AMD Radeon Pro 5600M vs AMD Radeon R9 M380 Comparison

# The Verdict

The benchmark data tells a remarkably one-sided story: the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M wins both head-to-head tests decisively, with a 197.8% advantage in Geekbench Metal and a 280.3% advantage in Geekbench OpenCL. The Pro 5600M is not merely faster — it is in a different performance class entirely, despite both cards sitting near the same overall percentile ranking (59th vs. 58th). That near-parity in percentile is the curious anomaly here, explained by the fact that the R9 M380's average benchmark score of 15,521 is dragged upward by its nearest rivals — including the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti at 15,548 and the RTX 2060 at 15,290 — while the Pro 5600M's 16,351 average sits within 0.1% of the RX 5700 XT and 0.9% of the RTX 5090 D V2.

Who should pick which? For any workload measured by Geekbench Metal or OpenCL — the only two benchmarks both cards share — the Pro 5600M is the only rational choice. The data shows a 2.98x raw performance gap in OpenCL, a margin that would dwarf any architectural or driver-level nuance. The R9 M380, however, might still serve a niche: it is a 28nm GCN 2.0 part from 2015 with a 4GB GDDR5 frame buffer, and its 58th percentile ranking suggests it remains competitive with far more modern cards in aggregate scoring, likely due to its inclusion in systems where the surrounding hardware limits the GPU's ceiling. But for pure compute performance, the verdict is unambiguous: the Pro 5600M wins every measurable contest.

# Architecture Differences

The two GPUs represent a generational chasm in AMD's design philosophy. The Pro 5600M uses the Navi 12 chip built on TSMC's 7nm process, employing the RDNA 1.0 architecture. The R9 M380 uses the Strato chip on a 28nm process, based on the older GCN 2.0 architecture. That process shrink alone — 7nm versus 28nm — explains much of the efficiency gap, though the fact pack provides no direct power comparison since the R9 M380's TDP is not listed.

The compute resources differ dramatically. The Pro 5600M fields 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, while the R9 M380 has 768 shading units, 48 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. That is a 3.33x advantage in shading units, a 3.33x advantage in TMUs, and a 4x advantage in ROPs for the newer card. The Pro 5600M's pixel rate of 73.22 GPixel/s and texture rate of 183.0 GTexel/s dwarf the R9 M380's 16.00 GPixel/s and 48.00 GTexel/s, respectively — a 4.58x gap in pixel throughput and a 3.81x gap in texturing.

Memory architecture is equally divergent. The Pro 5600M uses 8GB of HBM2 across a 2048-bit bus, delivering 394.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The R9 M380 uses 4GB of GDDR5 across a 128-bit bus, yielding 96.00 GB/s. That is a 4.1x bandwidth advantage for the Pro 5600M, which matters enormously for compute-heavy workloads that saturate memory. The R9 M380's transistor count of 2,080 million on a 160 mm² die (13.0M transistors per mm²) is provided, while the Pro 5600M's transistor count and die size are not listed — but the clock speeds tell a partial story: the R9 M380 runs at a 900 MHz base and 1000 MHz boost, while the Pro 5600M runs at 822 MHz base and 1144 MHz boost. The older card's higher base clock does not compensate for its far smaller compute footprint.

Feature support also differs. The Pro 5600M supports DirectX 12_1, while the R9 M380 supports DirectX 12_0. Both support OpenGL 4.6, but the Pro 5600M's Vulkan support is 1.3 versus the R9 M380's 1.2.170. The Pro 5600M also uses PCIe 4.0 x16, while the R9 M380 is limited to PCIe 3.0 x16 — though the fact pack does not include benchmarks that isolate bus bandwidth effects.

# Where Each One Wins

The Pro 5600M wins everywhere the data measures. In Geekbench Metal, it scores 55,030 versus 18,476 for the R9 M380 — a 197.8% delta. In Geekbench OpenCL, it scores 47,783 versus 12,565 — a 280.3% delta. The wins tally is 2-0 in favor of the Pro 5600M, with zero wins for the R9 M380.

The OpenCL result is particularly telling: a 280.3% advantage suggests the Pro 5600M's compute architecture scales far better with parallel workloads. The R9 M380's 768 shading units simply cannot match the 2,560-unit array of the Pro 5600M when the workload is sufficiently parallel. The Metal result, while still a massive win, shows a smaller relative gap — 197.8% — which may indicate that Metal's driver implementation on the older GCN architecture handles the available hardware more efficiently, or that the benchmark's workload is less purely compute-bound.

For the R9 M380, the only "win" is contextual: its 58th percentile ranking is only one point below the Pro 5600M's 59th, despite the latter having four times the bandwidth and over three times the shading units. This suggests that in the broader GPU landscape, the R9 M380 holds its own against a wide range of cards — its nearest rivals include the GTX 1080 Ti (deltaPct -0.2%) and the RTX 2060 (deltaPct +1.5%). But when directly compared to the Pro 5600M, there is no workload category in the fact pack where the R9 M380 comes out ahead.

# FAQ

Q: Is the AMD Radeon Pro 5600M always faster than the R9 M380 in the provided benchmarks?

A: Yes. The Pro 5600M wins both shared benchmarks: Geekbench Metal at 55,030 versus 18,476 (197.8% higher) and Geekbench OpenCL at 47,783 versus 12,565 (280.3% higher). The head-to-head record is 2 wins for the Pro 5600M and 0 for the R9 M380.

Q: How close are these two GPUs in overall GPU rankings?

