AMD Radeon Pro 580 vs NVIDIA RTX A2000 Comparison

The NVIDIA RTX A2000 and AMD Radeon Pro 580 represent two distinct generations of workstation graphics, separated by four years of architectural evolution and targeting fundamentally different platforms. The RTX A2000 is a modern dual-slot PCIe card built on Samsung's 8nm process, designed for professional desktop workstations, while the Radeon Pro 580 is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) from AMD's GCN 4.0 era, intended for Apple Mac systems with portable device-dependent outputs. Benchmark data shows the RTX A2000 holding a commanding lead in every shared test, with an average benchmark score of 46,043 compared to the Radeon Pro 580's 40,318, a difference of roughly 14.2%. This analysis examines where each card excels, their architectural divergences, and the specific numbers that define their performance gap.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A2000 achieves an average benchmark score of 46,043, placing it at the 85th percentile of all GPUs, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580 scores 40,318 on average, placing it at the 82nd percentile.

Q: How do the two cards compare in Geekbench OpenCL performance?

A: The RTX A2000 scores 67,695 in Geekbench OpenCL, which is 76% higher than the Radeon Pro 580's score of 38,457. This is the largest performance delta between the two across all shared benchmarks.

Q: What is the difference in memory configuration?

A: The RTX A2000 features 6 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the Radeon Pro 580 has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus with 217.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU supports hardware ray tracing and tensor cores?

A: Only the NVIDIA RTX A2000 includes dedicated ray tracing cores (26) and tensor cores (104). The AMD Radeon Pro 580 has no RT cores and no tensor cores, reflecting its older GCN architecture.

Q: What are the power requirements for each card?

A: The RTX A2000 has a 70 W TDP with no power connectors and a suggested PSU of 250 W. The Radeon Pro 580 has a 185 W TDP, also with no power connectors, but no suggested PSU is listed.

Q: Which GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A2000 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, whereas the AMD Radeon Pro 580 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3.

Where Each One Wins

The performance landscape is decisively tilted toward the NVIDIA RTX A2000 in compute-heavy workloads. In the two shared benchmark tests — Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan — the RTX A2000 wins both, giving it a 2-0 record in head-to-head comparisons. The OpenCL result is particularly lopsided: the RTX A2000's 67,695 score versus 38,457 represents a 76% advantage, indicating that general-purpose GPU compute tasks such as rendering, simulation, and data processing will see substantial acceleration on the NVIDIA card. The Vulkan test shows a narrower but still decisive gap, with the RTX A2000 scoring 69,089 against 43,285, a 59.6% lead that reinforces its superiority in graphics API workloads.

The AMD Radeon Pro 580 has no benchmark wins to claim, but its strengths lie in specific hardware attributes rather than measured performance. It offers 8 GB of memory compared to the RTX A2000's 6 GB, which could be advantageous for very large datasets that exceed 6 GB, though the RTX A2000's higher bandwidth (288.0 GB/s versus 217.0 GB/s) partially mitigates this. The Radeon Pro 580 also has a higher texture rate at 172.8 GTexel/s versus 124.8 GTexel/s for the RTX A2000, suggesting it may handle texture-heavy workloads with more raw throughput. However, these advantages do not translate into benchmark victories, and the RTX A2000's architectural efficiency appears to overcome the Radeon Pro 580's raw resource counts.

Architecture Differences

The RTX A2000 is built on NVIDIA's Ampere architecture using the GA106 chip, fabricated on Samsung's 8nm process with 12,000 million transistors on a 276 mm² die. This yields a transistor density of 43.5 million per mm², a figure that reflects the modern node's efficiency. The Radeon Pro 580, in contrast, uses AMD's GCN 4.0 architecture with the Ellesmere chip, manufactured on GlobalFoundries' 14nm process. It packs 5,700 million transistors on a 232 mm² die, resulting in a significantly lower density of 24.6 million per mm². The process node advantage is stark: 8nm versus 14nm means the RTX A2000 can pack more than twice the transistors per area, enabling its higher feature set.

