AMD Radeon Pro 460 vs NVIDIA T400 Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro 460 and NVIDIA T400 are two low-profile workstation graphics cards from different eras, with the former built on AMD's GCN 4.0 architecture for Mac systems and the latter on NVIDIA's Turing architecture for general PC workstations. The benchmark data shows a near-total split in their performance profiles: the AMD card wins the Vulkan test by 5.3%, while the NVIDIA card wins the OpenCL test by 10.3%. Both sit within a single percentile point of each other in overall GPU rankings, with the Radeon Pro 460 at the 61st percentile and the T400 at the 60th, yet their architectural approaches and memory configurations create distinct usability cases.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon Pro 460 is the clear choice for Vulkan-based workloads, as its Geekbench Vulkan score of 16816 decisively beats the NVIDIA T400's 15976, a 5.3% advantage. This makes it the stronger option for applications that leverage Vulkan's cross-platform graphics and compute capabilities, particularly in newer game engines or scientific visualization tools that favor this API. The Radeon's larger 4 GB frame buffer and 128-bit memory bus also give it a theoretical capacity advantage for handling larger textures and datasets, even though its raw bandwidth of 81.28 GB/s is only marginally higher than the T400's 80.00 GB/s.

Conversely, the NVIDIA T400 dominates in OpenCL, scoring 17039 versus the Radeon's 15284, a substantial 10.3% lead. This matters for legacy compute pipelines, video encoding, and many professional applications like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve that historically favored OpenCL acceleration on NVIDIA hardware. The T400 also offers a higher boost clock (1425 MHz vs 907 MHz) and a faster memory clock (10 Gbps effective vs 5.1 Gbps effective), which contributes to its superior pixel fill rate of 22.80 GPixel/s compared to the Radeon's 14.51 GPixel/s. For users running OpenCL-heavy tasks, the T400's performance lead is significant enough to outweigh its smaller 2 GB memory capacity.

In terms of platform flexibility, the T400 wins outright because it is a single-slot PCIe 3.0 x16 card with three mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, making it usable in standard desktop workstations. The Radeon Pro 460 is an integrated GPU (IGP) with portable device-dependent display outputs, meaning it is locked into Apple's MacBook Pro designs from 2016 and cannot be repurposed. This makes the T400 the only viable choice for building or upgrading a custom workstation, while the Radeon is restricted to its original laptop chassis.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 460 has an average benchmark score of 17509 across three tests (Metal, OpenCL, and Vulkan), while the NVIDIA T400 averages 16508 across two tests (OpenCL and Vulkan). This gives the Radeon a 6.1% higher average, but the comparison is skewed because the Radeon includes a Metal score (20426) that the T400 does not have.

Q: How does the NVIDIA T400 compare to its nearest rival in average score?

A: The T400's average score of 16508 is virtually identical to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 D V2, which scores 16504 with a 0% delta. It is also 0.6% ahead of the AMD Radeon PRO W7500 and NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, and 0.9% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference between the two cards?

A: The Radeon Pro 460 has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus with 81.28 GB/s bandwidth, while the T400 has 2 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit bus with 80.00 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon holds a 2 GB capacity advantage, but the T400 uses faster GDDR6 memory with a higher effective clock of 10 Gbps versus 5.1 Gbps.

Q: Which card wins in the OpenCL benchmark and by how much?

A: The NVIDIA T400 wins the OpenCL benchmark with a score of 17039, beating the AMD Radeon Pro 460's 15284 by 10.3%. This is the largest performance gap between the two cards in any shared benchmark.

Q: Can the AMD Radeon Pro 460 be used in a desktop PC?

A: No. The Radeon Pro 460 is classified as an IGP (integrated graphics processor) with "Portable Device Dependent" display outputs, meaning it is soldered onto MacBook Pro motherboards and cannot be installed in a desktop. The NVIDIA T400 is a single-slot PCIe card with three mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs.

Q: What is the transistor density comparison between the two chips?

A: The AMD Baffin chip packs 3,000 million transistors into a 123 mm² die for a density of 24.4M per mm², while the NVIDIA TU117 chip contains 4,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die with a density of 23.5M per mm². The AMD chip is slightly denser despite using an older 14 nm process.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two shared benchmark tests paint a picture of complementary strengths rather than a single dominant card. In Geekbench OpenCL, the NVIDIA T400 delivers a commanding performance of 17039 points, which is 10.3% higher than the Radeon Pro 460's 15284 points. This is the larger margin in either test, and it reflects the T400's architectural efficiency in compute-heavy OpenCL workloads. The T400's advantage is likely driven by its Turing architecture's improved scheduling and its much higher boost clock of 1425 MHz, which allows it to execute instructions faster despite having fewer shading units (384 vs 1024).

