NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER vs NVIDIA Tesla P40 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two direct head-to-head benchmark comparisons between the NVIDIA Tesla P40 and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER. In both tests, the RTX 4080 SUPER dominates decisively. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 4080 SUPER scores 219,065 against the Tesla P40's 62,017, a difference of 71.7 percent in favor of the newer card. The gap is even wider in Geekbench Vulkan, where the RTX 4080 SUPER posts 260,075 versus 68,172 for the Tesla P40, a 73.8 percent margin. The RTX 4080 SUPER wins both recorded head-to-head matchups, leaving the Tesla P40 with zero wins.

The scale of these margins is substantial. In OpenCL, the RTX 4080 SUPER delivers roughly 3.5 times the raw score of the Tesla P40. In Vulkan, the advantage grows to nearly 3.8 times. These are not incremental improvements; they represent a generational leap in compute throughput. The Tesla P40, built on the Pascal architecture, was designed for data center compute tasks in 2016. The RTX 4080 SUPER, built on Ada Lovelace, is a 2024 consumer flagship with dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware, and the benchmark data reflects that evolution.

Looking at the average benchmark scores across all recorded tests, the RTX 4080 SUPER averages 54,209, which places it in the 86th percentile of all GPUs in the database. The Tesla P40 averages 65,095, placing it in the 89th percentile. This is a notable inversion: the Tesla P40's average score is higher than the RTX 4080 SUPER's average, despite losing both head-to-head tests by wide margins. The explanation lies in the benchmark sets. The Tesla P40 has only two recorded scores, both in Geekbench, while the RTX 4080 SUPER has ten recorded scores, including PassMark tests that drag its average down. The PassMark DirectX 10 score of 193 and DirectX 12 score of 134 are particularly low, likely reflecting driver or workload characteristics, and they pull the RTX 4080 SUPER's average below the Tesla P40's.

The nearest rivals in the database for each card further contextualize their standing. The Tesla P40 sits within 2 percent of the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100, the NVIDIA CMP 30HX, and the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP, with deltas of 1.4, 2, and 2 percent respectively. The AMD Radeon VII is 1.4 percent ahead. The RTX 4080 SUPER's nearest rivals are the RTX 4080 (0.1 percent behind), the Radeon Pro W5700X (1.1 percent ahead), the Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (2.7 percent ahead), and the Radeon 8060S (2.8 percent ahead). These tight margins indicate that both cards are competitive within their respective peer groups, even if the head-to-head comparison is lopsided.

Where Each One Wins

The data splits the two cards into distinct use cases. The RTX 4080 SUPER wins every head-to-head compute benchmark in the database. Its OpenCL score of 219,065 and Vulkan score of 260,075 are overwhelming. This card is built for modern graphics workloads, real-time rendering, and general compute tasks that leverage its 10,240 shading units and 52.22 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. Its FP16 throughput matches FP32 at 52.22 TFLOPS, a 1:1 ratio, which is critical for AI inference and machine learning tasks that use half-precision arithmetic. The Tesla P40, by contrast, has FP16 performance of only 183.7 GFLOPS, a 1:64 ratio, meaning its FP16 capability is practically negligible. Any workload relying on FP16 or tensor operations will favor the RTX 4080 SUPER by a massive margin.

The Tesla P40's strengths lie elsewhere. Its 24 GB of GDDR5 memory exceeds the RTX 4080 SUPER's 16 GB of GDDR6X. For workloads that require large memory capacity, such as certain data center inference models or large datasets that fit entirely in VRAM, the Tesla P40 holds an advantage. Its 384-bit memory bus, though slower in bandwidth at 347.1 GB/s versus 736.3 GB/s, provides more total memory. The Tesla P40 also has a higher average benchmark score (65,095) than the RTX 4080 SUPER (54,209), but this is a statistical artifact of differing test sets, not a genuine performance advantage. In any direct comparison, the RTX 4080 SUPER is faster.

The RTX 4080 SUPER also wins on architectural features. It has 80 ray tracing cores and 320 tensor cores, while the Tesla P40 has none. DirectX 12 Ultimate support (12_2) versus DirectX 12 (12_1) means the RTX 4080 SUPER can handle the latest graphics features, including ray tracing and mesh shaders. The Tesla P40, with no display outputs, is not intended for any interactive graphics work. It is a compute-only accelerator. The RTX 4080 SUPER has 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, making it suitable for gaming, content creation, and professional visualization. The Tesla P40's lack of outputs means it cannot drive a monitor at all.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous for anyone choosing between these two GPUs for a compute or graphics workload. The RTX 4080 SUPER is the superior card in every direct benchmark comparison, with a 71.7 percent lead in OpenCL and a 73.8 percent lead in Vulkan. Its FP32 compute of 52.22 TFLOPS is more than four times the Tesla P40's 11.76 TFLOPS. Its memory bandwidth of 736.3 GB/s is more than double the Tesla P40's 347.1 GB/s. Its architecture is newer, its feature set is richer, and its performance is categorically higher.

