NVIDIA GRID M60-1Q vs NVIDIA RTX A1000 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only directly comparable measurement in this pairing is the Geekbench Vulkan test, and the result is emphatic. The NVIDIA RTX A1000 scores 49,574, while the NVIDIA GRID M60-1Q scores 31,220. That is a 58.8% advantage for the RTX A1000, making it the clear winner in the sole head-to-head benchmark recorded in the database. This is not a marginal victory; it is a dominant gap that places the two cards in entirely different performance tiers.

Looking beyond the direct comparison, the RTX A1000 holds an average benchmark score of 34,207 across all recorded tests, placing it in the 79th percentile of all GPUs. The GRID M60-1Q, with only the Vulkan result to its name, averages 31,220, which lands in the 76th percentile. The delta in average scores is roughly 9.6%, but the percentile spread suggests the RTX A1000 is more consistently competitive across a broader range of workloads. The RTX A1000 also shows a strong OpenCL score of 52,078, which is notably higher than its Vulkan result, indicating that its compute capabilities are particularly well-suited to OpenCL-accelerated tasks.

The nearest rivals for each card provide additional context. The RTX A1000 sits within 0.4% of the NVIDIA RTX A2000 12 GB (average score 34,154) and within 0.2% of the AMD Radeon RX 560 XT (34,133). It trails the NVIDIA TITAN V (34,355) by only 0.4%, which is striking given the TITAN V's legacy as a high-end compute card. The GRID M60-1Q, meanwhile, essentially matches the NVIDIA Quadro M5000 (31,206, 0% delta) and is within 0.4% of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER (31,087). It falls behind the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell (31,532) by 1% and the TITAN RTX (31,676) by 1.4%. These proximity values show that the GRID M60-1Q, despite its age, still clusters with modern mid-range cards in raw Vulkan performance, but the RTX A1000 pulls ahead decisively when compared directly.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the only shared benchmark?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A1000 wins the Geekbench Vulkan test with a score of 49,574 versus the GRID M60-1Q's 31,220, a 58.8% advantage.

Q: How does the RTX A1000 compare to its closest rivals?

A: The RTX A1000's average score of 34,207 puts it 0.2% ahead of the RTX A2000 12 GB and the RX 560 XT, 0.6% ahead of the RX 480, and only 0.4% behind the TITAN V.

Q: What is the GRID M60-1Q's standing among its nearest competitors?

A: It matches the Quadro M5000 exactly (0% delta), sits 0.4% ahead of the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and trails the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell by 1% and the TITAN RTX by 1.4%.

Q: Is the GRID M60-1Q still competitive in modern API tests?

A: Yes, its Vulkan score of 31,220 places it in the 76th percentile of all GPUs, though that is three percentile points lower than the RTX A1000's 79th percentile.

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The RTX A1000, with an average of 34,207, compared to the GRID M60-1Q's 31,220, a difference of 2,987 points.

Q: Are there any tests where the GRID M60-1Q outperforms the RTX A1000?

A: No. In the recorded head-to-head data, the RTX A1000 wins the single shared test, and the GRID M60-1Q has no benchmark wins in this comparison.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is vast, reflecting nearly a decade of separate development. The RTX A1000 is built on the Ampere architecture using the GA107 chip, fabricated on an 8 nm process at Samsung. It packs 8,700 million transistors into a 200 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 43.5 million per square millimeter. In contrast, the GRID M60-1Q uses the Maxwell 2.0 architecture with the GM204 chip, produced on TSMC's 28 nm process. It contains 5,200 million transistors on a much larger 398 mm² die, giving it a transistor density of just 13.1 million per square millimeter. The RTX A1000 is therefore more than three times denser in transistor packing, which directly translates to higher compute throughput per unit area.

The RTX A1000 features 2,304 shading units, 72 texture mapping units, and 32 raster operation units. It also includes 18 ray tracing cores and 72 tensor cores, which are entirely absent from the GRID M60-1Q. This is a fundamental feature split: the Ampere card is equipped for hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI-driven tensor operations, while the Maxwell card has no such dedicated hardware. The GRID M60-1Q compensates with a different resource allocation, offering 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. Its texture and pixel throughput are actually higher on paper, with a texture rate of 150.8 GTexel/s and a pixel rate of 75.39 GPixel/s, versus 105.3 GTexel/s and 46.78 GPixel/s for the RTX A1000. This suggests the GRID card was designed for fill-rate-heavy workloads, while the RTX A1000 is built for modern compute and graphics features.

