AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT vs NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile Comparison

# Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT and NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile present a clear picture in direct comparison: the AMD part wins both available benchmark matchups, though the margins are not uniform. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Radeon Pro 5500 XT scores 41,772 against the RTX A500 Mobile's 41,263, a 1.2% advantage that places the two within noise of each other. The Vulkan test tells a more decisive story: 39,601 for the AMD versus 37,873 for the NVIDIA, a 4.6% lead that suggests the Radeon's architecture extracts more from the Vulkan API.

The average benchmark scores reinforce this ordering. The Radeon Pro 5500 XT holds a 45,384 average across its three tested workloads (Metal, OpenCL, Vulkan), while the RTX A500 Mobile averages 39,568 across its two (OpenCL, Vulkan). That 5,816-point gap represents a roughly 14.7% overall performance advantage for the AMD part, though the comparison is complicated by the fact that the AMD card has an additional Metal benchmark in its average that the NVIDIA card lacks.

Context from the nearest rivals is instructive. The Radeon Pro 5500 XT sits at the 84th percentile of all GPUs, surrounded by the Intel Arc A730M (45,592 average, 0.5% behind the AMD), the NVIDIA RTX 5090 Mobile (45,152, 0.5% ahead of the AMD), and the NVIDIA RTX 5880 Ada Generation (45,972, 1.3% behind the AMD). This is a tightly packed field where the Radeon Pro 5500 XT is competitive with far more expensive desktop and mobile parts. The RTX A500 Mobile, at the 82nd percentile, faces a different set of rivals: the AMD Radeon Pro 575 (39,555, exactly matching), the Radeon Pro 575X (39,116, 1.2% behind the NVIDIA), and the Radeon Pro WX 7100 (40,063, 1.2% ahead of the NVIDIA). The A500 Mobile is thus positioned in a lower performance tier altogether.

In the head-to-head, the Radeon Pro 5500 XT wins both tests (2 wins, 0 losses). The OpenCL margin of 1.2% is negligible in real-world terms, but the Vulkan margin of 4.6% is meaningful for applications that leverage that API. The data does not include a Metal comparison for the RTX A500 Mobile, but the Radeon Pro 5500 XT's Metal score of 54,779 is its strongest result, suggesting the AMD card would extend its lead if such a test were available.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT averages 45,384 across its benchmarks, while the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile averages 39,568. The AMD part also holds a higher percentile ranking at 84 versus 82 for the NVIDIA.

Q: How large is the Vulkan performance gap between the two?

A: The Radeon Pro 5500 XT scores 39,601 in Geekbench Vulkan, which is 4.6% higher than the RTX A500 Mobile's 37,873. This is the largest margin in any shared test.

Q: Does the RTX A500 Mobile win any benchmark?

A: No. In the two head-to-head tests available (Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan), the RTX A500 Mobile loses both. The OpenCL margin is 1.2% in favor of the AMD, and the Vulkan margin is 4.6% in favor of the AMD.

Q: How do these GPUs compare to their nearest rivals?

A: The Radeon Pro 5500 XT is within 1.3% of the Intel Arc A730M, RTX 5090 Mobile, RTX 5880 Ada Generation, and RTX 4070 Ti — all higher-tier parts. The RTX A500 Mobile sits within 1.9% of the Radeon Pro 575, 575X, WX 7100, and 580, which are older workstation parts.

Q: What explains the different rival groupings?

A: The Radeon Pro 5500 XT's 45,384 average places it in a performance band with modern flagships like the RTX 5090 Mobile and RTX 4070 Ti. The RTX A500 Mobile's 39,568 average places it with previous-generation Radeon Pro workstation cards, indicating a lower overall performance tier.

Q: Is the RTX A500 Mobile competitive in compute workloads?

A: In OpenCL, yes — the 1.2% deficit to the Radeon Pro 5500 XT is minor. However, the Vulkan gap of 4.6% shows the NVIDIA part falls behind in API-specific performance, and its overall average is roughly 14.7% lower than the AMD card.

The Verdict

The benchmark data indicates a clear but narrow victory for the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT. In the only two directly comparable workloads, the AMD card wins both: 41,772 versus 41,263 in OpenCL (1.2% lead) and 39,601 versus 37,873 in Vulkan (4.6% lead). The average benchmark score difference is more substantial — 45,384 versus 39,568 — though this includes the Radeon's additional Metal result.

