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How to Benchmark AI Inference Throughput on NVIDIA DGX and RTX Systems

By Freedom251 Team · · 11 min read

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To benchmark AI inference throughput on NVIDIA DGX and RTX systems credibly, hold the model checkpoint, precision, tokenizer, prompt and output distributions, software stack, GPU count, parallelism, clocks, and workload policy constant. Warm up the server, measure a stable window repeatedly, and report tokens per second together with time to first token (TTFT), inter-token latency (ITL), requests per second (RPS), and tail latencies. Use trtllm-bench throughput for maximum-load offline capacity, trtllm-bench latency for low-latency tests, GenAI-Perf for an OpenAI-compatible online endpoint, and MLPerf Inference when you need a prescribed, externally comparable result. A DGX result and an RTX result are comparable only when GPU count, topology, parallelism, precision, software versions, and the definition of throughput are explicitly matched.

What does an AI inference throughput benchmark need to prove?

A useful benchmark answers a specific capacity or user-experience question, rather than producing one impressive number. You may want to know the maximum output-token rate under saturation, how many requests a service can complete per second, whether a model meets a first-token target, or how many GPUs are needed for a stated service-level objective (SLO). Those are different tests and can produce different winners.

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Before running anything, write down the comparison you intend to make. For example: “Compare total output tokens per second at P95 TTFT below 500 ms,” or “Find the highest sustainable RPS while P99 end-to-end latency stays below two seconds.” A maximum-load result is not a latency guarantee, and a low-latency result is not a capacity ceiling.

Freeze the variables that change performance

Record the exact model name and checkpoint revision, tokenizer, precision or quantization, runtime and driver versions, GPU model and count, interconnect and topology, tensor and pipeline parallelism, batch or concurrency policy, request rate, KV-cache settings, and power and clock configuration. Include whether the reported throughput is per GPU or for the complete system.

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NVIDIA’s TensorRT-LLM guidance recommends persistence mode and standardized clock, power-limit, and boost settings for rigorous comparisons. Without those controls, a clock change, thermal state, or power cap can look like a software or hardware improvement.

Use a deterministic workload

Every request in the benchmark should be reproducible. TensorRT-LLM’s throughput schema requires a task ID, either a prompt or input IDs, and an output-token count. Keep input and output lengths representative of the application. Synthetic 128-input/128-output requests are convenient for repeatability, but they do not represent every workload: chat, retrieval-augmented generation, summarization, and code completion have different length distributions.

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Store the generated request file with the result. If you change the tokenizer, prompt template, stop conditions, or output-length distribution, treat it as a new workload rather than a continuation of the old series.

How should you prepare a DGX or RTX system before measuring?

  1. Identify the hardware. Record the precise GPU variant, memory capacity, count, interconnect (for example, NVLink or PCIe), NUMA placement, and whether the result is per GPU or aggregate.
  2. Pin the software. Save the operating-system image, NVIDIA driver, CUDA version, TensorRT-LLM or PyTorch version, serving layer, tokenizer package, and model commit or checksum.
  3. Set power and clocks. Enable persistence mode and apply the same documented power limit and clock or boost policy to every comparison system. Record ambient and thermal conditions when they can affect sustained clocks.
  4. Configure parallelism. Write down tensor-parallel and pipeline-parallel degrees, rank placement, communication settings, and the GPU-to-process mapping. A multi-GPU DGX run and a single- or dual-GPU RTX run are different configurations even when they use the same model.
  5. Configure memory behavior. Record maximum sequence length, KV-cache data type and capacity, paged-attention settings, and any admission or eviction policy. Out-of-memory failures and cache evictions must be reported, not silently excluded.
  6. Check isolation. Stop unrelated GPU jobs, confirm that clocks are stable, and capture utilization, memory use, temperature, and power telemetry during the run.

Build or load the engine only after these settings are fixed. If the engine is autotuned, retain the build log and tuning choices; rebuilding with different tactic selections can change the result.

