AMD Radeon Pro 570 vs NVIDIA T550 Mobile Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data reveals a fascinating split between these two professional mobile GPUs, with each claiming a decisive victory in a different API workload. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA T550 Mobile posts a score of 35521, crushing the AMD Radeon Pro 570's 27702 by a commanding 28.2%. That is not a marginal edge; it is a substantial gap that suggests fundamental differences in how each architecture handles general-purpose compute workloads. The T550's OpenCL result is especially striking when placed in context—it outperforms its own average benchmark score of 33161 by roughly 7%, indicating that OpenCL is a particularly strong environment for this Turing-based part.

Flip to the Vulkan benchmark, however, and the tables turn. The AMD Radeon Pro 570 scores 32110, edging out the T550's 30801 by 4.1%. While that margin is far narrower than the T550's OpenCL dominance, it is still a clear win for AMD. The Vulkan result also aligns more closely with the Pro 570's overall average score of 33258, suggesting that Vulkan is a representative workload for this GPU, whereas its OpenCL showing appears to be a notable weak point. The T550, by contrast, delivers a Vulkan score that falls below its own average, hinting that its architecture favors OpenCL's execution model over Vulkan's lower-level approach.

Looking at the aggregate numbers, the two GPUs are remarkably close in overall standing. The Pro 570's average benchmark score is 33258, while the T550 sits at 33161—a difference of just 0.3%. Both cards occupy the 76th and 77th percentiles respectively among all GPUs, placing them in essentially the same performance tier. The nearestRivals data reinforces this parity: the Pro 570 is listed as a near-rival to the T550 with a deltaPct of -0.3% from the T550's perspective, while the T550 appears as a near-rival to the Pro 570 with a deltaPct of 0.3% from AMD's viewpoint. These are rounding errors in real-world terms, yet the API-specific results tell a story of divergent strengths.

Where Each One Wins

The T550 Mobile's 28.2% OpenCL advantage makes it the clear choice for workloads that rely heavily on that API. OpenCL is commonly used in scientific computing, image processing, and certain professional rendering pipelines, so the T550's dominance there is significant. Its FP32 throughput of 3.410 TFLOPS, while lower than the Pro 570's 3.960 TFLOPS, does not prevent it from winning in OpenCL—suggesting that raw arithmetic throughput is not the sole determinant of performance in that API. The T550 also benefits from a much higher boost clock of 1665 MHz compared to the Pro 570's 1105 MHz, which likely helps in latency-sensitive or lightly-threaded OpenCL tasks.

The Pro 570's Vulkan win, while smaller, points to its strength in modern graphics APIs. Vulkan is increasingly used in game development, real-time visualization, and CAD applications, so the 4.1% edge could matter in those fields. The Pro 570's larger texture rate of 123.8 GTexel/s versus the T550's 106.6 GTexel/s, combined with its 112 texture mapping units against the T550's 64, suggests it can feed the GPU pipeline more efficiently in geometry-heavy or texture-bound scenes. The Pro 570 also has significantly more memory bandwidth—217.0 GB/s across a 256-bit bus, versus the T550's 96.00 GB/s on a 64-bit bus—which likely helps in large data sets and high-resolution textures.

For users who care about the Metal API, the Pro 570 has a clear advantage, since it is the only one of the two with a Geekbench Metal score, posting 39963. That places it well above its OpenCL and Vulkan results, indicating that AMD's GCN architecture is particularly well-tuned for Apple's Metal framework. This is unsurprising given the Pro 570's "Radeon Pro Mac" generation designation, but the data confirms it: if Metal is the primary API, the Pro 570 is the only option with measured performance.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs could hardly be more different under the hood. The T550 Mobile uses NVIDIA's TU117 chip built on TSMC's 12 nm process, while the Pro 570 employs AMD's Ellesmere silicon fabricated by GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm node. The process node difference is minor in absolute terms, but it contributes to a significant disparity in power consumption: the T550 draws just 23 W, whereas the Pro 570 consumes 150 W—a 6.5x difference that will have major implications for thermal design and battery life in portable devices.

Transistor counts tell an interesting story. The Pro 570 packs 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die, while the T550 has 4,700 million on a 200 mm² die. The transistor density is nearly identical—24.6M per mm² for AMD versus 23.5M per mm² for NVIDIA—so the Pro 570's larger die is simply a larger implementation of a similar density. Yet the T550 achieves comparable average performance with 18% fewer transistors, which speaks to the efficiency of NVIDIA's Turing architecture in this context.

The compute resources are starkly different. The Pro 570 fields 1792 shading units, 112 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, while the T550 has 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. AMD's raw hardware count is substantially higher, yet the T550 still wins in OpenCL. This suggests that NVIDIA's Turing architecture extracts more useful work per shading unit, possibly due to better scheduling or memory access patterns. The Pro 570's FP16 performance is identical to its FP32 at 3.960 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio), while the T550 doubles its FP16 throughput to 6.820 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio)—a feature that could benefit AI inference or certain media workloads, though neither GPU has dedicated tensor or ray tracing cores.

