NVIDIA Tesla M40 24 GB vs NVIDIA TITAN V Comparison

The NVIDIA Tesla M40 24 GB and the NVIDIA TITAN V are two datacenter-class accelerators from different eras of NVIDIA's lineup, and the recorded data paints a picture of a decisive generational gap. The TITAN V, built on Volta, sweeps the two shared benchmark tests against the Maxwell-based Tesla M40, winning both by margins approaching 70 percent or more. Yet the M40 carries twice the memory capacity, 24 GB versus 12 GB, and sits in a higher percentile of the database rankings. Both cards are end-of-life parts drawing 250 W in dual-slot form factors, but nearly everything else about them diverges.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in the shared benchmarks?

A: The TITAN V wins both head-to-head tests. In Geekbench OpenCL it scores 157265 against the Tesla M40's 37439, a gap of 76.2 percent in the TITAN V's favor. In Geekbench Vulkan the TITAN V scores 152117 against 45975, leading by 69.8 percent.

Q: Which card has more memory?

A: The Tesla M40 24 GB, as the name suggests, has 24 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus with 288.4 GB/s of bandwidth. The TITAN V has 12 GB of HBM2 on a much wider 3072-bit bus delivering 651.3 GB/s, so the M40 wins on capacity while the TITAN V wins on bandwidth.

Q: Do these cards support ray tracing or AI-specific hardware?

A: Neither has RT cores. The TITAN V, however, includes 640 tensor cores and delivers 29.80 TFLOPS of FP16 throughput, while the Tesla M40 has no tensor cores listed and no recorded FP16 figure. Its FP32 output is 6.832 TFLOPS versus 14.90 TFLOPS for the TITAN V.

Q: Can either card drive a display?

A: Only the TITAN V. It offers one HDMI 2.0 output and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. The Tesla M40 has no display outputs at all, marking it as a pure compute card.

Q: How do their database rankings compare?

A: The Tesla M40 24 GB sits in the 83rd percentile versus all GPUs with an average benchmark score of 41707. The TITAN V sits in the 79th percentile with an average score of 34355. The percentile difference reflects the composition of each card's recorded test set rather than head-to-head speed, since the shared tests favor the TITAN V overwhelmingly.

Q: What power supply does each card need?

A: Both carry a 250 W TDP and a 600 W suggested PSU. The M40 uses an 8-pin EPS connector, while the TITAN V uses a 6-pin plus an 8-pin configuration.

Architecture Differences

These two cards bookend a major transition in NVIDIA's engineering. The Tesla M40 24 GB is a Maxwell 2.0 design, the GM200 chip, fabricated on TSMC's 28 nm process. It packs 8,000 million transistors onto a 601 mm² die, working out to a density of 13.3M transistors per square millimeter. The TITAN V is a Volta design, the GV100 chip, built on TSMC's 12 nm process. Its 21,100 million transistors spread across an even larger 815 mm² die, but the newer node lifts density to 25.9M per square millimeter, nearly double the M40's figure.

The transistor budget shows in the core counts. The TITAN V fields 5120 shading units and 320 texture mapping units against the M40's 3072 and 192 respectively. Both chips have 96 render output units, so the pixel-pipeline back end is identical in width, but the TITAN V's higher clocks push its pixel rate to 139.7 GPixel/s versus 106.8 GPixel/s, and its texture rate to 465.6 GTexel/s versus 213.5 GTexel/s.

Clocks favor the newer card across the board. The TITAN V runs a 1200 MHz base and 1455 MHz boost, while the M40 runs 948 MHz base and 1112 MHz boost. The M40's GDDR5 memory runs at an effective 6 Gbps, while the TITAN V's HBM2 runs at 1696 Mbps effective across that very wide 3072-bit interface.

The most consequential architectural difference is the TITAN V's 640 tensor cores, dedicated matrix hardware the Maxwell card simply lacks. That shows up in the FP16 figure of 29.80 TFLOPS at a 2:1 ratio to FP32, doubling the effective throughput of the 14.90 TFLOPS FP32 pipeline for half-precision workloads. The M40 records no FP16 capability at all. For anything touching lower-precision compute, the gap between these cards widens beyond what the raw shader counts suggest.

Software support is identical: both list DirectX 12 (feature level 12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. Both connect over PCIe 3.0 x16. Both are end-of-life. The M40 arrived on 2015-11-09 as part of the Tesla Maxwell line, between the Tesla Kepler predecessor and Tesla Pascal successor. The TITAN V launched on 2017-12-06, positioned in the database under GeForce 10, between the GeForce 900 predecessor and GeForce 20 successor.

The Verdict

The data points to a clear split. For compute throughput, the TITAN V is the only sensible choice: it wins both shared benchmarks by 69.8 and 76.2 percent, delivers more than double the FP32 TFLOPS, doubles FP32 throughput again in FP16 thanks to its tensor cores, and offers more than double the memory bandwidth. Anyone running OpenCL or Vulkan compute workloads should treat the M40 as uncompetitive here.