Which NVIDIA tool should you use for inference benchmarking?

Question Recommended mode What it measures When to use it
How fast can an offline engine run at saturation? trtllm-bench throughput Maximum-load throughput and summary latency statistics Capacity upper bounds, engine and kernel tuning
Can the system meet a low-latency target? trtllm-bench latency Latency-oriented behavior with controlled load Interactive or latency-sensitive inference
How will an online API behave? GenAI-Perf Client-observed TTFT, ITL, end-to-end latency, TPS, and RPS OpenAI-compatible production or staging endpoints
Do I need a prescribed public comparison? MLPerf Inference Results under a fixed, published benchmark specification Standardized hardware and software comparisons

trtllm-bench can build tuned engines, run Python-based workflows, and emit throughput and latency summaries. For an online test, expose an OpenAI-compatible service and drive it with GenAI-Perf or TensorRT-LLM’s serving benchmark. Save the tool’s CSV or JSON output instead of copying only a headline number.

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Offline versus online measurement

Offline tests submit work to an engine without modeling a user’s arrival pattern. They are useful for a maximum-load upper bound and for isolating runtime changes. Online tests include client scheduling, queueing, network and serialization overhead, admission control, and streaming behavior. They are the appropriate evidence for a deployed endpoint.

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Do not present an offline TPS number as the capacity of an API unless the online path has been measured. Conversely, do not dismiss online overhead when selecting hardware for a service: it is part of the user’s observed latency and sustainable RPS.

How do you run a repeatable throughput benchmark?

  1. Create the request dataset. For each task, include the required ID, prompt or input IDs, and target output-token count. Use a fixed seed where sampling is enabled, and publish the prompt and output-length distributions.
  2. Build or select the engine. Keep precision, quantization, maximum sequence length, and parallelism identical across systems. Capture build-time warnings and tactic-selection logs.
  3. Start the service or benchmark process. Verify that every intended GPU is visible and that the process-to-GPU mapping matches the recorded topology.
  4. Warm up. Send enough requests to populate caches and reach steady clocks. Do not include compilation, engine loading, CUDA graph capture, or first-request initialization in the representative interval.
  5. Choose the load sweep. For offline capacity, use maximum load. For online behavior, sweep concurrency or request rate from lightly loaded to saturated. Keep each level long enough to observe stable queueing and tail latency.
  6. Measure a stable window. GenAI-Perf uses a sliding window so warm-up and cool-down requests are excluded from representative statistics. Use an equivalent exclusion rule when your tool does not provide one.
  7. Repeat each point. Run multiple trials, preserve every raw output file, and report the median or distribution across trials. Investigate outliers instead of deleting them.
  8. Validate accounting. Confirm whether token counts include only generated tokens, whether request preparation is inside the timed interval, and whether aborted or failed requests are counted.
  9. Archive the recipe. Keep the dataset, command line, environment capture, engine artifacts, logs, telemetry, and result files together. A number without its recipe cannot be reproduced.

When a run is interrupted by an out-of-memory error, timeout, server restart, or queue overflow, mark that load point as a failure. Do not replace it with a lower-load result and label the system “stable.”

Which metrics should you report, and how are they calculated?

Throughput and latency describe different parts of the same request timeline. Report both aggregate and tail values so a high average does not hide an unacceptable user experience.

Metric Definition What it tells you
TTFT Time from request submission until the first output token Perceived responsiveness and queueing or prefill cost
ITL (also called TPOT) Average delay between consecutive output tokens; GenAI-Perf excludes the first token from this interval Streaming token cadence after generation begins
End-to-end latency TTFT + generation time Total wait until the response is complete
TPS Total generated output tokens divided by the stated measurement interval Token capacity; define exactly what the interval includes
RPS Completed requests divided by the stated measurement interval Request-serving capacity
P50, P90, P95, P99 Latency percentiles across requests Typical and tail behavior under the tested load

Always state whether TPS is aggregate or per GPU, whether input tokens are excluded, and whether the interval includes request preparation, queueing, network transfer, and post-processing. Tools differ in these boundaries, so two values labeled “tokens per second” can measure different things.