The compute architectures diverge fundamentally. The RTX A2000 includes 3,328 shading units, 104 TMUs, and 48 ROPs, alongside 26 dedicated RT cores and 104 tensor cores for ray tracing and AI acceleration. The Radeon Pro 580 has 2,304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 32 ROPs, with no RT or tensor cores. This means the RTX A2000 supports hardware-accelerated ray tracing and tensor-based operations, features entirely absent from the Radeon Pro 580. The shading unit count favors NVIDIA by 44%, but AMD counters with 38% more TMUs, creating a trade-off between pixel processing and texture throughput. The RTX A2000's pixel rate is 57.60 GPixel/s versus 38.40 GPixel/s for the Radeon Pro 580, a 50% advantage, while the Radeon Pro 580's texture rate of 172.8 GTexel/s exceeds the RTX A2000's 124.8 GTexel/s by 38%.

Both GPUs deliver FP32 and FP16 compute at a 1:1 ratio, but the absolute numbers favor NVIDIA. The RTX A2000 achieves 7.987 TFLOPS FP32, while the Radeon Pro 580 manages 5.530 TFLOPS, a difference of 44%. Memory technology also differs: the RTX A2000 uses GDDR6 at 12 Gbps effective on a 192-bit bus, while the Radeon Pro 580 uses GDDR5 at 6.8 Gbps effective on a 256-bit bus. The RTX A2000's bandwidth advantage (288.0 GB/s versus 217.0 GB/s) comes despite the narrower bus, thanks to faster memory clocks. The bus interface also differs, with the RTX A2000 supporting PCIe 4.0 x16 versus PCIe 3.0 x16 on the Radeon Pro 580, offering double the theoretical bandwidth for data transfers.

Specification Differences

The two cards diverge across nearly every specification field. The RTX A2000 has a base clock of 562 MHz and a boost clock of 1200 MHz, while the Radeon Pro 580 starts at 1100 MHz base and boosts to 1200 MHz. The memory clocks are 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) for the RTX A2000 and 1695 MHz (6.8 Gbps effective) for the Radeon Pro 580. Memory capacity favors AMD at 8 GB versus 6 GB, but the type differs (GDDR5 versus GDDR6) and the bus width is 256-bit versus 192-bit. Bandwidth, however, goes to NVIDIA at 288.0 GB/s versus 217.0 GB/s.

The TDP is a major differentiator: the RTX A2000 draws 70 W, while the Radeon Pro 580 draws 185 W, a 2.6x difference. The RTX A2000 is a dual-slot card measuring 167 mm in length and 69 mm in height, whereas the Radeon Pro 580 is an IGP with no listed dimensions and portable device-dependent display outputs. The RTX A2000 offers 4x mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, while the Radeon Pro 580 relies on the host device for display connectivity. The RTX A2000 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the Radeon Pro 580 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_0) and Vulkan 1.3. The RTX A2000 has a launch MSRP of 449 USD, while the Radeon Pro 580 has no launch MSRP listed. Both cards are end-of-life, with the RTX A2000 released on August 9, 2021, succeeding Quadro Turing and preceding Workstation Ada, while the Radeon Pro 580 was released on June 4, 2017, with no predecessor or successor listed.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head benchmark data contains two tests, and the NVIDIA RTX A2000 wins both decisively. In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX A2000 scores 67,695 against the Radeon Pro 580's 38,457, yielding a delta of 76%. This is the most significant performance gap in the comparison, indicating that compute workloads leveraging OpenCL will run nearly twice as fast on the RTX A2000. The Radeon Pro 580's score places it near the bottom of modern GPU performance, while the RTX A2000's score approaches that of much larger cards.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX A2000 again prevails with a score of 69,089 versus 43,285 for the Radeon Pro 580, a delta of 59.6%. While slightly narrower than the OpenCL gap, this still represents a substantial advantage for the RTX A2000 in Vulkan-based applications. The Radeon Pro 580's Vulkan score of 43,285 is actually higher than its OpenCL score, suggesting some relative strength in Vulkan, but it remains far behind the RTX A2000's Vulkan performance. The RTX A2000's nearest rivals include the NVIDIA RTX 5880 Ada Generation (0.2% higher) and Intel Arc A730M (1% higher), while the Radeon Pro 580 sits close to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (0.1% lower) and AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 (0.6% higher). These rival comparisons contextualize the two cards: the RTX A2000 competes with much newer hardware, while the Radeon Pro 580 is aligned with older professional and mainstream GPUs. The data clearly shows that in any shared workload, the RTX A2000 is the superior performer, with the only question being the magnitude of the win, which ranges from 59.6% to 76% depending on the API.