The Tesla P40's only advantages are memory capacity (24 GB versus 16 GB) and a higher average benchmark score that stems from an incomplete test set. For users who need more than 16 GB of VRAM for a specific compute task, the Tesla P40 might be the only option in this pairing. But for anyone who values raw performance, modern API support, or any form of graphics output, the RTX 4080 SUPER is the clear choice. The percentile rankings (89th for Tesla P40, 86th for RTX 4080 SUPER) are misleading without context; the RTX 4080 SUPER's lower percentile reflects its broader and more demanding benchmark suite, not inferior performance.

The production status of both cards is end-of-life, so neither is a future-proof investment in terms of availability. But the RTX 4080 SUPER's launch MSRP was 5,699 USD for the Tesla P40 versus 999 USD for the RTX 4080 SUPER. The RTX 4080 SUPER delivers dramatically more performance per dollar, though pricing is not the focus here. The verdict from the data: the RTX 4080 SUPER wins on every measurable performance metric, and the Tesla P40 only makes sense for niche memory-capacity-bound workloads.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has a higher Geekbench OpenCL score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER scores 219,065, compared to 62,017 for the NVIDIA Tesla P40, a 71.7 percent advantage.

Q: Does the Tesla P40 have more VRAM than the RTX 4080 SUPER?

A: Yes, the Tesla P40 has 24 GB of GDDR5 memory, while the RTX 4080 SUPER has 16 GB of GDDR6X.

Q: Which card supports ray tracing?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER has 80 ray tracing cores and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2). The Tesla P40 has no ray tracing cores and supports only DirectX 12 (12_1).

Q: What is the memory bandwidth difference?

A: The RTX 4080 SUPER has 736.3 GB/s bandwidth, while the Tesla P40 has 347.1 GB/s. The RTX 4080 SUPER offers more than double the bandwidth.

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score in the database?

A: The Tesla P40 has an average score of 65,095, while the RTX 4080 SUPER averages 54,209. However, the Tesla P40 has only two recorded benchmarks, while the RTX 4080 SUPER has ten, so this comparison is not apples-to-apples.

Q: Does the Tesla P40 have any display outputs?

A: No, the Tesla P40 has no display outputs, making it a compute-only accelerator. The RTX 4080 SUPER has 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from vastly different architectural eras. The Tesla P40 uses the GP102 chip on the Pascal architecture, manufactured on a 16 nm process at TSMC. It packs 11,800 million transistors on a 471 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 25.1 million per mm². The RTX 4080 SUPER uses the AD103 chip on the Ada Lovelace architecture, manufactured on a 5 nm process, also at TSMC. It contains 45,900 million transistors on a 379 mm² die, a density of 121.1 million per mm². The RTX 4080 SUPER packs nearly four times the transistors into a smaller die, evidence of the process node shrink.

The core configurations differ dramatically. The Tesla P40 has 3,840 shading units, 240 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units. The RTX 4080 SUPER has 10,240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. The RTX 4080 SUPER also adds 80 ray tracing cores and 320 tensor cores, which are entirely absent from the Tesla P40. Pixel rate and texture rate scale accordingly: the RTX 4080 SUPER reaches 285.6 GPixel/s and 816.0 GTexel/s, while the Tesla P40 manages 147.0 GPixel/s and 367.4 GTexel/s.

Clock speeds are another separator. The Tesla P40 runs at a base of 1303 MHz and a boost of 1531 MHz, with memory at 1808 MHz (7.2 Gbps effective). The RTX 4080 SUPER runs at a base of 2295 MHz and a boost of 2550 MHz, with memory at 1438 MHz (23 Gbps effective). The higher clocks, combined with more cores, yield an FP32 performance of 52.22 TFLOPS for the RTX 4080 SUPER versus 11.76 TFLOPS for the Tesla P40. FP16 performance is even more lopsided: the RTX 4080 SUPER delivers 52.22 TFLOPS at 1:1 ratio, while the Tesla P40 delivers only 183.7 GFLOPS at a 1:64 ratio.

Memory architecture also differs. The Tesla P40 uses 24 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, yielding 347.1 GB/s. The RTX 4080 SUPER uses 16 GB of GDDR6X on a 256-bit bus, yielding 736.3 GB/s. The narrower bus is more than compensated by the faster memory technology. The Tesla P40 uses a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, while the RTX 4080 SUPER uses PCIe 4.0 x16, doubling the potential host bandwidth. Power requirements scale with performance: the Tesla P40 has a 250 W TDP with an 8-pin EPS connector, while the RTX 4080 SUPER has a 320 W TDP with a 16-pin connector. The suggested PSU is 600 W for the Tesla P40 and 700 W for the RTX 4080 SUPER.

Physical dimensions differ as well. The Tesla P40 is 267 mm long and 111 mm high, taking a dual-slot width. The RTX 4080 SUPER is 310 mm long, 140 mm high, and 61 mm wide, taking a triple-slot width. The Tesla P40 has no display outputs, while the RTX 4080 SUPER offers 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a. API support reflects the newer architecture: the RTX 4080 SUPER supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Tesla P40 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The release dates tell the story: the Tesla P40 launched in September 2016, and the RTX 4080 SUPER launched in January 2024. The Tesla P40 is a Pascal-era data center card, while the RTX 4080 SUPER is an Ada Lovelace consumer flagship. The architectural gap explains the performance gap.