NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 vs NVIDIA Tesla M40 Comparison

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and the NVIDIA Tesla M40 represent two distinct eras of GPU design, separated by seven years of architectural evolution. The RTX 4090 is a modern Ada Lovelace flagship designed for high-end gaming and real-time ray tracing, while the Tesla M40 is a Maxwell 2.0-era compute accelerator built for datacenter workloads. The benchmark data shows a massive performance gulf between them, with the RTX 4090 dominating in every recorded test, yet the Tesla M40 retains a distinct identity as a specialized compute card with no display outputs and a much lower power envelope.

Where Each One Wins

The recorded data presents an unambiguous split: the RTX 4090 wins every benchmark in the database. In the two head-to-head tests, the GeForce card takes both victories, with wins in Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan. The RTX 4090 also holds a higher average benchmark score of 60347 compared to the Tesla M40’s 41897, a gap that reflects its newer architecture and far larger resource pool.

However, the Tesla M40’s role is not defined by raw speed against a modern flagship. Its design priorities point to a different use case. It is a dual-slot, 250 W card that requires only a 600 W suggested power supply, compared to the RTX 4090’s triple-slot, 450 W design and 850 W suggested PSU. The Tesla M40 also has no display outputs, meaning it is intended purely for compute tasks in a server or workstation environment where rendering to a monitor is unnecessary. Its 8-pin EPS power connector, rather than the RTX 4090’s 16-pin connector, further indicates a datacenter orientation. For tasks that fit within its 12 GB GDDR5 memory and do not require modern graphics features, the Tesla M40 can serve as a low-power compute accelerator, though the data shows it is dramatically slower in compute workloads than the RTX 4090.

The RTX 4090 wins in every measurable category, from raw FP32 throughput to memory bandwidth. Its 82.58 TFLOPS FP32 performance dwarfs the Tesla M40’s 6.832 TFLOPS. It also supports modern APIs like DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, whereas the Tesla M40 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4. For any workload that can leverage the RTX 4090’s feature set, including ray tracing, tensor operations, or high-bandwidth memory access, the choice is clear.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs come from fundamentally different architectural generations. The RTX 4090 is built on the AD102 chip using the Ada Lovelace architecture, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It packs 76,300 million transistors into a 609 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 125.3M per mm². This makes it a highly compact, dense design with massive compute resources. By contrast, the Tesla M40 uses the GM200 chip with the Maxwell 2.0 architecture, also from TSMC but on a much older 28 nm process. It contains only 8,000 million transistors on a 601 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of just 13.3M per mm². The die sizes are similar, but the RTX 4090 fits nearly ten times more transistors into the same area.

The shading resources tell a similar story. The RTX 4090 has 16,384 shading units, 512 texture mapping units, and 176 ROPs. It also includes 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI workloads. The Tesla M40 has 3,072 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, with no RT cores and no tensor cores. That absence of dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware means the Tesla M40 cannot accelerate those workloads at all, whereas the RTX 4090 is built specifically to handle them.

Clock speeds also differ significantly. The RTX 4090 runs at a base clock of 2235 MHz and boosts to 2520 MHz, while the Tesla M40 operates at a much lower 948 MHz base and 1112 MHz boost. This clock advantage, combined with the larger shader count, explains the enormous throughput gap. The RTX 4090 achieves a pixel rate of 443.5 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 1,290.2 GTexel/s, while the Tesla M40 manages 106.8 GPixel/s and 213.5 GTexel/s respectively.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two recorded head-to-head benchmarks show a one-sided contest. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 4090 scores 255416 against the Tesla M40’s 39192, a delta of 551.7% in favor of the newer card. That is not a modest improvement; it is a sixfold increase in raw compute performance. In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX 4090 scores 271631 versus the Tesla M40’s 44602, a delta of 509%. Both tests reflect the same underlying reality: the RTX 4090’s combination of more shading units, higher clocks, and newer architecture yields performance that is an order of magnitude beyond the Maxwell-era Tesla.

Beyond the head-to-head tests, the RTX 4090 has a much broader benchmark profile. It has scores in PassMark DirectX 10, 11, 12, and 9 tests, as well as PassMark G2D, G3D, and GPU compute tests. Its PassMark G3D score is 38194, and its GPU compute score is 26613. The Tesla M40 has no corresponding scores in those tests, which limits direct comparison. However, the available data shows the RTX 4090 sitting in the 88th percentile of all GPUs, while the Tesla M40 sits in the 83rd percentile. Despite being seven years older, the Tesla M40 still ranks in the upper tier of the database, though far below the RTX 4090.

