AMD Radeon Pro 580 vs Intel Arc A730M Comparison

FAQ

Q: How does the Intel Arc A730M compare to the AMD Radeon Pro 580 in average benchmark score?

A: The Intel Arc A730M averages 45,592 points across its recorded benchmarks, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580 averages 40,318 points. That places the Intel part roughly 13.1% higher overall, though each GPU lands in a similar percentile bracket: the Arc A730M sits at the 84th percentile of all GPUs, and the Radeon Pro 580 at the 82nd.

Q: Which GPU wins in OpenCL performance, and by how much?

A: The Intel Arc A730M dominates OpenCL with a score of 70,352 versus 38,457 for the AMD Radeon Pro 580. This is an 82.9% advantage for the Intel part — by far the largest single-benchmark gap in this comparison.

Q: Does the Radeon Pro 580 have any benchmark where it beats the Arc A730M?

A: No. In the head-to-head results, the Arc A730M wins both recorded tests: OpenCL (70,352 vs 38,457) and Vulkan (64,693 vs 43,285). The AMD card has no wins in the shared benchmark suite, though it does have a unique Metal score of 39,213 that the Intel part cannot match because it lacks a Metal result.

Q: How do the nearest rivals for each card compare?

A: The Arc A730M’s closest rival is the AMD Radeon Pro 5500 XT, which scores nearly identically at 45,384 (a 0.5% delta). The Radeon Pro 580’s nearest rival is the AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 at 40,063 (a 0.6% delta). Both cards sit within 1.9% of their immediate competitors, suggesting tight clustering in their respective performance tiers.

Q: What are the key architectural differences in process node and transistor count?

A: The Arc A730M uses TSMC’s 6 nm process with 21,700 million transistors on a 406 mm² die (53.4 million transistors per mm²). The Radeon Pro 580 uses GlobalFoundries’ 14 nm process with only 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die (24.6 million per mm²). The Intel chip has nearly four times the transistor count in a larger package.

Q: Which GPU supports newer graphics APIs?

A: The Intel Arc A730M supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3. Both cards support OpenGL 4.6. This gives Intel a clear advantage for modern rendering features.

Architecture Differences

The Intel Arc A730M is built on the Xe-HPG architecture, specifically the DG2-512 chip from the Alchemist generation (Arc 7 Mobile). This is a 6 nm TSMC part with 21,700 million transistors packed into a 406 mm² die. In contrast, the AMD Radeon Pro 580 uses the GCN 4.0 architecture on the Ellesmere chip, manufactured on a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process with 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die. The transistor density tells the story: 53.4 million per mm² for Intel versus 24.6 million for AMD — a 2.2x density advantage that reflects the generational gap in process technology.

The compute resources differ substantially. The Arc A730M fields 3,072 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units. The Radeon Pro 580 counters with 2,304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and just 32 ROPs. Intel also includes 24 dedicated ray tracing cores, while AMD’s GCN 4.0 design has no ray tracing hardware at all. Neither card lists tensor cores, so AI acceleration is not a distinguishing feature here.

Memory architecture diverges sharply. The Arc A730M uses 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, delivering 336.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The Radeon Pro 580 uses 8 GB of GDDR5 on a wider 256-bit bus, but achieves only 217.0 GB/s due to slower memory clocks (1695 MHz versus 1750 MHz). The Intel part has 55% more bandwidth despite a narrower bus, thanks to the faster memory type.

Clock speeds show another gap. The Arc A730M boosts to 2050 MHz from a 1100 MHz base, while the Radeon Pro 580 boosts to just 1200 MHz from the same 1100 MHz base. This 850 MHz boost advantage, combined with the higher core count, explains the massive throughput differences: Intel’s FP32 performance is 12.60 TFLOPS versus 5.530 TFLOPS for AMD — a 2.3x gap. The pixel rate is similarly lopsided at 196.8 GPixel/s versus 38.40 GPixel/s, and texture rate comes in at 393.6 GTexel/s versus 172.8 GTexel/s.

Power consumption inverts the performance relationship. The Arc A730M is rated at 80 W TDP, while the Radeon Pro 580 draws 185 W. This is a 105 W difference in favor of Intel, meaning the newer part delivers far more performance per watt. The Radeon Pro 580 also relies on PCIe 3.0 x16, whereas the Arc A730M uses PCIe 4.0 x16, doubling the available bus bandwidth for data transfers.

The Verdict

The data points to a clear overall winner: the Intel Arc A730M outperforms the AMD Radeon Pro 580 in every shared benchmark, with a 49.5% lead in Vulkan and an 82.9% lead in OpenCL. The average benchmark scores reinforce this — 45,592 versus 40,318. For anyone choosing between these two for general compute or graphics workloads, the Arc A730M is the stronger option on raw performance.

However, the Radeon Pro 580 has its own niche. Its 185 W TDP suggests it was designed for sustained professional workloads in a desktop-class mobile context, and its unique Metal benchmark score of 39,213 indicates it has macOS ecosystem support that the Intel part simply cannot offer. If the target platform is Apple-based or requires Metal API compatibility, the Radeon Pro 580 becomes the only viable choice despite its lower raw numbers.

The Arc A730M’s 80 W TDP makes it dramatically more power-efficient — less than half the power draw with more than double the FP32 throughput. This suggests Intel’s architecture is far more modern and better suited to thermally constrained environments. The ray tracing cores and DirectX 12 Ultimate support further tilt the balance toward Intel for gaming and real-time rendering workloads.

