NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell vs NVIDIA Tesla M4 Comparison

NVIDIA’s Tesla M4 and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell sit at opposite ends of the company’s professional GPU spectrum, separated by a decade of architecture evolution and a gulf in nearly every raw specification. The Tesla M4, a Maxwell-era compute card from 2015, was designed for low-power inference and media processing, while the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, released in 2025, is a flagship workstation accelerator with modern rendering and AI features. The data available shows only one benchmark per card, and they do not overlap in test type, making direct numerical comparison impossible; however, their specifications and relative performance percentiles tell a clear story about their intended roles.

FAQ

Q: How does the Tesla M4’s single benchmark score compare to its nearest rivals?

A: The Tesla M4 scored 16,932 in Geekbench OpenCL, placing it 0.5% behind the AMD Radeon HD 7970M (17,019), 0.6% behind the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 (17,037), 0.9% behind the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT (17,083), and 0.8% ahead of the NVIDIA T400 4 GB (16,792). Its percentile rank of 60 indicates it outperforms the majority of all GPUs despite its age.

Q: What is the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell’s benchmark standing?

A: The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell scored 16,408 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, which is exactly on par with the AMD Radeon PRO W7500 (16,415, 0% delta), 0.3% above the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT (16,361), 0.4% above the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M (16,351), and 0.6% below the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D V2 (16,504). It holds a 59th percentile rank among all GPUs.

Q: Which card has more memory and bandwidth?

A: The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell has 96 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The Tesla M4 has 4 GB of GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus, providing 88.00 GB/s. That is a 24-fold difference in capacity and over 20 times the bandwidth.

Q: Are these cards from the same architecture generation?

A: No. The Tesla M4 uses Maxwell 2.0 architecture on a 28 nm process, while the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell uses Blackwell 2.0 on a 5 nm process. The manufacturing node shrink from 28 nm to 5 nm is a primary driver of the massive differences in transistor density and power efficiency.

Q: What is the power consumption difference?

A: The Tesla M4 has a TDP of 50 W with a suggested power supply of 250 W, while the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell has a TDP of 600 W and requires a 1000 W power supply. This 12-fold increase in TDP reflects the RTX PRO 6000’s vastly higher compute throughput and feature set.

Q: Do both cards support the same modern APIs?

A: Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. However, the Tesla M4 supports DirectX 12 (12_1), while the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), which includes advanced features like ray tracing and mesh shaders.

Architecture Differences

The Tesla M4 is built on the GM206 chip using Maxwell 2.0 architecture, fabricated by TSMC on a 28 nm process. It contains 2,940 million transistors on a 228 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 12.9 million per mm². The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell uses the GB202 chip with Blackwell 2.0 architecture, also from TSMC but on a 5 nm node. This newer process packs 92,200 million transistors onto a 750 mm² die, achieving a density of 122.9 million per mm² — nearly ten times greater.

The shading core counts reflect this generational leap. The Tesla M4 has 1,024 shading units, 64 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 32 raster output units (ROPs). The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell has 24,064 shading units, 752 TMUs, and 192 ROPs. Crucially, the RTX PRO 6000 adds 188 dedicated ray tracing cores and 752 tensor cores, which are entirely absent from the Tesla M4. These tensor cores enable AI-accelerated workloads like DLSS and neural rendering, while the ray tracing cores handle real-time ray-traced graphics. The Tesla M4 has no such specialized hardware, limiting it to traditional rasterization and compute tasks.

Clock speeds also differ substantially. The Tesla M4 runs at a base clock of 872 MHz with a boost of 1072 MHz, while the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell operates at a 1590 MHz base and boosts to 2617 MHz. The memory subsystem is equally divergent: the Tesla M4 uses GDDR5 at 1375 MHz (5.5 Gbps effective), while the RTX PRO 6000 uses GDDR7 at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective). The bus interface also advances from PCIe 3.0 x16 on the Tesla M4 to PCIe 5.0 x16 on the RTX PRO 6000, doubling potential data transfer rates to the host system.

Where Each One Wins

The Tesla M4 wins decisively in power efficiency and physical footprint. Its 50 W TDP and single-slot design make it suitable for dense, low-power server deployments where space and cooling are constrained. The suggested 250 W power supply is a fraction of the 1000 W required by the RTX PRO 6000, and the Tesla M4 has no display outputs, confirming its role as a headless compute accelerator for tasks like video transcoding or light inference. Its 2.195 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, while modest by modern standards, is sufficient for its era’s workload demands.

The RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell wins in every compute and graphics metric. Its 126.0 TFLOPS of FP32 performance is roughly 57 times higher than the Tesla M4’s. It also delivers 126.0 TFLOPS of FP16 performance (1:1 ratio), a feature the Tesla M4 lacks entirely (no FP16 data is listed). The 96 GB memory capacity and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth enable massive datasets and high-resolution rendering that would be impossible on the 4 GB Tesla M4. The RTX PRO 6000 also has display outputs (4x DisplayPort 2.1b), making it a full workstation card for professional visualization, while its ray tracing and tensor cores unlock modern rendering and AI workflows.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in every core specification field. Process node shrinks from 28 nm to 5 nm. Transistor count jumps from 2,940 million to 92,200 million. Die size expands from 228 mm² to 750 mm². Base clock rises from 872 MHz to 1590 MHz, and boost clock goes from 1072 MHz to 2617 MHz. Memory size increases from 4 GB to 96 GB, type changes from GDDR5 to GDDR7, bus width widens from 128-bit to 512-bit, and bandwidth grows from 88.00 GB/s to 1.79 TB/s.

Shading units multiply from 1,024 to 24,064, TMUs from 64 to 752, and ROPs from 32 to 192. The RTX PRO 6000 adds 188 RT cores and 752 tensor cores, which the Tesla M4 does not have. Pixel rate rises from 34.30 GPixel/s to 502.5 GPixel/s, and texture rate from 68.61 GTexel/s to 1,968.0 GTexel/s. FP32 performance goes from 2.195 TFLOPS to 126.0 TFLOPS. TDP increases from 50 W to 600 W, slot width from single-slot to dual-slot, power connector from none to 1x 16-pin, and suggested PSU from 250 W to 1000 W. Bus interface updates from PCIe 3.0 to PCIe 5.0. Display outputs go from none to 4x DisplayPort 2.1b. The Tesla M4 is 4 GB, end-of-life, while the RTX PRO 6000 is 96 GB and active.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

There are no direct head-to-head benchmark results linking the Tesla M4 and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell. Their respective scores come from different test suites: the Tesla M4 was evaluated in Geekbench OpenCL (16,932), while the RTX PRO 6000 was evaluated in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 (16,408). These tests measure different capabilities — OpenCL is a compute API, while Steel Nomad is a graphics-focused DirectX 12 benchmark — so a direct numerical comparison would be misleading.

Instead, the data reveals how each card performs relative to its own contemporary rivals. The Tesla M4’s 16,932 OpenCL score is competitive with GPUs like the GTX 690 (17,037) and RX 7600 XT (17,083), despite being a decade older. Its 60th percentile ranking suggests it still holds up for basic compute workloads. The RTX PRO 6000’s 16,408 Steel Nomad score is essentially tied with the Radeon PRO W7500 (16,415) and slightly ahead of the RX 5700 XT (16,361), but trails the RTX 5090 D V2 (16,504) by 0.6%. Its 59th percentile in this specific test indicates it is not the absolute top performer in this particular benchmark, though its spec sheet suggests dominance in other areas like memory capacity and AI throughput.

The lack of overlapping benchmarks means the performance gap between these two cards cannot be quantified directly from the provided data. However, the specification differences — particularly the 57x FP32 advantage and 20x bandwidth advantage of the RTX PRO 6000 — strongly imply a massive performance differential in any shared workload.

The Verdict

The data clearly designates the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell as the superior card for nearly any modern professional task. Its 96 GB of GDDR7 memory, 126.0 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, and dedicated ray tracing and tensor cores make it suitable for large-scale 3D rendering, AI model training, and scientific computing. The 26x increase in shading units and 23.5x increase in texture rate compared to the Tesla M4 enable workloads that the older card simply cannot handle. The 96 GB capacity alone is a practical requirement for datasets that exceed 4 GB, which is the Tesla M4’s entire memory pool.

The Tesla M4, however, retains a niche for legacy or low-power deployments. Its 50 W TDP and single-slot design allow for high-density installation in servers where the RTX PRO 6000’s 600 W requirement would be prohibitive. Its 2.195 TFLOPS, while minuscule next to the RTX PRO 6000’s 126.0 TFLOPS, is adequate for basic inference or video processing tasks from its 2015 era. The 0.8% advantage over the T400 4 GB in OpenCL shows it still competes with some modern low-end cards in compute.

For a user deciding between these two, the choice is straightforward: the RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell is the only option for modern professional workloads involving ray tracing, AI, or large memory footprints. Its 59th percentile rank in Steel Nomad, while not class-leading, is respectable for a workstation card. The Tesla M4 is a relic for specialized, power-constrained environments where its minimal footprint outweighs its outdated architecture. The 28 nm process and lack of tensor cores make it unsuitable for contemporary machine learning or graphics work, but its 60th percentile OpenCL score proves it is not entirely obsolete for simple compute tasks.