NVIDIA Quadro K3100M vs NVIDIA Quadro M3000M Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded data shows a decisive victory for the NVIDIA Quadro M3000M across the available shared benchmark tests. In the two comparable workloads, the M3000M outperforms the K3100M by a wide margin, with the K3100M failing to register a single win in any head-to-head comparison. The most striking result comes from the Geekbench Vulkan test, where the M3000M scores 16,668 against the K3100M's 5,484, a delta of 67.1% in favor of the newer part. This is not a marginal improvement; it represents a fundamental generational leap in compute capability.

The Geekbench OpenCL result tells a similar story. The M3000M posts 16,646, while the K3100M manages only 6,154. That is a 63% difference, placing the M3000M at nearly 2.7 times the raw score of its predecessor. When interpreting these numbers, it is important to note that the overall average benchmark score for the M3000M (4,621) is actually lower than that of the K3100M (5,154). This apparent contradiction is explained by the different benchmark suites available for each card: the M3000M's average includes several Passmark tests with low scores, such as 26 in DirectX 10 and 23 in DirectX 12, which drag down its arithmetic mean. The K3100M, by contrast, only has Geekbench results in the database, all of which are moderately high.

The percentile ranks reinforce the mixed picture. The M3000M sits at the 27th percentile of all GPUs, while the K3100M is at the 30th percentile, a narrow gap of three points despite the massive head-to-head deltas. This suggests that the K3100M's limited benchmark set overstates its relative standing, whereas the M3000M's broader test coverage includes older DirectX workloads where it scores poorly. For modern compute-oriented APIs like Vulkan and OpenCL, however, the M3000M is clearly the superior part. The rival data also shows how close the M3000M is to its immediate competition: its average score of 4,621 sits within 0.1% of the GeForce GTX 970M (4,628) and within 0.8% of both the Radeon R5 M320 and the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB (4,657 each). The K3100M's nearest rival is the Quadro 4000M at 5,211, a 1.1% gap, and the GeForce GTX 760M at 5,236, a 1.6% gap.

Architecture Differences

The two mobile workstation GPUs come from different architectural generations, and the data shows exactly how much that matters. The K3100M is built on the Kepler architecture with the GK104 chip, while the M3000M uses the Maxwell 2.0 architecture with the GM204 chip. Both are manufactured by TSMC on a 28 nm process, but the silicon itself is substantially different. The K3100M packs 3,540 million transistors onto a 294 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 12.0 million per square millimeter. The M3000M is a larger and denser chip: 5,200 million transistors on a 398 mm² die, for a density of 13.1 million per square millimeter. That is 1,660 million more transistors and 104 mm² more silicon for the M3000M.

The core configuration diverges sharply. The M3000M has 1,024 shading units, compared to 768 on the K3100M, a 33% increase. Both cards have 64 texture mapping units and 32 raster output pipelines, so the geometry front-end is identical in those respects. The clock speeds also favor the M3000M: its base clock is 823 MHz with a boost of 924 MHz, while the K3100M runs at a flat 706 MHz for both base and boost. This combined advantage in shader count and clock speed produces a massive gap in raw throughput. The M3000M delivers 1.892 TFLOPS of FP32 compute, against 1,084.4 GFLOPS for the K3100M. Pixel fill rate is 29.57 GPixel/s versus 11.30 GPixel/s, and texture fill rate is 59.14 GTexel/s versus 45.18 GTexel/s.

Memory is another clear differentiator. Both cards feature 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, but the M3000M runs its memory at 1,253 MHz (5 Gbps effective) to achieve 160.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The K3100M's memory is clocked at 800 MHz (3.2 Gbps effective), producing 102.4 GB/s. That is a 56.6% bandwidth advantage for the M3000M, which matters for texture-heavy and compute-bound workloads. The API support also differs: the M3000M supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4, while the K3100M is limited to DirectX 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. Both support OpenGL 4.6. The bus interface is another distinction: the K3100M uses MXM-B (3.0), whereas the M3000M moves to PCIe 3.0 x16, which can affect data transfer overhead in some applications.

Where Each One Wins

The K3100M has no wins in the head-to-head benchmark data. In every recorded comparison, the M3000M comes out ahead. The K3100M's only statistical advantage is its percentile rank (30th versus 27th) and its higher average benchmark score (5,154 versus 4,621), but those are artifacts of the benchmark sets, not indications of real-world superiority. The K3100M is the older Kepler-era part, and its performance profile is simply outclassed by the Maxwell 2.0 design in the M3000M.

The M3000M wins decisively in compute-oriented workloads. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 16,646 and Vulkan score of 16,668 show that it handles modern parallel compute tasks with ease. The K3100M's scores of 6,154 and 5,484 in those same tests place it at roughly 37% and 33% of the M3000M's performance, respectively. For users running GPU-accelerated rendering, machine learning inference, or any workload that leverages OpenCL or Vulkan, the M3000M is the only rational choice from these two.

