NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada Generation vs NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB Comparison

The NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada Generation and the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB occupy very different positions in the database, despite both being professional-grade NVIDIA parts. The RTX 4000 Ada Generation is an active workstation card built on Ada Lovelace, sitting in the 95th percentile of all GPUs in the database with an average benchmark score of 135218. The Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB is an end-of-life datacenter accelerator from the Pascal era, recorded at the 92th percentile with an average benchmark score of 79605. In the one direct comparison the database holds between them, the OpenCL test, the RTX 4000 Ada Generation wins by 84.2 percent. The data therefore presents a clear picture: the newer card is substantially faster in compute, while the older card retains one distinctive hardware trait, very high memory bandwidth, that the raw scores do not capture.

The Verdict

For anyone choosing between these two on performance grounds, the recorded data points firmly to the RTX 4000 Ada Generation. It scores 146593 in Geekbench OpenCL against 79605 for the Tesla P100, an advantage of 84.2 percent, and it also carries a Vulkan score of 123842 that the Tesla has no recorded equivalent for. Its percentile placement, 95 versus 92, confirms the gap is real across the wider database population rather than an artifact of a single test.

The Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB still earns consideration in one narrow respect: memory bandwidth. Its HBM2 subsystem delivers 732.2 GB/s across a 4096-bit bus, more than double the 360.0 GB/s of the RTX 4000 Ada's GDDR6 on a 160-bit bus. Workloads that are bandwidth-bound rather than compute-bound are the only category where the Pascal card's silicon retains a structural edge, though the database contains no benchmark demonstrating this translates into wins. Buyers should also note practical differences: the Tesla has no display outputs and is dual-slot with a 250 W TDP, while the RTX 4000 Ada is a single-slot card with a 130 W TDP and four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the RTX 4000 Ada Generation in the shared benchmark?

A: In Geekbench OpenCL the RTX 4000 Ada Generation scores 146593 against 79605 for the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, an 84.2 percent advantage.

Q: Does either card support ray tracing?

A: The RTX 4000 Ada Generation has 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores. The Tesla P100 has neither, as Pascal-era Tesla parts predate those units.

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The Tesla P100, with 732.2 GB/s from 16 GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus. The RTX 4000 Ada Generation provides 360.0 GB/s from 20 GB of GDDR6 on a 160-bit bus.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. The RTX 4000 Ada Generation is listed as Active. The Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB is End-of-life, having been succeeded by the Tesla Volta generation.

Q: How do the two compare against their nearest rivals in the database?

A: The RTX 4000 Ada Generation sits essentially level with the NVIDIA A10M (average score 135230, a difference of 0 percent) and marginally ahead of the Radeon PRO W6800, which scores 135396, less than a percent behind. The Tesla P100 scores 79605 on average, within a fraction of a percent of the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB at 79396 and the GeForce RTX 5090 at 79842 in its recorded test cluster.

Q: What are the power requirements?

A: The RTX 4000 Ada Generation has a 130 W TDP, a single 16-pin power connector, and a suggested PSU of 300 W. The Tesla P100 has a 250 W TDP, a single 8-pin connector, and a suggested PSU of 600 W.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from different worlds of silicon design. The RTX 4000 Ada Generation uses the AD104 chip on TSMC's 5 nm process, packing 35,800 million transistors into a 294 mm² die for a density of 121.8M transistors per mm². The Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB uses the GP100 chip on TSMC's 16 nm process, with 15,300 million transistors spread across a much larger 610 mm² die, yielding a density of 25.1M per mm². The Ada part achieves more than double the transistor count on less than half the die area, a direct consequence of the node gap between the two generations.

Architecturally, Ada Lovelace brings dedicated hardware the Pascal Tesla lacks entirely: 48 RT cores for ray tracing and 192 tensor cores. The Tesla P100 records null values for both. The compute resource counts also diverge in structure. The RTX 4000 Ada has 6144 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The Tesla P100 has 3584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, so the older card actually carries more texture units and rasterization outputs even though its raw throughput is far lower.

Floating-point behavior differs notably. The RTX 4000 Ada delivers 26.73 TFLOPS FP32 and the same 26.73 TFLOPS FP16 at a 1:1 ratio. The Tesla P100 delivers 9.526 TFLOPS FP32 but 19.05 TFLOPS FP16 at a 2:1 ratio, reflecting its datacenter heritage where half-precision throughput was deliberately doubled. Even so, the Ada card's FP16 figure exceeds the Tesla's by a comfortable margin.

