NVIDIA RTX 6000D vs NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB Comparison

The RTX 6000D and the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB represent two very different eras of NVIDIA accelerator design, and the recorded data reflects a generational gap measured in nearly a decade of silicon evolution. One is an active Blackwell PRO workstation product; the other is an end-of-life Pascal-era compute card. Both sit high in the database percentiles, at 98 and 92 respectively, but the head-to-head numbers show how far apart those percentile positions really are when translated into measured throughput.

FAQ

Q: How large is the performance gap between the RTX 6000D and the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB?

A: In the Geekbench OpenCL benchmark, the RTX 6000D scored 388405 against the P100's 79396, a delta of 389.2 percent in favor of the RTX 6000D. That is very close to a five-fold advantage in this compute test.

Q: How do the memory configurations compare?

A: The RTX 6000D carries 84 GB of GDDR7 on a 448-bit bus with 1.40 TB/s of bandwidth. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB carries 12 GB of HBM2 on a 3072-bit bus with 549.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The Blackwell card offers roughly 2.5 times the memory capacity and bandwidth of the Pascal card.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. The RTX 6000D is listed as Active, with a release date in mid-2025. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB is listed as End-of-life, having launched in mid-2016.

Q: Which card has dedicated AI and ray tracing hardware?

A: The RTX 6000D has 156 RT cores and 624 tensor cores. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB has no dedicated RT cores or tensor cores listed in the database.

Q: What was each card's launch MSRP?

A: The RTX 6000D had a launch MSRP of 8,565 USD. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB had a launch MSRP of 4,599 USD.

Q: How do their raw FP32 throughputs compare?

A: The RTX 6000D delivers 97.04 TFLOPS FP32, while the P100 delivers 9.526 TFLOPS FP32, roughly a tenfold difference in favor of the newer card.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide here spans three major NVIDIA generations. The RTX 6000D is built on the GB202 chip under the Blackwell 2.0 architecture, part of the Blackwell PRO W generation, fabricated on TSMC's 5 nm process. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB uses the GP100 chip under Pascal, part of the Tesla Pascal generation, fabricated on TSMC's 16 nm process. The node difference alone explains much of the density story: the RTX 6000D packs 92,200 million transistors into a 750 mm² die for a density of 122.9M trans mm², while the P100 packs 15,300 million transistors into 610 mm² for 25.1M per mm². That is close to a fivefold density advantage for Blackwell, achieved on a die only modestly larger.

The hardware block counts reinforce the gap. The RTX 6000D fields 19968 shading units, 624 TMUs, 192 ROPs, 156 RT cores, and 624 tensor cores. The P100 fields 3584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, with no RT or tensor cores recorded. Notably, the P100 was designed around a 2:1 FP16 ratio, delivering 19.05 TFLOPS at half precision versus 9.526 TFLOPS FP32, an intentional choice for the datacenter workloads of its era. The RTX 6000D's 1:1 ratio yields 97.04 TFLOPS at both precisions, so even at the P100's favored half-precision precision point, the newer card is roughly five times faster.

The platform interfaces also diverge sharply. The RTX 6000D uses PCIe 5.0 x16 with four DisplayPort 2.1b outputs, DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), and Vulkan 1.4. The P100 uses PCIe 3.0 x16, has no display outputs at all, and supports DirectX 12 (12_1) with Vulkan 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only one benchmark appears in both cards' records: geekbench_opencl. It is not close.

The RTX 6000D scored 388405. The Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB scored 79396. The delta is 389.2 percent in favor of the RTX 6000D, and the head-to-head record credits the win to the RTX 6000D, giving it a clean sweep of one win to zero. In practical terms, the P100's score is the score of a card that still ranks in the 92nd percentile against all GPUs in the database, yet it delivers barely a fifth of the OpenCL throughput of the Blackwell card. Perspective from each card's rival circle deepens the point: the P100's nearest competitor by average score is its own sibling, the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB at 79605, within 0.3 percent, and it also sits within touching distance of the GeForce RTX 5090 at 79842 (a -0.6 percent delta) on this metric. The RTX 6000D, with an average score of 195964, competes in an entirely different bracket, against the Tesla V100S PCIe 32 GB at 194415 (0.8 percent away), the A100 SXM4 40 GB at 187147 (4.7 percent ahead of it), the A100 PCIe 80 GB at 207124 (5.4 percent ahead of it), and the RTX 5000 Ada Generation at 184664 (6.1 percent behind it).

