Glossary3 sections1 min read
What is PCIe vs SXM?
SXM is NVIDIA's mezzanine form factor: the GPU mounts on a baseboard with NVLink and a higher power budget. PCIe is the standard add-in card form factor that fits ordinary servers.
Why it matters when renting a GPU
The same GPU name can hide two products. SXM versions usually have higher power, bandwidth and throughput; PCIe versions are cheaper to host and easier to find.
Compare like with like: an H100 SXM price and an H100 PCIe price are not interchangeable.
Worked example
The H100 SXM runs at up to 700 W with 3,350 GB/s and 989 dense BF16 TFLOPS; the H100 PCIe runs at 350 W with 2,000 GB/s and 756 TFLOPS.
Frequently asked questions
- Is SXM faster than PCIe?
- For the same GPU generation, usually yes: more power, more bandwidth and NVLink. For single-GPU inference of a small model, the gap can be small.