The M3000M also holds a clear advantage in memory bandwidth, which is critical for large datasets and high-resolution textures. Its 160.4 GB/s bandwidth is more than half again as fast as the K3100M's 102.4 GB/s. The M3000M's higher pixel fill rate (29.57 GPixel/s versus 11.30 GPixel/s) means it can drive more pixels per second, which benefits viewport performance in CAD and 3D modeling applications. The K3100M does have one thing going for it: a lower transistor count and smaller die, which could imply lower manufacturing complexity, but that does not translate into any user-facing performance benefit in the data.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro M3000M scores 16,646 in Geekbench OpenCL, while the NVIDIA Quadro K3100M scores 6,154. The M3000M is 63% faster in this test.

Q: How do the two cards compare in Vulkan performance?

A: The M3000M scores 16,668 in Geekbench Vulkan, versus 5,484 for the K3100M, a delta of 67.1% in favor of the M3000M.

Q: Do both cards have the same memory configuration?

A: Yes, both have 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus. However, the M3000M has higher memory bandwidth at 160.4 GB/s, compared to 102.4 GB/s for the K3100M.

Q: What are the shading unit counts?

A: The M3000M has 1,024 shading units, while the K3100M has 768. The M3000M also has higher base and boost clocks: 823 MHz and 924 MHz respectively, versus 706 MHz for both on the K3100M.

Q: Which card has better API support?

A: The M3000M supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4, whereas the K3100M supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Q: How do their average benchmark scores compare?

A: The K3100M has a higher average benchmark score of 5,154, compared to 4,621 for the M3000M. This is because the K3100M only has Geekbench results in the database, while the M3000M includes Passmark tests with lower scores.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous. The NVIDIA Quadro M3000M is the superior GPU in every head-to-head benchmark recorded in the database. It wins both shared tests, and the margins are enormous: 63% in OpenCL and 67.1% in Vulkan. The M3000M was released in 2015, two years after the K3100M, and it shows the full benefit of the Maxwell 2.0 architecture's evolution. The M3000M has 1,660 million more transistors, 256 more shading units, a 56.6% bandwidth advantage, and higher clocks across the board.

The M3000M's weaknesses in the Passmark DirectX tests (26 in DirectX 10, 42 in DirectX 11, 23 in DirectX 12, and 98 in DirectX 9) are worth noting for legacy applications, but those workloads are not representative of modern workstation use cases like OpenCL compute or Vulkan rendering. The K3100M's higher percentile rank of 30th versus 27th percentile of all GPUs should not be read as a sign of superiority. It is simply a consequence of the K3100M having fewer benchmark results in the database, all of which happen to be mid-range Geekbench scores. The M3000M's broader test coverage includes a Passmark G3D score of 5,543 and a GPU compute score of 9,213, alongside its strong Geekbench numbers.

Who should pick which? Anyone choosing between these two cards should take the M3000M without hesitation, based on performance alone. The K3100M is the only choice if a DirectX 9 workload absolutely requires its particular feature set, where it scores 98 in Passmark DirectX 9, but that is a niche scenario. For every other workload recorded, the M3000M wins on compute power, pixel throughput, and memory bandwidth. The verdict from the data is simple: the M3000M is the faster card.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ in nearly every major specification field except for memory size, type, bus width, TMU count, TDP, slot width, and power connectors, all of which are identical: 4 GB GDDR5 memory, 256-bit bus width, 64 texture mapping units, 32 ROPs, 75 W TDP, MXM Module slot width, no power connectors, and portable device dependent display outputs. Everything else is different.

The M3000M uses the GM204 chip with Maxwell 2.0 architecture, while the K3100M uses the GK104 chip with Kepler architecture. The M3000M has a larger die at 398 mm² and more transistors at 5,200 million, resulting in higher transistor density of 13.1 million per square millimeter. The K3100M has 3,540 million transistors on 294 mm² with a density of 12.0 million per square millimeter. The M3000M runs at a base clock of 823 MHz and a boost clock of 924 MHz, while the K3100M is locked at 706 MHz for both. Memory clocks differ as well: the M3000M operates at 1,253 MHz (5 Gbps effective), and the K3100M at 800 MHz (3.2 Gbps effective). Bandwidth is 160.4 GB/s for the M3000M and 102.4 GB/s for the K3100M. Shading units number 1,024 on the M3000M versus 768 on the K3100M. Pixel rate is 29.57 GPixel/s versus 11.30 GPixel/s, texture rate is 59.14 GTexel/s versus 45.18 GTexel/s, and FP32 compute is 1.892 TFLOPS versus 1,084.4 GFLOPS. The M3000M supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.4, while the K3100M supports DirectX 12 (11_0) and Vulkan 1.2.175. The bus interface is PCIe 3.0 x16 on the M3000M and MXM-B (3.0) on the K3100M. The M3000M was released in 2015 and is the successor to the Quadro Kepler-M, while the K3100M was released in 2013 and is the predecessor to the Quadro Maxwell-M. Both are end-of-life products.