The RTX A500 Mobile's case rests on its efficiency rather than its raw performance. With a 30 W TDP versus the Radeon's 125 W, the NVIDIA part delivers 6.296 TFLOPS of FP32 performance at a fraction of the power draw. That FP32 figure is actually 16.6% higher than the Radeon's 5.398 TFLOPS, yet the NVIDIA still loses the real-world benchmarks. This suggests the Radeon's architecture extracts more usable performance from each FLOP, or that driver optimizations favor the AMD part in these specific workloads.

For compute tasks where power is unconstrained, the Radeon Pro 5500 XT is the better choice based on benchmark scores alone. Its 84th percentile ranking places it alongside much more expensive parts like the RTX 5090 Mobile and RTX 4070 Ti, while the RTX A500 Mobile's 82nd percentile places it among older Radeon Pro cards. The Vulkan advantage of 4.6% is the strongest single differentiator.

For laptop deployments where power is critical, the RTX A500 Mobile's 30 W TDP makes it a more viable option despite its lower scores. The NVIDIA part also brings hardware ray tracing (16 RT cores) and tensor cores (64), features the Radeon lacks entirely. If those features matter for the workload, the NVIDIA card's lower raw benchmark scores may be acceptable trade-offs.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every specification category. Memory capacity is a major divergence: the Radeon Pro 5500 XT offers 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus with 224.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the RTX A500 Mobile provides 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus with 96.00 GB/s — half the capacity and less than half the bandwidth. Clock speeds also differ: the Radeon runs at 1187 MHz base and 1757 MHz boost, whereas the NVIDIA runs at 832 MHz base and 1537 MHz boost, but with higher memory clocks at 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) versus the Radeon's 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective).

Compute unit counts show a different trade-off. The RTX A500 Mobile has more shading units (2,048 versus 1,536) but fewer texture mapping units (64 versus 96). Both have 32 ROPs. The NVIDIA part's FP32 throughput of 6.296 TFLOPS exceeds the Radeon's 5.398 TFLOPS, yet the Radeon achieves higher pixel rate (56.22 GPixel/s versus 49.18) and texture rate (168.7 GTexel/s versus 98.37). FP16 performance is dramatically different: the Radeon delivers 10.80 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), while the NVIDIA provides 6.296 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio).

Power and physical specifications vary widely. The Radeon Pro 5500 XT is rated at 125 W TDP with a suggested 300 W power supply, while the RTX A500 Mobile draws just 30 W with no suggested PSU listed. Both are IGP form factors without power connectors. The Radeon has no display outputs, while the NVIDIA's outputs are described as "Portable Device Dependent." Both use PCIe 4.0 x8 interfaces.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap is fundamental. The AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT uses the Navi 14 chip built on RDNA 1.0 architecture, fabricated on TSMC's 7 nm process. It contains 6,400 million transistors on a 158 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 40.5 million per mm². The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile uses the GA107S chip on Ampere architecture, built on Samsung's 8 nm process. It packs 8,700 million transistors onto a 200 mm² die, achieving 43.5 million transistors per mm² — slightly higher density despite the larger process node.

The RDNA 1.0 architecture in the AMD card implements DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The Ampere architecture in the NVIDIA card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), a newer specification that includes hardware ray tracing and mesh shaders. The NVIDIA card explicitly includes 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores, hardware features absent from the Radeon Pro 5500 XT. This makes the RTX A500 Mobile architecturally more modern in terms of feature support, even though its benchmark scores trail the older AMD design.

The Radeon Pro 5500 XT belongs to the "Radeon Pro Mac (Navi Series)" generation and was released on August 3, 2020, while the RTX A500 Mobile is part of the "Ampere-MW (Ax000)" generation, released on March 21, 2022 — roughly 19 months later. The NVIDIA card's predecessor is listed as Quadro Turing-M and its successor as Ada-MW, indicating a clear product lineage within NVIDIA's mobile workstation lineup. The AMD card has no listed predecessor or successor in this data.

Memory architecture differs beyond capacity: the Radeon's 128-bit bus with 224 GB/s bandwidth is more than double the NVIDIA's 64-bit bus with 96 GB/s. This bandwidth advantage likely contributes to the Radeon's higher pixel and texture fill rates, which are 14.3% and 71.5% higher respectively. The NVIDIA card's higher FP32 throughput (16.6% more than the AMD) suggests compute-heavy tasks might favor it, but the benchmark results show the Radeon winning in practice. The Radeon's FP16 capability at 2:1 ratio (10.80 TFLOPS) versus the NVIDIA's 1:1 ratio (6.296 TFLOPS) gives the AMD part a 71.5% advantage in half-precision workloads, which can matter for AI inference and certain graphics effects.