Memory subsystems diverge sharply. The T550 uses 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus, yielding 96.00 GB/s of bandwidth. The Pro 570 also has 4 GB, but it is GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus, delivering 217.0 GB/s—more than double the bandwidth. The T550 compensates with a much higher memory clock of 12 Gbps effective versus the Pro 570's 6.8 Gbps, but the narrow bus limits its overall throughput. For pixel and texture rates, the T550 leads in pixel fill at 53.28 GPixel/s versus 35.36 GPixel/s, but the Pro 570 wins in texture fill at 123.8 GTexel/s versus 106.6 GTexel/s.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 570 edges out the NVIDIA T550 Mobile with an average score of 33258 versus 33161, a difference of 0.3%. Both occupy nearly the same percentile ranking, with the Pro 570 at 77 and the T550 at 76 among all GPUs.

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

A: The T550 Mobile wins the Geekbench OpenCL test decisively, scoring 35521 against the Pro 570's 27702—a 28.2% advantage. This is the single largest performance delta between the two cards in any shared benchmark.

Q: Does the AMD Radeon Pro 570 support the Metal API?

A: Yes, the Pro 570 has a Geekbench Metal score of 39963, which is its highest benchmark result across any API. The NVIDIA T550 Mobile has no Metal benchmark data in the fact pack, so the Pro 570 is the only one of the two with measured Metal performance.

Q: What is the memory bandwidth difference, and does it matters?

A: The Pro 570 offers 217.0 GB/s of bandwidth over a 256-bit bus, while the T550 provides 96.00 GB/s over a 64-bit bus. The Pro 570's bandwidth is more than double, which likely contributes to its Vulkan win and its strength in texture-heavy workloads.

Q: Which GPU consumes less power?

A: The T550 Mobile draws just 23 W, while the Pro 570 consumes 150 W—a 6.5x difference. This makes the T550 substantially more suitable for thin-and-light laptops, whereas the Pro 570 would require more robust cooling and power delivery.

Q: Are these GPUs still in production?

A: No, both are end-of-life products. The Pro 570 was released on June 4, 2017, while the T550 has no listed release date but is marked as end-of-life with a predecessor in the Quadro Pascal-M series and a successor in Ampere-MW.

The Verdict

The data paints a clear picture of two GPUs that, despite near-identical average scores, serve very different purposes. The NVIDIA T550 Mobile is the efficiency champion—its 23 W power draw, combined with a 28.2% OpenCL victory, makes it the obvious pick for professional workloads in compact, power-constrained devices where OpenCL is the primary API. Its smaller die, lower transistor count, and higher clock speeds suggest a design philosophy focused on per-watt performance, and the benchmark results confirm that approach works.

The AMD Radeon Pro 570, by contrast, is a brute-force solution. It throws more shading units, more TMUs, and vastly more memory bandwidth at problems, and it wins where those resources matter—Vulkan and Metal. Its 217.0 GB/s bandwidth is a massive advantage for texture-heavy applications, and its 1:1 FP16/FP32 ratio offers consistency across precision levels. The 150 W power draw is a serious constraint, but for users who need maximum throughput in Vulkan or Metal, the Pro 570 delivers.

For a mobile workstation where battery life and thermals are critical, the T550's 23 W TDP is a decisive factor. For a desktop replacement or a device with robust cooling, the Pro 570's raw resources make it the better choice in graphics APIs. Neither GPU has a universal advantage; the selection depends entirely on the target workload. The tie in average score—0.3% apart—belies the fundamental differences in architecture and design philosophy that the API-specific benchmarks reveal.

Specification Differences

| Specification | NVIDIA T550 Mobile | AMD Radeon Pro 570 |

|---|---|---|

| Architecture | Turing | GCN 4.0 |

| Process Node | 12 nm (TSMC) | 14 nm (GlobalFoundries) |

| Transistors | 4,700 million | 5,700 million |

| Die Size | 200 mm² | 232 mm² |

| Base Clock | 1065 MHz | 1000 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 1665 MHz | 1105 MHz |

| Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR5 |

| Memory Bus Width | 64 bit | 256 bit |

| Memory Bandwidth | 96.00 GB/s | 217.0 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 1024 | 1792 |

| TMUs | 64 | 112 |

| Pixel Rate | 53.28 GPixel/s | 35.36 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 106.6 GTexel/s | 123.8 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 3.410 TFLOPS | 3.960 TFLOPS |

| FP16 | 6.820 TFLOPS (2:1) | 3.960 TFLOPS (1:1) |

| TDP | 23 W | 150 W |

| DirectX | 12 (12_1) | 12 (12_0) |

| Vulkan | 1.4 | 1.3 |

| Release Date | Not listed | 2017-06-04 |