NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell vs NVIDIA Tesla P4 Comparison

NVIDIA Tesla P4 vs NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell is a study in generational extremes. The Tesla P4, a product from 2016, is a low-power inference accelerator from the Pascal era. The RTX PRO 4500, released in 2025, is a current-generation workstation powerhouse built on the Blackwell architecture. The recorded data shows a single direct benchmark comparison between the two, and the results are overwhelmingly one-sided.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database contains one head-to-head benchmark result for this pairing: the Geekbench Vulkan test. In this measurement, the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell scored 221,768 points. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 managed a score of 40,309 points. This gives the RTX PRO 4500 a commanding victory, with a delta of -81.8% from the perspective of the Tesla P4, meaning the Tesla P4's score is 81.8% lower than its rival's.

This result is not subtle. The RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell delivers more than five times the raw Vulkan performance of the Tesla P4, a margin that reflects the immense architectural and technological gap between the two products. To put the Tesla P4's score in context, its average benchmark score across all recorded tests is 37,628, which places it in the 81st percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals in the database include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, which averages 37,648 (a -0.1% delta), and the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, which averages 37,507 (a +0.3% delta). The Tesla P4 is essentially performance-equivalent to these much more modern gaming cards in average terms, but the RTX PRO 4500 sits in a different performance class entirely.

The RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell's average benchmark score across its wider test suite is 31,532, which places it in the 76th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the NVIDIA TITAN RTX at 31,676 (a -0.5% delta) and the Intel Arc Pro A30M at 31,894 (a -1.1% delta). While its average score is lower than the Tesla P4's average, this is because the RTX PRO 4500's benchmark set includes a wider range of Passmark tests, including legacy DirectX 9, 10, and 11 workloads where it scores relatively low (397, 204, and 320 respectively). Its performance in modern compute and graphics workloads, as shown by the Vulkan result and its 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 7,025, is where its true capability lies.

The single head-to-head result is the clearest indicator of relative performance: the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell is the dominant force, and the Tesla P4, despite its respectable standing among its own peers, cannot compete in this arena.

The Verdict

The data presents a straightforward conclusion: the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell is the superior product for virtually any modern workload. Its 221,768 Vulkan score against the Tesla P4's 40,309 is a decisive 81.8% advantage. The RTX PRO 4500 is the clear choice for professionals requiring high-end compute, ray tracing, and modern API support. It is an active product, still in production, and represents the current state of NVIDIA's workstation lineup.

The NVIDIA Tesla P4, conversely, is an end-of-life product. Its strengths lie in its extreme efficiency and its historical role as a low-profile inference card. Its 75 W TDP and lack of power connectors made it a unique solution for embedding in servers or small form factor systems that lacked dedicated GPU power. However, its performance ceiling is firmly anchored in 2016. Its 5.704 TFLOPS FP32 performance and 8 GB of GDDR5 memory are simply not competitive with modern requirements. For anyone building a new system, the choice is clear: the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell is the only rational pick.

The verdict is not a close call. The benchmark data shows one product is a relic and the other is a modern powerhouse. The RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell wins in the only direct comparison available, and it wins by an enormous margin.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell wins in every measurable category from the recorded data. It wins the sole head-to-head benchmark, the Geekbench Vulkan test, with a score of 221,768. It also holds decisive advantages in raw specifications that drive performance: its FP32 compute is 50.53 TFLOPS, nearly nine times the Tesla P4's 5.704 TFLOPS. Its memory bandwidth of 896.0 GB/s is over four times the Tesla P4's 192.3 GB/s. Its texture rate of 789.5 GTexel/s is more than four times the Tesla P4's 178.2 GTexel/s. Its pixel rate of 269.6 GPixel/s is nearly four times the Tesla P4's 71.30 GPixel/s.

The NVIDIA Tesla P4's only advantage from the data is its physical power envelope. Its 75 W TDP is dramatically lower than the RTX PRO 4500's 200 W, and it requires no power connectors, while the RTX PRO 4500 needs a 16-pin connector and a 550 W power supply. The Tesla P4 is also a single-slot card, whereas the RTX PRO 4500 is dual-slot. This makes the Tesla P4 a potential fit for dense, low-power environments where the RTX PRO 4500 would not physically or electrically fit. Its smaller length of 168 mm versus the RTX PRO 4500's 267 mm also grants it greater compatibility with compact chassis. However, these are practical deployment advantages, not performance wins.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU performs better in the direct head-to-head benchmark?