For professional users who prioritize absolute performance, modern API support, and efficiency, the Intel Arc A730M is the data-backed recommendation. For legacy macOS deployments or workloads that specifically require Metal or GCN-era optimizations, the Radeon Pro 580 remains relevant despite its age. The verdict is not about which card is "better" in the abstract — it is about matching the silicon to the software ecosystem.

Specification Differences

| Specification | Intel Arc A730M | AMD Radeon Pro 580 |

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

| Chip | DG2-512 | Ellesmere |

| Architecture | Xe-HPG | GCN 4.0 |

| Process Node | 6 nm | 14 nm |

| Foundry | TSMC | GlobalFoundries |

| Transistors | 21,700 million | 5,700 million |

| Die Size | 406 mm² | 232 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 53.4M / mm² | 24.6M / mm² |

| Boost Clock | 2050 MHz | 1200 MHz |

| Memory Clock | 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) | 1695 MHz (6.8 Gbps effective) |

| Memory Size | 12 GB | 8 GB |

| Memory Type | GDDR6 | GDDR5 |

| Memory Bus | 192 bit | 256 bit |

| Memory Bandwidth | 336.0 GB/s | 217.0 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 3072 | 2304 |

| TMUs | 192 | 144 |

| ROPs | 96 | 32 |

| RT Cores | 24 | None |

| Pixel Rate | 196.8 GPixel/s | 38.40 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 393.6 GTexel/s | 172.8 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 12.60 TFLOPS | 5.530 TFLOPS |

| FP16 | 25.19 TFLOPS (2:1) | 5.530 TFLOPS (1:1) |

| TDP | 80 W | 185 W |

| Bus Interface | PCIe 4.0 x16 | PCIe 3.0 x16 |

| DirectX | 12 Ultimate (12_2) | 12 (12_0) |

| Vulkan | 1.4 | 1.3 |

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

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The OpenCL test is the most starkly one-sided result in this comparison. The Intel Arc A730M scores 70,352, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580 manages only 38,457. That is an 82.9% delta — the Intel part nearly doubles the AMD card’s output. This gap aligns with the compute specifications: the Arc A730M has 3,072 shading units operating at a 2050 MHz boost, compared to 2,304 shading units at 1200 MHz for the Radeon Pro 580. OpenCL workloads that scale with raw shader throughput will see roughly proportional gains.

The Vulkan test narrows the gap but still favors Intel decisively. The Arc A730M scores 64,693 versus 43,285 for the Radeon Pro 580, a 49.5% advantage. The smaller delta in Vulkan compared to OpenCL suggests that AMD’s GCN architecture handles Vulkan’s explicit API model relatively better than it does OpenCL, possibly due to driver maturity or the API’s lower-level access patterns. Still, the Intel part wins by a wide margin.

It is worth remembering the Radeon Pro 580 has a Metal benchmark score of 39,213 that has no Intel counterpart in the data. This is not a head-to-head comparison because the Arc A730M lacks a Metal result, but it provides a reference point for the AMD card’s performance in Apple’s graphics API. In the shared tests, the Arc A730M wins 2-0, with winsA at 2 and winsB at 0.

The average benchmark scores — 45,592 for Intel versus 40,318 for AMD — reflect a 13.1% overall gap that is smaller than the individual test deltas. This is because the averages include different benchmark mixes: Intel’s average includes a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,732, while AMD’s includes the Metal score. The head-to-head tests are the cleaner apples-to-apples comparison, and they show Intel’s dominance.

Where Each One Wins

Intel Arc A730M wins in raw compute and modern rendering. The 82.9% OpenCL lead and 49.5% Vulkan lead are unambiguous. The FP32 throughput of 12.60 TFLOPS versus 5.530 TFLOPS means any workload that is shader-bound — physics simulations, image processing, machine learning inference — will complete substantially faster on the Intel part. The 24 ray tracing cores give it a feature that the Radeon Pro 580 simply does not have, making it the only choice for hardware-accelerated ray tracing in DirectX 12 Ultimate titles. The 12 GB memory capacity and 336.0 GB/s bandwidth also support larger datasets and textures than the Radeon Pro 580’s 8 GB and 217.0 GB/s.

AMD Radeon Pro 580 wins in power-draw tolerance and ecosystem compatibility. At 185 W TDP, this card was clearly designed for systems that can handle significant heat and power delivery — likely larger mobile workstations or desktop-replacement laptops. The PCIe 3.0 interface, while older, is perfectly adequate for many professional workloads. The unique Metal benchmark score indicates macOS driver support that the Intel Arc A730M cannot match, making the Radeon Pro 580 the only option for Hackintosh builds or legacy Mac Pro upgrades. Its 256-bit memory bus, while paired with slower GDDR5, may also offer better latency characteristics in certain access patterns, though the bandwidth deficit of 119 GB/s is hard to overcome.

The efficiency argument belongs entirely to Intel. The Arc A730M delivers 2.3x the FP32 performance at 43% of the power draw (80 W versus 185 W). This suggests that in thermally constrained environments — thin laptops, compact workstations — the Intel part can sustain higher performance without throttling. The Radeon Pro 580’s 185 W budget would require substantially more robust cooling solutions.

For specific use cases: The Arc A730M is the clear pick for gaming, real-time 3D rendering, compute-heavy professional applications, and any workload that benefits from ray tracing or DirectX 12 Ultimate features. The Radeon Pro 580 is the only choice for macOS environments, and it retains relevance for legacy GCN-optimized software that may not have been updated for Intel’s architecture. The Radeon Pro 580’s 2017 release date also means it has a longer track record in professional deployments, which could matter for organizations with validated software stacks.