NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile vs NVIDIA Tesla M40 Comparison

The NVIDIA Tesla M40 and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile represent two distinct eras of GPU design, separated by a decade of architectural evolution. The data shows a clear performance hierarchy, with the mobile Blackwell part delivering a generational leap in compute capability despite being constrained by a laptop form factor. While the Tesla M40 was a dual-slot, 250 W workstation accelerator, the RTX 5080 Mobile is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) with a power envelope of just 80 W. The benchmark results quantify this shift, revealing that the newer mobile GPU is decisively faster in the shared test suite.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two products share only two benchmark results in the data set: Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan. In both instances, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile delivers a dominant victory, showcasing its superior compute architecture and memory subsystem.

In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the RTX 5080 Mobile scores 166,986 points, while the Tesla M40 manages 39,192 points. This represents a deltaPct of -76.5%, meaning the Tesla M40's score is 76.5% lower than the RTX 5080 Mobile's. In practical terms, the mobile GPU is approximately 4.26 times faster than the older workstation card in this compute workload. This massive margin is not unexpected, given that the RTX 5080 Mobile has 7680 shading units versus the Tesla M40's 3072, along with a significantly higher FP32 throughput of 23.04 TFLOPS against 6.832 TFLOPS.

The Geekbench Vulkan results follow a similar pattern. The RTX 5080 Mobile achieves 169,754 points, while the Tesla M40 scores 44,602 points. The deltaPct here is -73.7%, indicating the Tesla M40 is 73.7% behind the winner. This translates to a 3.8x performance advantage for the RTX 5080 Mobile in the Vulkan API. The newer GPU's support for DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and its dedicated 60 ray tracing cores and 240 tensor cores provide a feature set that the Maxwell 2.0 architecture of the Tesla M40, which only supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and has no RT or tensor cores, simply cannot match.

The data shows a clean sweep: the RTX 5080 Mobile wins both head-to-head benchmarks, resulting in 2 wins for the mobile part and 0 for the Tesla M40. The average benchmark score across all tests in the FACT PACK also reflects this, with the RTX 5080 Mobile averaging 38,349 points across a broader suite, while the Tesla M40 averages 41,897 across its two tests. However, it is important to note that the Tesla M40's average is skewed by its lower scores on those two specific tests, and the RTX 5080 Mobile's average is pulled down by its low Passmark DirectX 9, 10, 11, and 12 scores, which are likely from a different testing methodology.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in Geekbench OpenCL and by what margin?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile is significantly faster. It scores 166,986 points versus 39,192 for the Tesla M40, a deltaPct of -76.5% for the older card, meaning the RTX 5080 Mobile is about 4.3 times faster in this test.

Q: How does the RTX 5080 Mobile's Vulkan score compare to the Tesla M40's?

A: The RTX 5080 Mobile wins decisively with 169,754 points against 44,602 points. This gives the Tesla M40 a deltaPct of -73.7%, indicating the mobile GPU is roughly 3.8 times faster in the Vulkan API.

Q: Does the Tesla M40 have any ray tracing or tensor core capabilities?

A: No. The FACT PACK lists the Tesla M40's rtCores and tensorCores as null. In contrast, the RTX 5080 Mobile has 60 ray tracing cores and 240 tensor cores, giving it a hardware advantage in those workloads.

Q: What are the pixel and texture fill rates for each GPU?

A: The Tesla M40 has a pixel rate of 106.8 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 213.5 GTexel/s. The RTX 5080 Mobile has a higher pixel rate of 144.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 360.0 GTexel/s.

Q: Which GPU has a higher transistor density?

A: The RTX 5080 Mobile has a much higher transistor density at 120.6M / mm², based on a 5 nm process node, compared to the Tesla M40's 13.3M / mm² on a 28 nm node.

Q: Is the Tesla M40 still in production?

A: No, the production status for the Tesla M40 is listed as "End-of-life," while the RTX 5080 Mobile is marked as "Active."

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Mobile is the clear winner for any modern compute workload. Its 23.04 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, combined with 23.04 TFLOPS of FP16 performance (1:1 ratio), makes it exceptionally well-suited for AI inference, machine learning training, and high-performance computing tasks that leverage its 240 tensor cores. The 60 ray tracing cores also enable hardware-accelerated ray tracing, a feature absent on the Tesla M40. The 896.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth, provided by 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, is over three times the bandwidth of the Tesla M40's 288.4 GB/s, which is critical for data-intensive applications.

The NVIDIA Tesla M40, despite being end-of-life, still has a niche. Its 12 GB of GDDR5 memory and 384-bit bus width provide a large memory pool, though at lower bandwidth. In the FACT PACK, it sits in the 83rd percentile of all GPUs, slightly higher than the RTX 5080 Mobile's 81st percentile. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, where it is 1.7% ahead in average score, and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE, where it is 1.9% behind. This suggests that in legacy OpenCL or Vulkan workloads that do not utilize the newer GPU's specialized cores, the Tesla M40 can still hold its own against older high-end desktop parts. For a system that requires a passive display output (the Tesla M40 has "No outputs"), the RTX 5080 Mobile's "Portable Device Dependent" outputs make it the only choice for a laptop.

Specification Differences

The specifications of these two GPUs are dramatically different across nearly every field. The most obvious difference is form factor and power: the Tesla M40 is a dual-slot card requiring an 8-pin EPS power connector and a 600 W suggested PSU, with a 250 W TDP. The RTX 5080 Mobile is an IGP with no power connectors and no suggested PSU, drawing just 80 W.

Memory is another major point of divergence. The Tesla M40 uses 12 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, yielding 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The RTX 5080 Mobile uses 16 GB of GDDR7 on a 256-bit bus, which produces a much higher 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

The bus interface also differs: the Tesla M40 uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the newer part uses PCIe 5.0 x16. Display outputs are nonexistent on the Tesla M40, while the RTX 5080 Mobile's outputs are "Portable Device Dependent." Finally, the physical dimensions are listed only for the Tesla M40, at 267 mm in length (10.5 inches), while the RTX 5080 Mobile's dimensions are not provided.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gulf between these two processors is vast. The Tesla M40 is built on the Maxwell 2.0 architecture using the GM200 chip, fabricated on a 28 nm process at TSMC. It contains 8,000 million transistors on a 601 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of 13.3M / mm². Its compute layout features 3072 shading units, 192 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 96 raster operation pipelines (ROPs), with no ray tracing or tensor cores.

In contrast, the RTX 5080 Mobile is based on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture with the GB203 chip, manufactured on a 5 nm process, also at TSMC. This chip packs 45,600 million transistors onto a significantly smaller 378 mm² die, achieving a density of 120.6M / mm². The compute configuration is far larger, with 7680 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. Crucially, it also includes 60 dedicated ray tracing cores and 240 tensor cores, enabling features like hardware ray tracing and AI-accelerated workloads. The API support is also updated, with DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) on the RTX 5080 Mobile versus DirectX 12 (12_1) on the Tesla M40, while OpenGL and Vulkan support are both at 4.6 and 1.4, respectively. The clock speeds also tell the story of efficiency: the Tesla M40's base and boost clocks are 948 MHz and 1112 MHz, while the RTX 5080 Mobile starts at a lower 975 MHz base but boosts to 1500 MHz, demonstrating a more efficient architecture that can reach higher sustained clocks within its much lower power budget.