AMD Radeon Pro 5600M vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Comparison

The recorded data tells a story of two very different design philosophies colliding across a seven-year gap: a power-hungry desktop flagship from NVIDIA's Kepler era against a tightly constrained professional mobile part built on AMD's first-generation RDNA architecture. The head-to-head results, at least on the surface, look lopsided, but the context around those scores raises questions worth investigating. Both cards are end-of-life, both sit in the lower-middle of the full GPU database, and both land within striking distance of surprising neighbors. What the numbers imply depends heavily on which workload you examine.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The recorded head-to-head suite covers three Geekbench API tests, and the Radeon Pro 5600M sweeps all three.

The largest gap appears in Geekbench Metal, where the Pro 5600M scores 55030 against the GTX 780's 10114, a delta of 81.6 percent in AMD's favor. That margin is enormous, though Metal is an API closely tied to Apple platforms, which raises the question of how much of that lead reflects raw silicon versus a software stack the Kepler part was never optimized for.

OpenCL narrows the gap but does not change the outcome: 47783 for the Pro 5600M versus 22863 for the GTX 780, a 52.2 percent advantage for AMD. Vulkan follows the same pattern, with the Pro 5600M posting 46425 against 24514, a 47.2 percent lead for the newer card.

A curious detail sits inside the GTX 780's own results: its Vulkan score of 24514 exceeds its OpenCL score of 22863, suggesting the Kepler driver path performs slightly better through Vulkan than OpenCL even on aging hardware. The Pro 5600M shows the opposite ordering, with Metal at the top, OpenCL second, and Vulkan third, hinting that AMD's compute performance scales best through the API stack its architecture was designed around.

Against the broader database, the GTX 780 averages 19164 across its recorded benchmarks, placing it in the 64th percentile of all GPUs. The Pro 5600M averages 16351 and lands in the 59th percentile. So despite losing every direct comparison, the GTX 780 actually ranks slightly higher against the field, which tells us the two cards were benchmarked on different mixes of tests and that percentile placement and head-to-head dominance do not always agree.

Where Each One Wins

On pure benchmark outcomes, the Pro 5600M wins everything: Metal, OpenCL, and Vulkan, three wins to zero. Compute-heavy and modern-API workloads are clearly its territory, with its 5.857 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput and 11.71 TFLOPS of FP16 at a 2:1 ratio dwarfing the GTX 780's 4.156 TFLOPS FP32 (the Kepler card records no FP16 figure at all, consistent with an era before dedicated half-precision support became standard).

Where the GTX 780 holds its ground is efficiency-adjacent and feature-related rather than scoreboard-based. Its memory subsystem still posts a wide 384-bit GDDR5 bus delivering 288.4 GB/s, and its texture throughput of 173.2 GTexel/s is not far behind the Pro 5600M's 183.0 GTexel/s despite the age gap. In pixel rate, however, the Pro 5600M pulls clearly ahead at 73.22 GPixel/s versus 43.30 GPixel/s, thanks to 64 ROPs against the GTX 780's 48.

The Pro 5600M's HBM2 memory is arguably its strongest asset for professional use: 8 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus produces 394.2 GB/s of bandwidth, roughly 37 percent more than the GTX 780's 288.4 GB/s, and more than double the capacity of the GTX 780's 3 GB. Workloads that fit in 3 GB will run on either card; anything larger belongs to the AMD part by default.

Architecture Differences

These two cards could hardly be more architecturally distinct. The GTX 780 uses NVIDIA's GK110 chip on the Kepler architecture, manufactured by TSMC on a 28 nm process, with 7080 million transistors packed into a 561 mm² die for a density of 12.6M per mm². The Pro 5600M uses AMD's Navi 12 chip on RDNA 1.0, built by TSMC on a 7 nm process; transistor count and die size are not recorded for it in the database.

Core counts favor AMD in shading units, 2560 versus 2304, and in ROPs, 64 versus 48, while the GTX 780 leads in TMUs at 192 versus 160. Clock behavior differs in character: the GTX 780 runs a base of 863 MHz with a boost of 902 MHz, a narrow window, while the Pro 5600M starts at 822 MHz and boosts much further to 1144 MHz, reflecting the aggressive clock scaling that finer process nodes enable.

Power profiles are the starkest contrast. The GTX 780 is a 250 W desktop card occupying a dual-slot footprint, requiring one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector, with a suggested 600 W PSU. The Pro 5600M is an integrated-in-package mobile professional part with a 50 W TDP and no power connectors at all. That is a fivefold difference in power draw for the performance relationship described above.

Platform connectivity also diverges: PCIe 3.0 x16 on the GTX 780 versus PCIe 4.0 x16 on the Pro 5600M. Display outputs on the GTX 780 are fixed at two DVI, one HDMI 1.4a, and one DisplayPort 1.2, while the Pro 5600M's outputs are listed as portable-device dependent, fitting its embedded Mac-oriented role. Both are dual-slot-class cards dimensionally only in the NVIDIA's case: the GTX 780 measures 267 mm long, 111 mm tall, and 38 mm wide, while the Pro 5600M records no dimensions.