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For streaming systems, publish TTFT and ITL alongside TPS. A system can generate many tokens per second in aggregate while making users wait too long for the first token or producing an uneven token cadence. Report at least median, P90, P95, and P99 latency where the tooling supports it.

How should you compare DGX and RTX results?

Compare systems at equivalent operating points, not by placing one headline number beside another. DGX configurations often combine several GPUs and a high-bandwidth interconnect; an RTX result may use one GPU or a different topology. State GPU count, interconnect, tensor and pipeline parallelism, precision, model, software versions, dataset, and whether throughput is total or per GPU.

Comparison axis Correct method Why it matters
Throughput at a latency budget Find the highest TPS or RPS while TTFT and P95/P99 stay below the same limits Matches an interactive service SLO
Latency at a throughput target Hold TPS or RPS constant and compare TTFT, ITL, and end-to-end percentiles Shows user experience at required capacity
Per-GPU versus total Publish both when possible and label the denominator Prevents a multi-GPU total from being mistaken for single-GPU performance
Scaling efficiency Measure the same workload at one, two, four, and more GPUs; compare observed speedup with ideal linear speedup Reveals communication and scheduling overhead
Power or cost context Include only measured power, energy, or cost data with its measurement method Prevents unsupported efficiency claims

When sweeping concurrency, plot throughput against TTFT, P95/P99 latency, or your stated SLO. The useful operating point is often near the knee of this curve: adding concurrency initially raises throughput, then produces rapidly rising latency with little additional throughput. Choose the highest point that still meets the service target, not necessarily the absolute TPS peak.

Interpreting published NVIDIA reference figures

NVIDIA’s TensorRT-LLM overview publishes output throughput per GPU for systems including H100 SXM in DGX H100, H200 SXM in DGX H200, B200 in DGX B200, GB200 NVL72, and RTX 6000 Pro Blackwell Server Edition. NVIDIA describes these as reference measurements, not guaranteed peak performance, and notes that hardware variants can differ in TDP, memory bandwidth, core count, and features. Use them as directional context, then reproduce the exact workload on your own configuration.

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A TensorRT-LLM documentation example reports 20,685.5510 tokens/sec and 161.6059 requests/sec, with 18,563.6825 ms total latency, for a documented Llama 3.1 8B PyTorch-backend run using 128 input and 128 output tokens. Those figures apply only when the model, backend, dataset, software, and configuration match; they are not universal DGX or RTX limits.

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When should you use MLPerf instead of a custom benchmark?

Use MLPerf Inference when the goal is a prescribed, externally comparable result. Its evaluations are conducted under specified conditions across hardware, software, and services, which makes the rules, scenarios, and result-compliance requirements part of the measurement.

Use trtllm-bench or GenAI-Perf for application-specific capacity planning, model and runtime tuning, or an OpenAI-compatible production service. A custom test can use your real prompt lengths, arrival pattern, sampling settings, and SLO; that realism is valuable even though the result is not directly interchangeable with an MLPerf submission.

Do not mix a compliant standardized result with an internally tuned application result in one ranking. Label the benchmark class, workload, and constraints so readers know whether they are seeing a standard score or a deployment decision.

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What commonly invalidates a DGX-versus-RTX benchmark?

