AMD Radeon Pro 580 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Comparison

The Verdict

The data positions these two cards as near-statistical twins in overall average score, yet they could hardly be more different in era and intent. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 and AMD Radeon Pro 580 both land at the 82nd percentile among all GPUs, and their average benchmark scores sit within 0.1% of each other — 40377 versus 40318. That headline parity, however, masks a generation gap. The RTX 5070 is the clear pick for anyone running modern DirectX 12 or Vulkan workloads, where it delivers 349% and 313.4% advantages respectively over the Radeon Pro 580 in the only two head-to-head tests available. The Radeon Pro 580, an end-of-life part from 2017, only appears in Metal, OpenCL, and Vulkan tests, and it loses decisively in the two shared disciplines. For a current system, the RTX 5070 is the only rational choice unless a workflow is locked to AMD's Metal implementation on macOS hardware, where the Radeon's 39213 Metal score is the sole data point in its favor. The RTX 5070 wins both head-to-head matchups; the Radeon Pro 580 wins none.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gulf between these two is enormous, reflecting nearly eight years of silicon evolution. The RTX 5070 uses NVIDIA's Blackwell 2.0 architecture on a 5 nm TSMC process, while the Radeon Pro 580 uses AMD's GCN 4.0 architecture on a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process. Transistor counts tell the story: the RTX 5070 packs 31,100 million transistors on a 263 mm² die, yielding a density of 118.3M per mm². The Radeon Pro 580 has just 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die, a density of 24.6M per mm². That is a 5.5x transistor advantage for the NVIDIA chip on a comparable die area.

Core configurations diverge sharply. The RTX 5070 fields 6144 shading units, 192 TMUs, 80 ROPs, 48 RT cores, and 192 tensor cores. The Radeon Pro 580 has 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 32 ROPs — no dedicated RT or tensor cores at all. Clock speeds also favor NVIDIA: 2325 MHz base and 2512 MHz boost versus 1100 MHz base and 1200 MHz boost for AMD. The result is a compute gap that is not close: the RTX 5070 delivers 30.87 TFLOPS FP32 and FP16 (1:1), while the Radeon Pro 580 delivers 5.530 TFLOPS in both. Pixel rate is 201.0 GPixel/s versus 38.40 GPixel/s, and texture rate is 482.3 GTexel/s versus 172.8 GTexel/s.

Memory is another differentiator. The RTX 5070 has 12 GB of GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus with 672.0 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon Pro 580 has 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 217.0 GB/s bandwidth. The older card's wider bus is irrelevant given the massive bandwidth deficit. Interface and power also differ: PCIe 5.0 x16 versus PCIe 3.0 x16, 250 W TDP with a 16-pin connector and 600 W suggested PSU versus 185 W with no power connectors and an IGP slot width. The Radeon Pro 580 is marked "Portable Device Dependent" for display outputs, while the RTX 5070 offers 1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DisplayPort 2.1b. API support favors NVIDIA as well: DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4 versus DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Where Each One Wins

Based strictly on benchmark results, the RTX 5070 wins every shared test by a landslide, and the Radeon Pro 580's only unique strength is its Metal score. The RTX 5070's two head-to-head victories come in Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan, with deltas of 349% and 313.4% respectively. Those are not marginal wins; they are generational blowouts. The RTX 5070 also leads in every PassMark category, though those tests are not part of the head-to-head set: G3D at 29137, GPU compute at 15787, G2D at 1305, DirectX 9 at 320, DirectX 11 at 277, DirectX 10 at 180, and DirectX 12 at 108. It also posts a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 5077.

The Radeon Pro 580's single claim to relevance is its Geekbench Metal score of 39213, a test the RTX 5070 does not appear in. For macOS-centric workloads that rely on Metal, the AMD card has at least a measurable baseline. But in OpenCL, where both are tested, the RTX 5070 scores 172660 versus 38457 — a 349% lead. In Vulkan, the RTX 5070 scores 178923 versus 43285, a 313.4% lead. There is no scenario in the data where the Radeon Pro 580 wins a shared benchmark. Its average score of 40318 is carried entirely by its Metal result, which suggests the card's usefulness is confined to Apple ecosystem environments.

FAQ

Q: How do the average benchmark scores compare?

A: The RTX 5070 has an average benchmark score of 40377, while the Radeon Pro 580 scores 40318. The delta is 0.1%, meaning they are effectively tied on average despite the massive architectural differences.

Q: Which card wins in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The RTX 5070 wins decisively with a score of 172660 versus 38457 for the Radeon Pro 580, a delta of 349%.

Q: Does the Radeon Pro 580 have any ray tracing or tensor cores?

A: No. The Radeon Pro 580 has null values for both RT cores and tensor cores. The RTX 5070 has 48 RT cores and 192 tensor cores.

Q: What memory configurations do the two cards use?

A: The RTX 5070 has 12 GB of GDDR7 on a 192-bit bus with 672.0 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon Pro 580 has 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus with 217.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: What is the production status of each card?

A: The RTX 5070 is marked "Active" and was released on March 3, 2025. The Radeon Pro 580 is marked "End-of-life" and was released on June 4, 2017.

Q: Which card has higher FP32 compute performance?

A: The RTX 5070 delivers 30.87 TFLOPS FP32, while the Radeon Pro 580 delivers 5.530 TFLOPS FP32 — a 5.6x difference in favor of NVIDIA.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only two benchmarks where both cards have recorded scores are Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, and both tell the same story with different magnitudes. In OpenCL, the RTX 5070 scores 172660 against the Radeon Pro 580's 38457. That is a delta of 349% — the NVIDIA card is roughly 4.5x faster. The RTX 5070's raw compute advantage of 30.87 TFLOPS versus 5.530 TFLOPS explains this gap almost entirely. The Radeon Pro 580's 2304 shading units at 1200 MHz boost cannot compete with 6144 shading units at 2512 MHz boost.

In Vulkan, the RTX 5070 scores 178923 versus 43285 for the Radeon Pro 580, a delta of 313.4%. The RTX 5070's Vulkan 1.4 support and newer architecture likely contribute to the slightly smaller but still enormous margin. The Radeon Pro 580's Vulkan 1.3 support and GCN 4.0 design are simply outclassed. Notably, the RTX 5070's Vulkan score is higher than its OpenCL score, while the Radeon Pro 580's Vulkan score is also higher than its OpenCL score — but the absolute gaps remain vast.

The overall average scores nearly match because the Radeon Pro 580's Geekbench Metal result of 39213 is not part of the head-to-head set, and it boosts the AMD card's average to 40318. The RTX 5070's average of 40377 includes its 3DMark Steel Nomad score of 5077, all five PassMark tests, and both Geekbench compute tests. The delta of 0.1% between the two averages is remarkable given the architectural chasm, but it is an artifact of different test suites rather than true performance parity. In any shared workload, the RTX 5070 wins by factors of three to four. The Radeon Pro 580's only competitive data point is its Metal score, which has no direct RTX 5070 counterpart in the dataset.