NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile vs NVIDIA Tesla P4 Comparison

The NVIDIA Tesla P4 and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile represent two distinct generations of NVIDIA’s professional GPU lineup, separated by nearly six years of architectural evolution. The data shows a near-perfect split in benchmark outcomes, with each card claiming one decisive victory. Their average benchmark scores are remarkably close—39,186 for the Tesla P4 versus 39,568 for the RTX A500 Mobile—placing both at the 82nd percentile of all GPUs. This statistical tie, however, masks fundamentally different design philosophies, as the Pascal-era Tesla P4 was built for datacenter inference workloads while the Ampere-based RTX A500 Mobile targets professional laptops. The following analysis breaks down their head-to-head results, architectural divergences, and the specific use cases where each card holds an advantage.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two available benchmarks, Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, produce opposing winners. In Geekbench OpenCL, the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile scores 41,263 against the Tesla P4’s 37,896, a margin of 8.2% in favor of the mobile card. This is a substantial lead in a compute-oriented API that stresses raw shader throughput and memory bandwidth utilization. The RTX A500 Mobile’s advantage here aligns with its higher FP32 rating of 6.296 TFLOPS compared to the Tesla P4’s 5.704 TFLOPS—a 10.4% theoretical difference that closely tracks the observed benchmark delta.

Conversely, the Geekbench Vulkan test flips the result decisively. The Tesla P4 posts 40,476 versus the RTX A500 Mobile’s 37,873, giving the older card a 6.9% win. This is particularly notable because Vulkan is a low-overhead, driver-efficient API that often rewards architectural maturity and memory subsystem design. The Tesla P4’s 256-bit memory bus and 192.3 GB/s bandwidth—exactly double the RTX A500 Mobile’s 64-bit bus and 96.00 GB/s—likely explain this reversal. In Vulkan workloads that frequently access large datasets, the Tesla P4’s superior bandwidth compensates for its lower peak compute.

The aggregate picture is one of parity. The Tesla P4 wins one benchmark, the RTX A500 Mobile wins the other, and their average scores differ by less than 1% (39,186 versus 39,568). This places them in the same competitive tier, with the nearest rival AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 sitting just 0.6% below the Tesla P4 and the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT only 0.2% above the RTX A500 Mobile. Neither card enjoys a meaningful overall performance advantage; instead, the choice between them hinges on workload-specific characteristics and platform constraints.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher peak FP32 compute, and by how much?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile leads with 6.296 TFLOPS, while the NVIDIA Tesla P4 delivers 5.704 TFLOPS. This gives the Ampere card a 10.4% advantage in raw single-precision throughput.

Q: Why does the Tesla P4 win the Vulkan benchmark despite having lower FP32 compute?

A: The Tesla P4’s 256-bit memory bus provides 192.3 GB/s of bandwidth, exactly double the RTX A500 Mobile’s 96.00 GB/s. Vulkan workloads that are memory-bandwidth-bound benefit disproportionately from this wider interface, enabling the 6.9% win in that specific test.

Q: How do the memory capacities and types differ between the two cards?

A: The Tesla P4 features 8 GB of GDDR5, whereas the RTX A500 Mobile uses 4 GB of GDDR6. The Tesla P4’s memory operates at 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective), while the RTX A500 Mobile runs at 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective), but the latter’s narrower bus halves overall bandwidth.

Q: Are there any workload-specific hardware features unique to the RTX A500 Mobile?

A: Yes, the RTX A500 Mobile includes 16 ray tracing cores and 64 tensor cores, neither of which exist on the Tesla P4. These enable DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) support, while the Tesla P4 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1).

Q: What is the thermal design power difference between the two cards?

A: The Tesla P4 has a TDP of 75 W, while the RTX A500 Mobile is rated at just 30 W. This makes the mobile card more than twice as power-efficient on paper, a critical factor for laptop implementations.

Q: How do their average benchmark scores compare to their nearest rivals?

A: The Tesla P4’s average of 39,186 is 0.6% above the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (38,949) and 1% below the RTX A500 Mobile. The RTX A500 Mobile’s average of 39,568 is 0.2% above the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (39,647) and 0.3% above the AMD Radeon Pro 575 (39,703).

Architecture Differences

The Tesla P4 is built on NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture using the GP104 chip, fabricated on a 16 nm process at TSMC. This 314 mm² die contains 7,200 million transistors, yielding a transistor density of 22.9 million per square millimeter. Pascal was NVIDIA’s first architecture designed with a strong focus on datacenter inference, and the Tesla P4 reflects that heritage with its compact single-slot form factor and absence of display outputs. It belongs to the Tesla Pascal generation (Pxx), positioned between Tesla Maxwell and Tesla Volta.

The RTX A500 Mobile uses the Ampere architecture with the GA107S chip, fabricated on Samsung’s 8 nm process. Despite having a smaller die at 200 mm², it packs 8,700 million transistors—1,500 million more than the Tesla P4—resulting in a dramatically higher transistor density of 43.5 million per square millimeter. This is nearly double the density of the Pascal chip, reflecting the advanced manufacturing node. The RTX A500 Mobile is part of the Ampere-MW generation (Ax000), succeeding Quadro Turing-M and preceding Ada-MW.