Feature support follows the same pattern. The RTX 4000 Ada reports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the Tesla P100 reports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.3. Both list OpenGL 4.6. The bus interface also differs: PCIe 4.0 x16 for the Ada card versus PCIe 3.0 x16 for the Pascal card.

Specification Differences

The specification sheet diverges in nearly every dimension that matters:

• Memory: 20 GB GDDR6 at 360.0 GB/s on a 160-bit bus (RTX 4000 Ada) versus 16 GB HBM2 at 732.2 GB/s on a 4096-bit bus (Tesla P100). The Ada card has more capacity; the Tesla has far more bandwidth.
• Clocks: 1500 MHz base and 2175 MHz boost for the Ada card, with memory at 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). The Tesla runs 1190 MHz base and 1329 MHz boost, with memory at 715 MHz (1430 Mbps effective).
• Throughput: Pixel rate of 139.2 GPixel/s versus 127.6 GPixel/s, and texture rate of 417.6 GTexel/s versus 297.7 GTexel/s, both favoring the Ada card.
• Power and cooling: 130 W TDP, single-slot, one 16-pin connector, 300 W suggested PSU for the Ada card. 250 W TDP, dual-slot, one 8-pin connector, 600 W suggested PSU for the Tesla.
• Physical size: 245 mm long and 112 mm tall for the Ada card versus 267 mm long for the Tesla.
• Display: Four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs on the Ada card, no outputs at all on the Tesla, which was designed for headless server deployment.
• Lineage: The RTX 4000 Ada Generation belongs to the Workstation Ada generation, following Workstation Ampere and preceding Blackwell PRO W. The Tesla P100 belongs to the Tesla Pascal generation, following Tesla Maxwell and preceding Tesla Volta. Release dates are 2023 for the Ada card and 2016 for the Tesla.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database holds one direct comparison between these two cards, and it is decisive. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 4000 Ada Generation scores 146593 and the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB scores 79605. That is an 84.2 percent margin for the newer card, and the magnitude is consistent with the underlying hardware: nearly triple the FP32 compute (26.73 versus 9.526 TFLOPS), a much higher boost clock, and roughly 1.7 times the shading units.

Context from each card's rival cluster reinforces the reading. The RTX 4000 Ada Generation's average score of 135218 places it effectively even with the NVIDIA A10M at 135230, 0.1 percent ahead of the AMD Radeon PRO W6800 at 135396, and slightly ahead of both the Radeon Pro W6800X Duo (135774) and the Radeon PRO V620 (136472). It competes squarely in a modern professional tier. The Tesla P100's average of 79605 puts it in a cluster with the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB at 79396 (0.3 percent apart), the GeForce RTX 5090 at 79842, the Radeon RX 6850M XT at 78940, and the Radeon Pro Vega 64X at 80959, a mixed grouping that reflects how compute scores from different eras and product classes interleave.

The Tesla P100 records no Vulkan result, while the RTX 4000 Ada posts 123842 in Geekbench Vulkan, so the graphics-API side of the ledger is uncontested.

Where Each One Wins

RTX 4000 Ada Generation wins: general compute, by the large margin recorded in the shared OpenCL test; any workload relying on FP32 throughput, where it holds nearly a threefold advantage; ray tracing and AI inference, thanks to 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores the Tesla simply does not have; texture fill work at 417.6 versus 297.7 GTexel/s; memory capacity at 20 GB versus 16 GB; and all practical deployment concerns, with a single-slot form factor, a lower 130 W TDP, four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and an active production status with modern DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4 support.

Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB wins: nothing in the recorded benchmark data, which shows zero head-to-head wins for the Pascal card. Its case rests entirely on hardware characteristics the benchmarks do not score: HBM2 bandwidth of 732.2 GB S, double that of its rival, a wider 4096-bit bus, higher FP16-to-FP32 ratio throughput at 19.05 TFLOPS for its era, and more ROPs (96 versus 64) and TMUs (224 versus 192) on paper. For bandwidth-hungry legacy compute environments already standardized on Pascal-era Tesla infrastructure, those attributes are the sole remaining arguments the data supports. Everywhere else, the RTX 4000 Ada Generation is the stronger card.