NVIDIA Quadro P4000

The NVIDIA Quadro P4000 is a Pascal-based professional GPU built on TSMC's 16 nm process, with 7,200 million transistors on a 314 mm² die (a density of 22.9M per mm²). It features 1,792 shading units, 112 texture mapping units, and 64 ROPs, delivering 5.304 TFLOPS of FP32 compute. The card comes with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 243.3 GB/s of bandwidth, and has a TDP of 105 W. Its launch MSRP was 815 USD. In the benchmark database, it holds an average score of 10,134 and sits at the 47th percentile of all GPUs, placing it near the middle of the performance distribution. The nearest rivals—AMD Radeon RX 550X, Intel Iris Pro Graphics P580, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950A, and AMD Radeon R9 M375—all score within a 1.3% band, making the P4000's position highly competitive among low-end parts. Released on 2017-02-05, it is now end-of-life, succeeding the Quadro Maxwell series and preceding Quadro Volta.

Who Should Consider It

The Quadro P4000 is best suited for professional workstation environments where driver stability and API support matter more than raw gaming performance. Its 8 GB frame buffer and 243.3 GB/s memory bandwidth are sufficient for high-resolution textures in 3D modeling, CAD, and visualization tasks. The card's pixel rate of 94.72 GPixel/s and texture rate of 165.8 GTexel/s indicate it can drive multiple 4K displays at reasonable frame rates, especially given the four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. However, its average benchmark score of 10,134 and 47th percentile ranking show that it is not a high-performance part by modern standards. For users who need a single-slot card with a 105 W TDP and a 6-pin power connector, the P4000 fits into compact workstations without extensive power delivery. The data suggests it is a capable choice for 1080p or 1440p professional workloads, but not for demanding 4K gaming or compute-heavy tasks like machine learning, given its FP16 throughput of only 82.88 GFLOPS (1:64 ratio). The nearest rivals, such as the RX 550X (0.4% slower) and the R9 M375 (1.3% slower), are typically consumer or mobile parts; the P4000's advantage lies in its professional feature set rather than raw speed. The card's 1792 shading units and 112 TMUs provide enough parallelism for typical DCC (digital content creation) workloads, while the 64 ROPs handle fill-rate-intensive tasks at high resolutions. Because the card is end-of-life, it may appeal primarily to users with legacy software validation needs or those seeking a low-power, single-slot solution for multi-GPU render farms.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The Quadro P4000 does not include dedicated ray tracing (RT) cores or tensor cores, as indicated by the absence of these fields in its specifications. Consequently, hardware-accelerated ray tracing is not available. The card supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, meaning it can run applications that rely on these APIs. The DirectX 12_1 feature level includes support for conservative rasterization and other rasterizer features, but the lack of RT and tensor cores limits its ability to handle modern ray-traced effects or AI-accelerated workloads. The FP32 compute of 5.304 TFLOPS is the primary processing resource, while FP16 is negligible at 82.88 GFLOPS due to the 1:64 ratio. This makes the card suitable for traditional graphics pipelines and compute shaders that use FP32, but not for half-precision deep learning or ray tracing. The display outputs are four DisplayPort 1.4a connectors, which support high refresh rates and multiple monitors, but no HDMI or DVI is included. The API support includes Vulkan 1.4, a relatively recent version, which suggests the driver stack is maintained for modern cross-platform graphics. However, without hardware RT, any ray-traced effects would rely on compute shaders or fallback paths, likely yielding poor performance compared to dedicated RT hardware. The absence of tensor cores also means no hardware acceleration for features like DLSS or AI-based denoising, which are common in contemporary GPUs.

Power and Cooling

The Quadro P4000 has a TDP of 105 W, which is modest for a GPU with 1,792 shading units. It requires a single 6-pin power connector, and the suggested power supply is 300 W. This makes it easy to integrate into systems with modest PSUs. The card is a single-slot design, measuring 241 mm in length and 111 mm in height, which is beneficial for space-constrained chassis or multi-GPU configurations. The cooling solution is a capable air cooler that fits within the single-slot profile. Given the low TDP, thermal management should be straightforward in most well-ventilated cases. The PCIe 3.0 x16 bus interface is sufficient for its bandwidth needs, though it does not support PCIe 4.0. The single-slot form factor and 105 W power draw allow for dense installations; for example, a workstation could host multiple P4000 cards for distributed rendering without exceeding typical power budgets. The 300 W PSU recommendation is conservative, leaving headroom for other components. The card's length of 9.5 inches (241 mm) fits in most mid-tower cases, and the height of 4.4 inches (111 mm) is standard. The single 6-pin connector is a common and easily accommodated power input.