The RTX A1000 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, with FP32 compute rated at 6.737 TFLOPS and FP16 at the same 6.737 TFLOPS in a 1:1 ratio. The GRID M60-1Q supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, but its FP32 is only 4.825 TFLOPS, and it has no recorded FP16 capability. The absence of tensor and RT cores in the GRID card means it cannot accelerate DLSS, ray-traced effects, or AI inference workloads, all of which are native to the RTX A1000.

Clock behavior also differs. The RTX A1000 runs at a base of 727 MHz and boosts to 1,462 MHz, while the GRID M60-1Q has a lower base of 557 MHz but a boost of 1,178 MHz. Memory configuration is another stark contrast: the RTX A1000 uses 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 192.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the GRID M60-1Q uses 1 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 160.4 GB/s bandwidth. The RTX A1000 has more total memory and higher bandwidth, but the GRID card's wider bus is a remnant of an older design philosophy.

Specification Differences

The two cards diverge sharply on nearly every measurable specification. The RTX A1000 is an active product from the Workstation Ampere generation, released in April 2024, while the GRID M60-1Q is end-of-life from the GRID (Mx) generation, released in August 2015. Process nodes are 8 nm (Samsung) versus 28 nm (TSMC), and transistor counts are 8,700 million versus 5,200 million, with die sizes of 200 mm² versus 398 mm².

Memory is a major differentiator: the RTX A1000 has 8 GB of GDDR6 with a 128-bit bus and 192.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the GRID M60-1Q has only 1 GB of GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus and 160.4 GB/s bandwidth. The RTX A1000's FP32 compute is 6.737 TFLOPS versus 4.825 TFLOPS for the GRID card. Power requirements are also drastically different: the RTX A1000 consumes 50 W with no power connectors and a suggested PSU of 250 W, while the GRID M60-1Q draws 225 W, requires a single 8-pin connector, and asks for a 550 W PSU. The RTX A1000 is single-slot, 163 mm long, and 69 mm high, while the GRID M60-1Q is dual-slot and 267 mm long. The RTX A1000 offers four mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs and a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, whereas the GRID M60-1Q has no display outputs and uses PCIe 3.0 x16. The RTX A1000 includes 18 RT cores and 72 tensor cores; the GRID M60-1Q has neither. Memory clocks are 12 Gbps effective for the RTX A1000 versus 5 Gbps effective for the GRID card.

The Verdict

The data points to a single conclusion: the NVIDIA RTX A1000 is the superior GPU in this comparison, and by a wide margin. Its 58.8% lead in the only shared benchmark, its higher average score (34,207 versus 31,220), and its higher percentile ranking (79 versus 76) all confirm this. The RTX A1000 also brings modern architectural features, ray tracing cores, tensor cores, and eight times the memory capacity, all while consuming a fraction of the power. The GRID M60-1Q, by contrast, is an end-of-life product with no display outputs, no RT or tensor hardware, and a much lower compute ceiling. Any workload that benefits from modern graphics APIs, AI acceleration, or larger frame buffers will favor the RTX A1000. The GRID M60-1Q's only advantages are its wider memory bus, higher texture and pixel fill rates, and its historical clustering with cards like the Quadro M5000 and RTX 4070 Ti SUPER in Vulkan, but these do not compensate for the overall performance deficit.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX A1000 wins in every practical scenario that the data supports. It is the clear choice for tasks involving Vulkan-based graphics, where it outperforms the GRID M60-1Q by nearly 60%. Its OpenCL score of 52,078 suggests strong compute performance for general-purpose GPU workloads, and its 8 GB GDDR6 memory allows it to handle larger datasets and higher-resolution textures than the GRID M60-1Q's 1 GB frame buffer. The presence of RT and tensor cores means the RTX A1000 can accelerate ray-traced rendering and AI inference, areas where the GRID M60-1Q has no hardware support. Additionally, the RTX A1000's 50 W power draw and single-slot design make it suitable for dense, power-constrained environments, whereas the GRID M60-1Q's 225 W requirement and dual-slot footprint limit its deployment flexibility. The GRID M60-1Q does retain an edge in raw fill-rate tasks due to its higher texture rate (150.8 GTexel/s versus 105.3 GTexel/s) and pixel rate (75.39 GPixel/s versus 46.78 GPixel/s), which could theoretically benefit legacy applications that are fill-rate-bound. However, with no display outputs and only 1 GB of memory, those scenarios are narrow and increasingly obsolete. The recorded data shows one decisive winner, and every measurable indicator reinforces that result.