A: The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell. In the Geekbench Vulkan test, it scored 221,768 points compared to the NVIDIA Tesla P4's 40,309 points, a difference of -81.8% for the Tesla P4.

Q: What are the average benchmark scores for each GPU?

A: The NVIDIA Tesla P4 has an average benchmark score of 37,628, while the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell has an average benchmark score of 31,532. The Tesla P4's average is higher because its benchmark set is smaller and does not include the diverse Passmark legacy tests that lower the RTX PRO 4500's average.

Q: How does the memory configuration differ?

A: The NVIDIA Tesla P4 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 192.3 GB/s of bandwidth. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell has 32 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 896.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has more shading units?

A: The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell has 10,496 shading units, while the NVIDIA Tesla P4 has 2,560 shading units.

Q: What is the production status of each card?

A: The NVIDIA Tesla P4 is end-of-life, while the NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell is active and still in production.

Q: Which GPU has ray tracing and tensor cores?

A: The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell has 82 ray tracing cores and 328 tensor cores. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 has neither, as it is based on the Pascal architecture which predates those features.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs are separated by multiple architectural generations. The NVIDIA Tesla P4 is built on the Pascal architecture, using the GP104 chip. It is fabricated by TSMC on a 16 nm process. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell is built on the Blackwell 2.0 architecture, using the GB203 chip. It is also fabricated by TSMC, but on a much more advanced 5 nm process. The transistor counts reflect this leap: the Tesla P4 has 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die, while the RTX PRO 4500 has 45,600 million transistors on a 378 mm² die. This results in a transistor density of 22.9M per mm² for the Tesla P4 and 120.6M per mm² for the RTX PRO 4500.

The RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell introduces hardware features that simply do not exist on the Pascal-based Tesla P4. The RTX PRO 4500 includes 82 ray tracing cores and 328 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI compute. The Tesla P4 has no such dedicated units. The FP16 compute capability also illustrates the architectural divide: the RTX PRO 4500 achieves 50.53 TFLOPS FP16 with a 1:1 ratio to FP32, while the Tesla P4 manages only 89.12 GFLOPS FP16, a 1:64 ratio. This indicates that the Tesla P4 is not designed for high-throughput FP16 workloads, whereas the RTX PRO 4500 handles them at full rate. The API support also differs, with the RTX PRO 4500 supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the Tesla P4 supports only DirectX 12 (12_1).

Specification Differences

The specification sheet reveals a comprehensive upgrade for the RTX PRO 4500 Blackwell across nearly every field. The most significant differences are in compute and memory. The RTX PRO 4500's FP32 performance is 50.53 TFLOPS versus the Tesla P4's 5.704 TFLOPS. Its FP16 performance is 50.53 TFLOPS versus 89.12 GFLOPS. The memory size jumps from 8 GB to 32 GB, and the memory type moves from GDDR5 to GDDR7. Memory bandwidth increases from 192.3 GB/s to 896.0 GB/s. The memory clock is rated at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective) for the RTX PRO 4500, compared to 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective) for the Tesla P4.

The core configurations are vastly different. The RTX PRO 4500 has 10,496 shading units, 328 TMUs, and 112 ROPs. The Tesla P4 has 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The RTX PRO 4500 also has 82 RT cores and 328 tensor cores, which the Tesla P4 lacks entirely. Clock speeds are higher on the RTX PRO 4500, with a base of 1635 MHz and a boost of 2407 MHz, compared to the Tesla P4's 886 MHz base and 1114 MHz boost. Pixel and texture rates scale accordingly: the RTX PRO 4500 achieves 269.6 GPixel/s and 789.5 GTexel/s, while the Tesla P4 achieves 71.30 GPixel/s and 178.2 GTexel/s.

Physical and power specifications also differ substantially. The RTX PRO 4500 has a 200 W TDP and requires a 16-pin power connector, with a suggested power supply of 550 W. The Tesla P4 has a 75 W TDP, requires no power connector, and has a suggested power supply of 250 W. The RTX PRO 4500 is a dual-slot card measuring 267 mm in length, 111 mm in height, and 40 mm in width, while the Tesla P4 is a single-slot card measuring 168 mm in length. The bus interface has also been updated from PCIe 3.0 x16 to PCIe 5.0 x16. Finally, the display outputs differ: the RTX PRO 4500 has 4x DisplayPort 2.1b outputs, while the Tesla P4 has no display outputs at all.