FAQ

Q: Does the Quadro P4000 support hardware ray tracing?

A: No. The card has no dedicated ray tracing cores (RT cores) or tensor cores, so ray tracing is not hardware-accelerated.

Q: What is the memory bandwidth of the Quadro P4000?

A: The card has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing a bandwidth of 243.3 GB/s.

Q: What is the TDP and power connector requirement?

A: The TDP is 105 W, and it requires a single 6-pin power connector. A 300 W power supply is suggested.

Q: Which display outputs does it have?

A: It has four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Q: How does it compare to the AMD Radeon RX 550X?

A: Based on average benchmark scores, the Quadro P4000 is 0.4% faster than the RX 550X (10,134 vs. 10,095).

Q: What is the FP16 compute performance?

A: FP16 performance is 82.88 GFLOPS, which is 1/64th of the FP32 rate, indicating very limited half-precision capability.

Benchmark Performance

The Quadro P4000's average benchmark score is 10,134, placing it at the 47th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals are clustered closely: the AMD Radeon RX 550X scores 10,095 (0.4% lower), the Intel Iris Pro Graphics P580 scores 10,189 (0.5% higher), the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950A scores 10,220 (0.8% higher), and the AMD Radeon R9 M375 scores 10,001 (1.3% lower). These deltas are within a 2.1 percentage point spread, indicating that the P4000 performs at the same level as these low-end parts. The individual benchmark results show a mixed picture: the 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score is 1,115, while Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan scores are 41,037 and 41,652, respectively. Passmark scores are notably uneven—DirectX 9 yields 181, DirectX 11 yields 86, DirectX 10 yields 66, and DirectX 12 yields only 40. This pattern suggests that the card's performance is much stronger on legacy APIs than on modern DirectX 12, possibly due to driver maturity or architecture design. The GPU compute score of 4,913 and G3D score of 11,466 indicate moderate compute capability. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 result of 1,115 is a modern stress test, and while we lack direct rival scores for that specific test, the overall average score places the P4000 just 0.4% above the RX 550X and 0.8% below the GTX 950A. This tight grouping means that in real-world applications, the P4000 would be virtually indistinguishable from these consumer parts in raw throughput. The low DirectX 12 Passmark score (40) versus DirectX 11 (86) could reflect driver optimizations that favor older APIs, which is relevant for professional software that often relies on OpenGL or DirectX 11. The Vulkan score (41,652) is slightly higher than OpenCL (41,037), suggesting the card handles Vulkan workloads marginally better. Overall, the data shows that the P4000 is not a high-performance part; its average score is just 0.4% above the RX 550X and 0.8% below the GTX 950A, making it essentially comparable to entry-level consumer GPUs.

Memory Subsystem

The Quadro P4000 is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, which is a substantial capacity for a professional card of its generation. The memory bus is 256 bits wide, and the memory clock runs at 1901 MHz, yielding an effective data rate of 7.6 Gbps and a total bandwidth of 243.3 GB/s. This bandwidth is sufficient to feed the 1,792 shading units and 112 TMUs, as evidenced by the texture rate of 165.8 GTexel/s and pixel rate of 94.72 GPixel/s. For high-resolution workloads, such as 4K texturing or multi-monitor setups, the 8 GB capacity allows large assets to reside in VRAM without frequent spills to system memory. However, the relatively modest bandwidth compared to modern GPUs may limit performance in memory-intensive scenarios. The 256-bit bus is a balanced choice for the card's compute capabilities, ensuring that the FP32 throughput of 5.304 TFLOPS is not starved for data. The lack of HBM or GDDR6 means the card relies on mature GDDR5 technology, which is adequate for its target applications. The memory subsystem is a key strength for professional use, offering both capacity and bandwidth that exceed what the nearest rivals typically provide, although the benchmark deltas suggest the practical impact is small. The effective memory data rate of 7.6 Gbps is standard for GDDR5 of that era, and the 243.3 GB/s bandwidth aligns with the card's fill rates, preventing bottlenecks in typical 3D rendering workloads. For users working with large textures or complex scenes, the 8 GB capacity is a clear advantage over the 2 GB or 4 GB buffers found in many consumer cards of similar performance class, even if the raw bandwidth is not exceptional by today's standards.