A: Despite the large performance gap, they are only one percentile point apart. The Pro 5600M sits at the 59th percentile of all GPUs, while the R9 M380 sits at the 58th. This is because the R9 M380's average benchmark score of 15,521 is comparable to its nearest rivals like the GTX 1080 Ti (15,548) and RTX 2060 (15,290), while the Pro 5600M's 16,351 average is within 0.1% of the RX 5700 XT.

Q: What memory configuration does each card use?

A: The Pro 5600M has 8GB of HBM2 memory on a 2048-bit bus with 394.2 GB/s bandwidth. The R9 M380 has 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus with 96.00 GB/s bandwidth. The Pro 5600M's bandwidth is 4.1 times higher.

Q: Which card has more shading units and how does that affect performance?

A: The Pro 5600M has 2,560 shading units versus 768 on the R9 M380 — a 3.33x advantage. This directly translates to the Pro 5600M's 5.857 TFLOPS FP32 throughput versus the R9 M380's 1.536 TFLOPS, a 3.81x gap that explains the large OpenCL benchmark delta.

Q: Are there any architectural features that the R9 M380 has that the Pro 5600M lacks?

A: The fact pack does not list any features where the R9 M380 has an advantage. The Pro 5600M supports a higher DirectX feature level (12_1 vs 12_0), a newer Vulkan version (1.3 vs 1.2.170), and a newer PCIe interface (4.0 x16 vs 3.0 x16).

Q: What is the production status and release timing for each card?

A: Both are end-of-life products. The Pro 5600M was released on 2020-06-14, while the R9 M380 was released on 2015-05-04. The R9 M380's predecessor is listed as "Solar System" and its successor as "Polaris Mobile," while no predecessor or successor is listed for the Pro 5600M.

# Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The data offers exactly two shared benchmarks, and both are landslides. In Geekbench Metal, the Pro 5600M scores 55,030 against the R9 M380's 18,476. The delta of 197.8% means the Pro 5600M delivers nearly three times the Metal performance. This is the smaller of the two wins, yet still a decisive margin that would translate to dramatically smoother graphics workloads in macOS environments, where Metal is the primary API.

Geekbench OpenCL shows an even larger gap: 47,783 versus 12,565, a 280.3% delta. This near-triple performance in a cross-platform compute API suggests the Pro 5600M's RDNA architecture is fundamentally better suited to general-purpose GPU compute. The R9 M380's GCN 2.0 design, while competent for its era, is simply outclassed when the workload scales to fill the Pro 5600M's 2,560 shading units and 394.2 GB/s of memory bandwidth.

The average benchmark scores reinforce this picture. The Pro 5600M's average across all its listed benchmarks is 16,351, while the R9 M380's average across its two listed benchmarks is 15,521. That 5.3% average gap is far smaller than the head-to-head deltas, which is a statistical artifact of the different benchmark suites each card was subjected to — the Pro 5600M has ten benchmark entries including PassMark DX9 through DX12 and compute tests, while the R9 M380 only has the two Geekbench entries. The R9 M380's percentile ranking of 58th, despite having only two data points, indicates that its aggregate score is competitive with cards like the GTX 1080 Ti (15,548) and RTX 2060 (15,290) — but those rivals are not the Pro 5600M.

# Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ in nearly every measurable specification, with the Pro 5600M holding the advantage across the board:

• Process Node: 7nm (TSMC) for the Pro 5600M versus 28nm (TSMC) for the R9 M380.
• Chip: Navi 12 versus Strato.
• Architecture: RDNA 1.0 versus GCN 2.0.
• Transistors: Not listed for Pro 5600M; 2,080 million for R9 M380.
• Die Size: Not listed for Pro 5600M; 160 mm² for R9 M380.
• Transistor Density: Not listed for Pro 5600M; 13.0M / mm² for R9 M380.
• Base Clock: 822 MHz for Pro 5600M versus 900 MHz for R9 M380.
• Boost Clock: 1144 MHz for Pro 5600M versus 1000 MHz for R9 M380.
• Memory Clock: 770 MHz (1540 Mbps effective) for Pro 5600M versus 1500 MHz (6 Gbps effective) for R9 M380.
• Memory Size: 8GB versus 4GB.
• Memory Type: HBM2 versus GDDR5.
• Memory Bus Width: 2048-bit versus 128-bit.
• Memory Bandwidth: 394.2 GB/s versus 96.00 GB/s.
• Shading Units: 2560 versus 768.
• TMUs: 160 versus 48.
• ROPs: 64 versus 16.
• Pixel Rate: 73.22 GPixel/s versus 16.00 GPixel/s.
• Texture Rate: 183.0 GTexel/s versus 48.00 GTexel/s.
• FP32 Performance: 5.857 TFLOPS versus 1.536 TFLOPS.
• FP16 Performance: 11.71 TFLOPS (2:1) for Pro 5600M; not listed for R9 M380.
• TDP: 50W for Pro 5600M; not listed for R9 M380.
• Slot Width: IGP for Pro 5600M; not listed for R9 M380.
• Power Connectors: None for Pro 5600M; not listed for R9 M380.
• Bus Interface: PCIe 4.0 x16 versus PCIe 3.0 x16.
• Display Outputs: Portable Device Dependent for Pro 5600M; not listed for R9 M380.
• DirectX Support: 12 (12_1) versus 12 (12_0).
• Vulkan Support: 1.3 versus 1.2.170.
• Generation: Radeon Pro Mac (Navi Mobile) versus Gem System (R9 M300).
• Predecessor: Not listed for Pro 5600M; Solar System for R9 M380.
• Successor: Not listed for Pro 5600M; Polaris Mobile for R9 M380.
• Release Date: 2020-06-14 versus 2015-05-04.