However, the tables turn in Geekbench Vulkan, where the AMD Radeon Pro 460 scores 16816, outperforming the T400's 15976 by 5.3%. This result is notable because the Radeon has a lower boost clock (907 MHz) and far fewer raw compute resources in terms of pixel rate (14.51 GPixel/s vs 22.80 GPixel/s), yet its GCN architecture appears to handle Vulkan's explicit multi-threading model more efficiently. The Radeon's 4 GB memory buffer may also help in Vulkan tests that allocate larger working sets, avoiding the T400's 2 GB ceiling.

Looking at the average benchmark scores, the Radeon Pro 460's 17509 average is boosted by its strong Metal score of 20426, a test that the T400 does not participate in. Without Metal, the two cards are much closer: the Radeon's OpenCL and Vulkan scores average 16050, while the T400's two scores average 16508, giving the NVIDIA card a 2.8% edge in their shared tests. This suggests that the T400 is the better all-rounder for cross-platform compute, while the Radeon's additional Metal support makes it superior for Apple's ecosystem.

The delta percentages in the head-to-head results are consistent with the cards' percentile standings: the Radeon sits at the 61st percentile among all GPUs, while the T400 sits at the 60th, a difference of just one percentile point. Neither card is a performance outlier in its class, but their distinct wins indicate that the choice between them depends entirely on the software environment.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ fundamentally in their memory and compute configurations. The AMD Radeon Pro 460 offers 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, yielding 81.28 GB/s of bandwidth, whereas the NVIDIA T400 provides 2 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit bus, achieving 80.00 GB/s. This means the Radeon has twice the capacity but nearly identical bandwidth, a trade-off that favors the Radeon for memory-hungry applications and the T400 for latency-sensitive tasks.

The shading unit counts are starkly different: the Radeon packs 1024 shading units with 64 texture mapping units (TMUs), while the T400 has just 384 shading units and 24 TMUs. Despite this 2.7x advantage in shader count, the Radeon's pixel rate is lower (14.51 GPixel/s vs 22.80 GPixel/s) because the T400's much higher boost clock (1425 MHz vs 907 MHz) compensates for its fewer ROPs (16 each). The texture rates follow the shader ratio more closely, with the Radeon at 58.05 GTexel/s versus the T400's 34.20 GTexel/s.

Clock speeds diverge significantly: the Radeon has a base clock of 850 MHz and boost of 907 MHz, while the T400 has a base clock of 420 MHz but boosts to 1425 MHz. The T400's memory clock is also faster at 1250 MHz (10 Gbps effective) compared to the Radeon's 1270 MHz (5.1 Gbps effective). The power profiles are close, with the Radeon rated at 35 W TDP and the T400 at 30 W, though the T400 lists a suggested PSU of 200 W while the Radeon has none. The T400 uses a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface and is single-slot, whereas the Radeon is an IGP with PCIe 3.0 x8 and no display outputs of its own.

Architecture Differences

The AMD Radeon Pro 460 is built on the Baffin chip using GCN 4.0 architecture, manufactured by GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm process. The chip contains 3,000 million transistors on a 123 mm² die, achieving a density of 24.4M transistors per mm². GCN 4.0 is a mature design that emphasizes raw shader throughput, and the Radeon's FP32 performance is 1.858 TFLOPS with a 1:1 FP16 ratio, meaning it processes FP16 at the same rate as FP32. This architecture supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, but lacks any dedicated ray tracing or tensor cores.

The NVIDIA T400 uses the TU117 chip based on Turing architecture, fabricated by TSMC on a 12 nm process. This chip is larger, with 4,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, but has a slightly lower transistor density of 23.5M per mm². Turing is a newer architecture that introduces a 2:1 FP16 ratio, allowing the T400 to deliver 2.189 TFLOPS of FP16 performance against 1,094.4 GFLOPS of FP32, effectively doubling its throughput for half-precision workloads. The T400 supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, the latter being a newer API version than the Radeon's 1.3.

The architectural generation gap is evident in the feature sets: Turing includes support for mesh shaders and variable rate shading (implied by DirectX 12_1), while GCN 4.0 is limited to DirectX 12_0. The T400's predecessor is the Quadro Volta series and its successor is the Workstation Ampere series, whereas the Radeon Pro 460 belongs to the Radeon Pro Mac (400 Series) generation with no listed predecessor or successor. The Radeon was released on 2016-10-29, while the T400 came later on 2021-05-05, making the NVIDIA card a much newer design with access to more modern driver optimizations. Both GPUs are now end-of-life products, but the Turing architecture's superior API support and FP16 performance give the T400 a longer relevance window for modern compute tasks.