The theoretical throughput figures corroborate the benchmark result. Pixel rate is 466.6 GPixel/s versus 127.6 GPixel/s, texture rate is 1516.3 GTexel/s versus 297.7 GTexel/s, and FP32 compute is 97.04 versus 9.526 TFLOPS. Clocks follow the same pattern: 1992 MHz base and 2430 MHz boost on the RTX 6000D against 1190 MHz base and 1329 MHz boost on the P100.

Specification Differences

The specification table diverges on nearly every line that matters:

• Process node: 5 nm versus 16 nm, both on TSMC.
• Memory: 84 GB GDDR7 at 1.40 TB/s on a 448-bit bus, versus 12 GB HBM2 at 549.1 GB/s on a 3072-bit bus. Memory clocks are 1560 MHz (25 Gbps effective) versus 715 MHz (1430 Mbps effective).
• Compute units: 19968 shading units, 624 TMUs, 192 ROPs, 156 RT cores, 624 tensor cores, versus 3584 shading units, 224 TMUs, 96 ROPs, and none of the latter two block types.
• Power: 600 W TDP with a single 16-pin connector and a 1000 W suggested PSU, versus 250 W TDP with a single 8-pin connector and a 600 W suggested PSU.
• Physical size: 304 mm long, 137 mm tall, 40 mm wide, versus 267 mm long with height and width unlisted. Both are dual-slot cards.
• Outputs: four DisplayPort 2.1b versus none.
• Bus: PCIe 5.0 x16 versus PCIe 3.0 x16.
• Status: Active versus End-of-life. Predecessor lineage is Workstation Ada versus Tesla Maxwell; the P100's successor is Tesla Volta, while the RTX 6000D has none listed.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 6000D wins every measured contest in the database. It wins the shared Geekbench OpenCL test by 389.2 percent, and it wins on every theoretical metric recorded: compute throughput, memory bandwidth, memory capacity, fill rates, and clock speeds. For any workload where these numbers matter, which includes OpenCL compute, rendering, and any task needing tensor or ray tracing hardware that the P100 simply lacks, the Blackwell card is the only option of the two. Its 84 GB frame buffer is also decisive for large datasets that cannot fit in 12 GB.

The P100's wins are not performance wins, and the data does not pretend otherwise. Its advantages are qualitative and environmental: a 250 W TDP versus 600 W, an 8-pin connector versus a 16-pin one, a 600 W suggested PSU versus 1000 W, and a shorter 267 mm board versus 304 mm. In other words, it is easier to host and power, and nothing more. It remains a 92nd-percentile card in the database rankings, but within its own neighborhood it trades blows with cards like the Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB, the GeForce RTX 5090 (on this OpenCL metric), the Radeon RX 6850M XT, and the Radeon Pro Vega 64X.

The Verdict

Based strictly on the recorded data, there is no performance case for the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB against the RTX 6000D. The newer card is roughly five times faster in the one shared benchmark, roughly ten times faster in FP32 theory, offers seven times the memory capacity and 2.5 times the bandwidth, and adds RT and tensor hardware the P100 never had. Anyone selecting between these two for compute, visualization, or AI workloads should choose the RTX 6000D.

The P100's remaining relevance is as a low-power, end-of-life compute card with no display outputs and modest hosting requirements. It trades within a tight cluster of similarly scoring cards, and it can still post a 92nd-percentile standing in the database. But in this matchup, the verdict is one-sided: the benchmark record credits one win to the RTX 6000D and zero to the Tesla P100, and every specification line that describes performance points the same direction.