NVIDIA P102-100 vs NVIDIA RTX A6000 Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The recorded benchmark data splits cleanly between these two NVIDIA accelerators. The NVIDIA RTX A6000 wins both head-to-head tests, and it wins them by substantial margins. In Geekbench OpenCL, the A6000 scores 193,937 against the P102-100’s 49,602, a 74.4% gap in favor of the workstation card. In Geekbench Vulkan, the A6000 posts 164,462 versus 67,454, a 59% advantage. There are no benchmark categories where the P102-100 comes out ahead in the database’s direct comparisons.

The P102-100’s role is narrower. Its two recorded scores, 49,602 in OpenCL and 67,454 in Vulkan, place it at the 88th percentile among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 58,528. That average sits within a tight cluster of rivals: the AMD Radeon PRO V710 averages 58,657 (0.2% ahead), the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT averages 58,392 (0.2% behind), the Intel Arc A570M averages 58,239 (0.5% behind), and the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM averages 58,085 (0.8% behind). The P102-100 is effectively a mid-pack performer that trades blows with those cards, but it cannot reach the A6000’s performance class.

The RTX A6000, by contrast, averages 44,075 across all its benchmark entries, a figure dragged down by its legacy Passmark DirectX 9, 10, 11, and 12 scores (245, 155, 191, and 87 respectively). Its modern compute scores are far higher, and its nearest rivals reflect a different tier: the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Mobile averages 43,667 (0.9% behind), the RTX 4070 Ti averages 44,795 (1.6% ahead), the Quadro M6000 averages 43,301 (1.8% behind), and the RTX 5050 Mobile averages 43,268 (1.9% behind). The A6000’s 84th percentile ranking among all GPUs understates its compute strength because the Passmark legacy tests pull the average down.

Architecture Differences

These two cards come from different NVIDIA generations with fundamentally different designs. The P102-100 uses the GP102 chip on the Pascal architecture, built on a 16 nm process at TSMC. It packs 11,800 million transistors into a 471 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 25.1 million per mm². The RTX A6000 uses the GA102 chip on the Ampere architecture, fabricated on Samsung’s 8 nm process. It holds 28,300 million transistors across a 628 mm² die, for a density of 45.1 million per mm².

The compute resources diverge sharply. The P102-100 has 3,200 shading units, 200 texture mapping units, and 80 render output units. The A6000 more than triples the shader count with 10,752 shading units, and it has 336 TMUs and 112 ROPs. The A6000 also brings 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores, hardware that the P102-100 lacks entirely, since Pascal predates NVIDIA’s dedicated ray tracing and tensor acceleration. The FP32 throughput tells the story: the P102-100 delivers 10.77 TFLOPS, while the A6000 reaches 38.71 TFLOPS. In FP16, the difference is even more pronounced because of the 1:1 ratio on Ampere: the A6000 also delivers 38.71 TFLOPS, while the P102-100 manages only 168.3 GFLOPS at a 1:64 ratio.

Memory configurations are equally distinct. The P102-100 carries 5 GB of GDDR5X on a 320-bit bus, with 440.3 GB/s of bandwidth and an effective 11 Gbps memory clock. The A6000 ships with 48 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus, delivering 768.0 GB/s of bandwidth at 16 Gbps effective. That is nearly 10 times the capacity and 74% more bandwidth. The A6000’s pixel rate is 201.6 GPixel/s versus 134.6 GPixel/s on the P102-100, and its texture rate is 604.8 GTexel/s versus 336.6 GTexel/s.

Clock behavior differs too. The P102-100 has a higher base clock at 1582 MHz, but its boost clock tops out at 1683 MHz. The A6000 starts lower at 1410 MHz but boosts to 1800 MHz. The P102-100 uses a PCIe 1.0 x4 interface, a severe bottleneck for a card of its era, while the A6000 runs on PCIe 4.0 x16. The P102-100 has no display outputs, making it a compute or mining-only board. The A6000 provides four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. The P102-100 supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The A6000 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. Both are dual-slot cards at 267 mm in length, but the A6000 adds a 112 mm height dimension. The P102-100 draws 250 W with two 8-pin connectors and a 600 W suggested PSU, while the A6000 draws 300 W with an 8-pin EPS connector and a 700 W suggested PSU.