Architecturally, the most significant divergence lies in compute feature support. The RTX A500 Mobile introduces 16 ray tracing cores and 64 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI inference workloads that the Pascal-based Tesla P4 cannot handle. This is reflected in their DirectX support: the RTX A500 Mobile offers DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Tesla P4 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1). The FP16 capability tells a similar story—the Tesla P4 achieves only 89.12 GFLOPS (a 1:64 ratio to FP32), whereas the RTX A500 Mobile delivers 6.296 TFLOPS of FP16 with a 1:1 ratio, making it far more capable for mixed-precision workloads.

The memory subsystems also differ fundamentally. The Tesla P4 uses GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus, while the RTX A500 Mobile uses GDDR6 with a 64-bit bus. This explains why the Tesla P4’s bandwidth (192.3 GB/s) is exactly double the RTX A500 Mobile’s (96.00 GB/s). The pixel and texture rates follow suit: the Tesla P4 reaches 71.30 GPixel/s and 178.2 GTexel/s, versus the RTX A500 Mobile’s 49.18 GPixel/s and 98.37 GTexel/s. The Tesla P4 also has more shading units (2,560 versus 2,048), TMUs (160 versus 64), and ROPs (64 versus 32).

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every measurable specification. The Tesla P4 uses the GP104 chip on a 16 nm TSMC process, while the RTX A500 Mobile uses the GA107S chip on Samsung’s 8 nm process. Transistor counts are 7,200 million versus 8,700 million, and die sizes are 314 mm² versus 200 mm², yielding densities of 22.9M/mm² and 43.5M/mm² respectively.

Clock speeds vary significantly in boost behavior. The Tesla P4 has a base clock of 886 MHz and a boost of 1114 MHz, while the RTX A500 Mobile runs at 832 MHz base and 1537 MHz boost. The higher boost clock on the Ampere card contributes to its FP32 advantage. Memory clocks are similar in base frequency (1502 MHz versus 1500 MHz), but effective speeds differ at 6 Gbps versus 12 Gbps due to the GDDR5/GDDR6 memory types.

Memory capacity is a major differentiator: 8 GB versus 4 GB. The bus width halves from 256-bit to 64-bit, and bandwidth drops from 192.3 GB/s to 96.00 GB/s. The compute units are uniformly smaller on the RTX A500 Mobile—2,048 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs—versus the Tesla P4’s 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. However, the RTX A500 Mobile adds 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores, which the Tesla P4 lacks entirely.

Power and physical characteristics diverge sharply. The Tesla P4 consumes 75 W with a suggested PSU of 250 W, while the RTX A500 Mobile sips 30 W with no suggested PSU listed. The Tesla P4 is a single-slot card measuring 168 mm (6.6 inches) in length with no display outputs; the RTX A500 Mobile is an IGP (integrated graphics processor) with portable-device-dependent outputs. The Tesla P4 uses PCIe 3.0 x16, whereas the RTX A500 Mobile uses PCIe 4.0 x8. Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, but DirectX support differs (12_1 versus 12 Ultimate/12_2). Release dates are September 2016 for the Tesla P4 and March 2022 for the RTX A500 Mobile, and both are now end-of-life products.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA Tesla P4 is the clear choice for memory-intensive workloads that benefit from high bandwidth and large frame buffers. Its 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus provides 192.3 GB/s of bandwidth—double that of the RTX A500 Mobile—making it superior for tasks involving large datasets, high-resolution textures, or compute operations that repeatedly access memory. The Vulkan benchmark win of 6.9% confirms this strength. The Tesla P4 also wins on raw pixel throughput (71.30 GPixel/s versus 49.18 GPixel/s) and texture rate (178.2 GTexel/s versus 98.37 GTexel/s), making it more responsive in fill-rate-limited scenarios. Its PCIe 3.0 x16 interface offers broader compatibility with older servers and workstations, and its single-slot, 168 mm form factor fits easily into dense datacenter chassis. For users running Vulkan-based workloads or needing more than 4 GB of memory, the Tesla P4 is the superior option.

The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile wins where modern features and power efficiency matter most. Its 30 W TDP is less than half the Tesla P4’s 75 W, making it dramatically more suitable for battery-powered laptops. The 8 nm Ampere architecture brings hardware ray tracing and tensor cores, enabling DirectX 12 Ultimate features that the Pascal card cannot support. In FP32 compute, the RTX A500 Mobile leads by 10.4% (6.296 versus 5.704 TFLOPS), and its 1:1 FP16 ratio (6.296 TFLOPS) crushes the Tesla P4’s 1:64 ratio (89.12 GFLOPS) for mixed-precision AI workloads. The OpenCL benchmark win of 8.2% demonstrates its compute advantage in API-agnostic workloads. The RTX A500 Mobile also supports PCIe 4.0, doubling the per-lane bandwidth of the Tesla P4’s PCIe 3.0 link, and its smaller die size (200 mm² versus 314 mm²) reflects a more modern, efficient design.

In summary, the Tesla P4 is the pick for bandwidth-hungry, memory-heavy workloads in fixed installations where power is not a constraint. The RTX A500 Mobile is the pick for mobile professionals needing modern API support, ray tracing, tensor core acceleration, and exceptional power efficiency. Their near-identical average scores (39,186 versus 39,568) mean that neither card offers a blanket performance advantage—the right choice depends entirely on the target platform and workload mix.