  • Different model or checkpoint: Even a minor revision can alter kernels, memory use, or generation behavior.
  • Different precision or quantization: FP16, BF16, FP8, and weight-only quantization trade quality, memory, and speed differently.
  • Unmatched prompt lengths: Prefill work changes with input length, while decode work changes with output length.
  • Unreported concurrency: A saturated batch and a single-request latency test answer different questions.
  • Cold-start contamination: Engine loading, compilation, or cache population inflates early latency.
  • Unstable clocks or thermal throttling: A later run may be slower for reasons unrelated to the software change.
  • Topology blindness: Cross-GPU communication can dominate when tensor or pipeline parallelism spans links with different bandwidth.
  • Token-accounting mismatch: One tool may include only generated tokens while another includes preparation or counts failed requests differently.
  • Average-only reporting: Mean latency can conceal a severe P99 tail under queueing.
  • Cherry-picked load points: Reporting only the best concurrency hides overload behavior and failure thresholds.

Fix these problems by rerunning both systems from the same dataset and software recipe, documenting the difference that remains, and publishing the complete sweep rather than a selected point.

What should a publishable benchmark report contain?

Include a compact configuration block before the charts or tables:

  • GPU model, count, memory, interconnect, topology, and per-GPU versus total scope.
  • Model checkpoint, tokenizer, prompt template, precision or quantization, and maximum sequence length.
  • Runtime, serving stack, driver, CUDA, operating-system image, and engine-build settings.
  • Tensor parallelism, pipeline parallelism, batching, concurrency or request-rate sweep, and KV-cache policy.
  • Dataset schema, input and output length distributions, sampling parameters, and random seed.
  • Persistence, clock, boost, and power-limit settings, plus relevant temperature and utilization observations.
  • Warm-up policy, measurement-window definition, number of repetitions, and treatment of failures.
  • TPS, RPS, TTFT, ITL, end-to-end latency, and P50/P90/P95/P99 values at every reported load point.

Provide the command line or configuration file and preserve raw CSV or JSON output. If a value is not measured, say “not measured” rather than infer it from another system or from a vendor reference table.

How do you turn benchmark data into a capacity decision?

  1. Define the service target. Set an arrival rate or RPS, a TTFT limit, an end-to-end latency limit, and acceptable P95 or P99 tails.
  2. Locate the feasible operating region. From the concurrency or request-rate sweep, discard points that violate any SLO or produce errors.
  3. Select the knee, not the peak. Among feasible points, choose the one with headroom before latency rises sharply. Leave capacity for burstiness and variance.
  4. Check scaling. Repeat the workload with additional GPUs and calculate measured speedup and scaling efficiency. Explain any loss through communication, memory, or scheduling observations rather than assuming linear scaling.
  5. Validate with application traffic. Re-run the chosen configuration using production-like prompt and output distributions and the actual endpoint path.

This process produces a defensible answer to “how many GPUs do we need?” without pretending that one synthetic maximum-load number predicts every deployment.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How many warm-up requests should an LLM benchmark use?

There is no universal count because engine compilation, CUDA graph capture, cache population, and thermal stabilization vary by runtime and model. Increase warm-up until clocks, memory use, and latency statistics stop trending, then document the rule and excluded requests rather than publishing a fixed count as a standard.

Should input tokens be included in tokens-per-second?

For generation capacity, most reports use generated output tokens, but the convention must be stated. Input processing still consumes compute and affects TTFT, so publish input length distributions and TTFT even when TPS excludes input tokens.

Why can a faster GPU show worse time to first token?

TTFT includes queueing and prefill, not just decode speed. Different batching, parallelism, tokenizer overhead, network path, or a saturated scheduler can make a faster accelerator deliver a slower first token at the tested load.

How do I compare quantized and full-precision engines fairly?

Treat precision or quantization as a separate experimental variable and keep every other setting fixed. Report quality or accuracy checks separately, because a throughput gain is not an equivalent result if the generated model behavior is materially different.

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What should I do when P99 latency is extremely noisy?

Lengthen the steady-state window, repeat the point, and inspect request arrivals, GPU clocks, host scheduling, and network or service logs. Keep the variance visible; replacing noisy tails with an average or a convenient percentile hides the operating risk.

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AI inferenceGenAI-PerfGPU performanceLLM benchmarkingMLPerfNVIDIA DGXNVIDIA RTXTensorRT-LLM

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