The Tesla M40 24 GB makes its case on memory capacity alone. At 24 GB versus 12 GB, it holds datasets the TITAN V cannot fit, and workloads that spill out of 12 GB will run on the M40 regardless of how much slower its silicon is. It also posts the higher database percentile, 83 versus 79, though that figure aggregates different test sets and should not be read as a head-to-head result.

Neither card is a display solution for a workstation in the M40's case: it has no outputs whatsoever. The TITAN V doubles as a display card with HDMI and DisplayPort connectivity. Both demand the same 250 W envelope and 600 W suggested PSU, and both occupy dual slots at the same 267 mm length, so platform requirements are a wash.

If the workload fits in 12 GB and leans on compute speed, the TITAN V is the pick. If capacity is the binding constraint, the M40's 24 GB is the only reason to choose it, and the benchmark data indicates the performance sacrifice is severe.

Specification Differences

The two cards share their manufacturer, foundry, dual-slot width, 250 W TDP, 600 W suggested PSU, PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, 96 ROPs, DirectX 12 (12_1) support, OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.4, 267 mm card length, end-of-life status, and launch MSRP territory is only defined for one of them, with the TITAN V carrying a launch MSRP of 2,999 USD. Where they differ:

• Chip: GM200 (M40) versus GV100 (TITAN V)
• Architecture: Maxwell 2.0 versus Volta
• Generation: Tesla Maxwell (Mxx) versus GeForce 10
• Process node: 28 nm versus 12 nm
• Transistors: 8,000 million versus 21,100 million
• Die size: 601 mm² versus 815 mm²
• Transistor density: 13.3M/mm² versus 25.9M/mm²
• Base clock: 948 MHz versus 1200 MHz
• Boost clock: 1112 MHz versus 1455 MHz
• Memory size: 24 GB versus 12 GB
• Memory type: GDDR5 versus HBM2
• Bus width: 384 bit versus 3072 bit
• Memory bandwidth: 288.4 GB/s versus 651.3 GB/s
• Shading units: 3072 versus 5120
• TMUs: 192 versus 320
• Tensor cores: none recorded versus 640
• Pixel rate: 106.8 GPixel/s versus 139.7 GPixel/s
• Texture rate: 213.5 GTexel/s versus 465.6 GTexel/s
• FP32: 6.832 TFLOPS versus 14.90 TFLOPS
• FP16: not recorded versus 29.80 TFLOPS (2:1)
• Power connectors: 8-pin EPS versus 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin
• Display outputs: none versus 1x HDMI 2.0 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
• Release date: 2015-11-09 versus 2017-12-06

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two tests exist in the database for both cards, and the TITAN V takes them both, with the M40 winning zero.

The first is Geekbench OpenCL. The TITAN V posts 157265 points; the Tesla M40 24 GB manages 37439. That is a 76.2 percent margin for the Volta card, meaning the M40 delivers less than a quarter of its rival's OpenCL compute performance. For a card sold specifically as a compute accelerator, this is the most damning number in the comparison, and it aligns with the theoretical specs: 14.90 TFLOPS FP32 against 6.832 TFLOPS more than accounts for the gap once the TITAN V's clock advantage is factored in.

The second is Geekbench Vulkan, where the TITAN V scores 152117 and the M40 scores 45975. The margin narrows slightly to 69.8 percent but remains a rout. Notably, the M40 performs better in Vulkan than in OpenCL relative to itself, scoring roughly 23 percent higher in the Vulkan test, yet it still finishes nowhere near the TITAN V.

Context from the database rankings adds nuance. The Tesla M40 24 GB's average score of 41707 places it in the 83rd percentile, alongside rivals such as the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti at 41187, which it edges by 1.3 percent, the AMD Radeon Pro 5300 at 40870, which it beats by 2 percent, the NVIDIA Tesla M40 at 41897, essentially an even match at 0.5 percent apart, and the AMD Radeon RX 7650 GRE at 42723, which leads the M40 by 2.4 percent. The TITAN V's average of 34355 puts it in the 79th percentile, clustered with the NVIDIA RTX A1000 at 34207, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 at 34541, the NVIDIA RTX A2000 12 GB at 34154, and the NVIDIA T1000 8 GB at 34561, all within a fraction of a percent of one another.

The takeaway is straightforward. In the tests both cards share, the TITAN V is in a different performance class, roughly three to four times faster in compute-oriented benchmarks. The M40's higher percentile comes from a different mix of recorded results, including a strong 19805 in PassMark G3D and 9263 in PassMark GPU Compute, tests the TITAN V's rivals in its own cluster cannot approach either. When the two are measured on identical ground, the recorded data leaves no ambiguity: the TITAN V wins every shared contest, and the M40's sole remaining argument is its 24 GB of memory.