The Verdict

The data supports a clear separation of roles. The P102-100 is a Pascal-era compute accelerator with no display outputs, a PCIe 1.0 x4 link, and a 5 GB memory frame. Its benchmark scores cluster with mid-range desktop and mobile GPUs from several generations, and its 88th percentile ranking reflects that. It is not a workstation card, and it cannot handle the memory-intensive or ray-traced workloads that the A6000 targets. The recorded benchmarks show it trailing the A6000 by 74.4% in OpenCL and 59% in Vulkan, deficits that no driver or overclock can close.

The RTX A6000 is the clear choice for compute-heavy professional work. Its 48 GB frame, 768.0 GB/s of bandwidth, and 38.71 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput put it in a different performance class. The 84 RT cores and 336 tensor cores enable ray tracing and AI acceleration that the P102-100 does not support at all. The A6000’s 84th percentile ranking is lower than the P102-100’s 88th percentile, but that is an artifact of the Passmark legacy DirectX scores dragging its average down. The modern compute benchmarks, Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan, show the A6000 at roughly three to four times the P102-100’s performance.

For a buyer constrained to the P102-100’s capabilities, the card is competitive with its immediate peers, within 0.8% of the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM and 0.5% of the Intel Arc A570M. But those peers are not workstation accelerators. The P102-100 is an end-of-life product from the Mining GPUs generation, released in February 2018. The A6000, released in October 2020, is also end-of-life, but it represents a far more recent and capable architecture. Its predecessor was the Quadro Turing line and its successor is the Workstation Ada generation. The launch MSRP of the A6000 was 4,649 USD.

FAQ

Q: Which card has more shading units?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A6000 has 10,752 shading units, while the NVIDIA P102-100 has 3,200.

Q: Does the P102-100 support ray tracing?

A: No. The P102-100 has no RT cores, whereas the RTX A6000 includes 84 RT cores.

Q: How much memory does each card have?

A: The P102-100 has 5 GB of GDDR5X on a 320-bit bus. The RTX A6000 has 48 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus.

Q: What is the average benchmark score for each card?

A: The P102-100 averages 58,528 across its recorded benchmarks. The RTX A6000 averages 44,075, though its modern compute scores are far higher than that average suggests.

Q: Which card has the higher boost clock?

A: The RTX A6000 boosts to 1800 MHz, while the P102-100 boosts to 1683 MHz. The P102-100 has the higher base clock at 1582 MHz versus 1410 MHz.

Q: Can the P102-100 connect to a display?

A: No. The P102-100 has no display outputs. The RTX A6000 provides four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two direct comparisons between these cards, and the RTX A6000 wins both decisively.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX A6000 scores 193,937 against the P102-100’s 49,602. The delta is 74.4% in favor of the A6000. This is the larger margin of the two tests, and it reflects the massive gap in raw compute resources: 10,752 shading units versus 3,200, 38.71 TFLOPS of FP32 versus 10.77 TFLOPS, and 768.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth versus 440.3 GB/s. OpenCL workloads that scale across shader count and memory bandwidth will favor the A6000 by roughly this proportion.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX A6000 scores 164,462 against the P102-100’s 67,454. The delta is 59% in favor of the A6000. The P102-100’s Vulkan score is relatively stronger than its OpenCL score, suggesting that its Pascal architecture handles Vulkan’s lower-level API overhead better than OpenCL’s dispatch model. Still, the A6000 maintains a commanding lead, driven by its higher boost clock (1800 MHz versus 1683 MHz), its 1:1 FP16 throughput, and its 84 RT cores, which can offload work in Vulkan pipelines that support ray tracing.

The P102-100’s best showing in these tests is its Vulkan score of 67,454, which is 36% higher than its own OpenCL score. The A6000’s two scores are closer together, with OpenCL leading Vulkan by 18%. That consistency suggests the A6000 is less sensitive to API choice, while the P102-100 benefits from Vulkan’s lower overhead relative to OpenCL.

Across all recorded benchmarks, the P102-100 wins zero head-to-head comparisons, and the RTX A6000 wins two. The P102-100’s nearest rivals, the AMD Radeon PRO V710, Radeon RX 6950 XT, Intel Arc A570M, and Radeon RX 5600 OEM, all sit within 0.8% of its average score, confirming that it competes with mid-range consumer and entry professional cards. The A6000’s nearest rivals, including the RTX 4090 Mobile, RTX 4070 Ti, Quadro M6000, and RTX 5050 Mobile, all sit within 1.9%, but those are all far faster than the P102-100’s peer group. The two cards do not overlap in performance class, and the benchmark data reflects that cleanly.