The nearest rivals for each card also highlight their respective market positions. The RTX 4090’s closest competitor in the database is the Intel Arc Pro A60 with an average score of 60326, essentially tied, followed by the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 48 at 60140, which is 0.3% behind. The AMD Radeon Pro W6600M is 2.5% ahead, and the AMD Radeon PRO V710 is 2.9% behind. The Tesla M40’s nearest rival is the NVIDIA Tesla M40 24 GB at 41707, which is 0.5% ahead, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti at 41187, which is 1.7% ahead. The AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE is 1.9% behind, and the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 is 2.5% behind. These figures show that the Tesla M40, while old, still competes near modern mid-range cards in the database’s average scoring, whereas the RTX 4090 is positioned alongside professional workstation GPUs.

Specification Differences

The most obvious differences between the two cards are in their compute resources and memory subsystems. The RTX 4090 has 16,384 shading units, 512 TMUs, and 176 ROPs, while the Tesla M40 has 3,072 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The RTX 4090 also adds 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores, neither of which the Tesla M40 possesses.

Memory capacity and bandwidth also differ. The RTX 4090 ships with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory on a 384-bit bus, delivering 1.01 TB/s of bandwidth. The Tesla M40 has 12 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 384-bit bus, providing 288.4 GB/s. Memory clocks are also different, with the RTX 4090 running at 1313 MHz (21 Gbps effective) versus the Tesla M40’s 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective).

Process node, transistor count, and density are all different. The RTX 4090 uses a 5 nm node, 76,300 million transistors, and 125.3M per mm² density, while the Tesla M40 uses a 28 nm node, 5,000 million transistors, and 13.3M per mm² density. The power and physical design also differ: the RTX 4090 is a triple-slot card with a 450 W TDP and a 1x 16-pin power connector, while the Tesla M40 is dual-slot with a 250 W TDP and an 8-pin EPS connector. The suggested PSU rating is 850 W for the RTX 4090 and 600 W for the Tesla M40.

The RTX 4090 supports PCIe 4.0 x16, whereas the Tesla M40 uses PCIe 3.0 x16. Display outputs are also a major split. The RTX 4090 includes 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a ports, while the Tesla M40 has no outputs. Release dates place the RTX 4090 in 2022 and the Tesla M40 in 2015, with the Tesla M40’s generation is Tesla Maxwell (Mxx, with no series designation, an 8,000 million transistor count, 601 mm² die, and 609 mm² die, several other differences exist in API support. The RTX 4090 supports DirectX 4.6, Vulkan 1.0, and OpenGL 4.6, while the Tesla M40 also supports OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.0. The RTX 4.6 and DirectX 1.4.4 and Vulkan 1.0.4 support 4.6, DirectX 1.4.4.0, and 1.4.0, but the RTX 4090 supports DirectX 1.4.4, while the Tesla M40 12 (the RTX 4090 supports DirectX 12.0, the RTX 4090 supports DirectX 12.0 (12.0, 12.1.

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FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The RTX 4090 scores 255416 in Geekbench OpenCL, compared to the Tesla M40’s 39192, a 551.7% advantage.

Q: Does the Tesla M40 support ray tracing?

A: No, the Tesla M40 has no RT cores and no tensor cores. The RTX 4090 includes 128 RT cores and 512 tensor cores.

Q: How much memory does each card have?

A: The RTX 4090 has 24 GB of GDDR6X memory with 1.01 TB/s bandwidth. The Tesla M40 has 12 GB of GDDR5 memory with 288.4 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: What are the power requirements?

A: The RTX 4090 has a 450 W TDP with an 850 W suggested PSU, while the Tesla M40 has a 250 W TDP with a 600 W suggested PSU.

Q: Can the Tesla M40 output video to a display?

A: No, the Tesla M40 has no display outputs, making it unsuitable for graphics rendering. The RTX 4090 offers 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort outputs.

Q: How do their transistor counts compare?

A: The RTX 4090 has 76,300 million transistors on a 5 nm process, while the Tesla M40 has 8,000 million transistors on a 28 nm process.