API support tilts modern on AMD's side: DirectX 12 at feature level 12_1 versus the GTX 780's 12 at 11_0, and Vulkan 1.3 versus 1.2.175. Both support OpenGL 4.6. Neither card has RT cores or tensor cores, so ray-tracing hardware and dedicated AI acceleration are absent from both.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the direct benchmark comparisons?

A: The Radeon Pro 5600M wins all three shared Geekbench tests: Metal by 81.6 percent (55030 versus 10114), OpenCL by 52.2 percent (47783 versus 22863), and Vulkan by 47.2 percent (46425 versus 24514).

Q: Does the Pro 5600M also rank higher against all GPUs in the database?

A: No. The GTX 780 sits in the 64th percentile with an average score of 19164, while the Pro 5600M sits in the 59th percentile averaging 16351. The percentile ranking and the head-to-head results point in opposite directions.

Q: How do their power requirements compare?

A: The GTX 780 has a 250 W TDP, needs a 6-pin plus an 8-pin connector, and carries a suggested 600 W PSU. The Pro 5600M has a 50 W TDP and requires no power connectors.

Q: Which card has more memory and bandwidth?

A: The Pro 5600M, with 8 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus delivering 394.2 GB/s, versus 3 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus delivering 288.4 GB/s for the GTX 780.

Q: Do either of these GPUs support hardware ray tracing?

A: Neither. The database records no RT cores and no tensor cores for either card.

Q: Which GPUs are their closest rivals in the database?

A: The GTX 780's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA TITAN Xp (within 0.1 percent) and the Tesla K20m (0.4 percent). The Pro 5600M's closest match is the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, also within 0.1 percent.

Specification Differences

• Chip and architecture: GK110 on Kepler (GTX 780) versus Navi 12 on RDNA 1.0 (Pro 5600M)
• Process node: 28 nm versus 7 nm, both fabricated by TSMC
• Die and transistors: 561 mm² die, 7080 million transistors, 12.6M per mm² recorded for the GTX 780; no figures recorded for the Pro 5600M
• Clocks: 863 MHz base and 902 MHz boost versus 822 MHz base and 1144 MHz boost; memory at 1502 MHz (6 Gbps effective) versus 770 MHz (1540 Mbps effective)
• Memory: 3 GB GDDR5, 384-bit, 288.4 GB/s versus 8 GB HBM2, 2048-bit, 394.2 GB/s
• Shading units: 2304 versus 2560
• TMUs: 192 versus 160
• ROPs: 48 versus 64
• Pixel rate: 43.30 GPixel/s versus 73.22 GPixel/s
• Texture rate: 173.2 GTexel/s versus 183.0 GTexel/s
• FP32: 4.156 TFLOPS versus 5.857 TFLOPS; FP16 recorded only for the Pro 5600M at 11.71 TFLOPS
• TDP: 250 W versus 50 W
• Form factor: dual-slot with 1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin connectors versus connector-less IGP
• Bus interface: PCIe 3.0 x16 versus PCIe 4.0 x16
• Display outputs: 2x DVI, 1x HDMI 1.4a, 1x DisplayPort 1.2 versus portable-device dependent
• DirectX: 12 (11_0) versus 12 (12_1); Vulkan 1.2.175 versus 1.3
• Release dates: the GTX 780 launched on May 22, 2013; the Pro 5600M on June 14, 2020
• Launch MSRP: 649 USD for the GTX 780; none recorded for the Pro 5600M
• Generation lineage: the GTX 780 belongs to the GeForce 700 series between the 600 and 900 generations; the Pro 5600M belongs to the Radeon Pro Mac (Navi Mobile) generation with no recorded predecessor or successor

The Verdict

Judged strictly on shared benchmark results, the Radeon Pro 5600M is the stronger performer, winning every head-to-head test by margins from 47.2 to 81.6 percent, delivering higher FP32 throughput, higher pixel rate, more memory capacity, and more bandwidth, all at one-fifth the power draw. Buyers whose priority is compute throughput through modern APIs like Metal, OpenCL, or Vulkan should pick the Pro 5600M based on this data.

The case for the GTX 780 is narrower but real. It holds a higher percentile ranking against the full database, 64th versus 59th, and its average score of 19164 edges out its average rival margins, sitting essentially even with the TITAN Xp and Tesla K20m. It also posts a slightly higher TMU count and texture rate, and it offers fixed display outputs including two DVI ports, relevant for legacy monitor setups. Neither card has hardware ray tracing or AI acceleration, and both are end-of-life, so the decision ultimately reduces to this: for measured performance and efficiency, the data favors the Pro 5600M; for legacy connectivity and a marginally better field ranking, the GTX 780 retains an argument.