AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 vs Intel Arc B580 Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 and Intel Arc B580 occupy drastically different corners of the GPU market, separated by six years of architectural evolution and a massive shift in performance expectations. The data shows a 2018-era mobile-class chip facing off against a 2024 desktop discrete card, with the Arc B580 delivering roughly 4–5× the raw compute throughput in shared benchmarks, yet both cards surprisingly land at the 68th percentile among all GPUs, highlighting how benchmark averages can mask generational gaps.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 posts an average benchmark score of 23,250, while the Intel Arc B580 scores 23,021. The AMD card edges ahead by roughly 1%, despite the Intel part winning both head-to-head tests in the shared benchmark suite.

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

A: The Intel Arc B580 scores 92,821 in Geekbench OpenCL, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 scores 18,268. This represents an 80.3% delta in favor of Intel, making it the single largest performance gap recorded between the two cards.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference between the two cards?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 uses 4 GB of HBM2 with a 1024-bit bus and 307.2 GB/s bandwidth. The Intel Arc B580 uses 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, delivering 456.0 GB/s bandwidth — 48% more memory capacity and 48% higher bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has a higher pixel fill rate?

A: The Intel Arc B580 achieves 213.6 GPixel/s, compared to the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16's 38.08 GPixel/s. Intel's card delivers roughly 5.6× the pixel throughput, a direct result of its 80 ROPs versus AMD's 32 ROPs.

Q: Are both cards in the same performance percentile?

A: Yes, both the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 and Intel Arc B580 are listed at the 68th percentile versus all GPUs. This places them in the same overall performance tier despite their radically different architectures and specifications.

Q: What API support differences exist between the two?

A: The AMD card supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3. The Intel card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, adding hardware ray tracing support with 20 dedicated RT cores.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs spans two distinct design philosophies. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 uses the GCN 5.0 architecture on a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process, built around the Vega 12 chip. This is a mobile-first integrated graphics processor (IGP) design from 2018, with 1024 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. It offers no ray tracing cores and no dedicated tensor hardware, relying on a purely compute-oriented design.

The Intel Arc B580, by contrast, uses the Xe2-HPG architecture on a 5 nm TSMC process, built around the BMG-G21 chip. This is a desktop discrete GPU from the Battlemage generation, featuring 2,560 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 80 ROPs. It includes 20 ray tracing cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing that the AMD part completely lacks. The transistor count alone tells the story: the Intel chip packs 19,600 million transistors on a 272 mm² die, with a density of 72.1M transistors per mm².

The cache and memory hierarchy differ fundamentally as well. AMD uses 4 GB of HBM2 on a 1024-bit interface, delivering 307.2 GB/s of bandwidth. Intel uses 12 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit interface, delivering 456.0 GB/s. The AMD card's HBM2 provides a much wider bus, but the Intel card compensates with faster GDDR6 memory and triple the capacity. Clock speeds also diverge sharply: the AMD card runs at 815 MHz base and 1190 MHz boost, while the Intel card runs at 2670 MHz for both base and boost.

The process node advantage is significant. TSMC's 5 nm process versus GlobalFoundries' 14 nm node represents roughly three generations of lithography improvement. This explains how Intel achieves 5.6× the FP32 throughput (13.67 TFLOPS vs 2.437 TFLOPS) and 5.6× the texture fill rate (427.2 GTexel/s vs 76.16 GTexel/s) while maintaining a reasonable 190 W TDP versus AMD's 75 W TDP.

The Verdict

The data paints a clear picture for different use cases. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 is a legacy mobile component, end-of-life since its 2018 release, designed for portable devices with an IGP form factor and 75 W power envelope. Its 2.437 TFLOPS of FP32 compute and 4 GB of HBM2 memory suit it for basic graphics tasks and light compute workloads in thin-and-light laptops from its era.

The Intel Arc B580 is the clear performance winner for anyone needing modern gaming or compute capability. Its 13.67 TFLOPS FP32 performance represents a 5.6× advantage over AMD, its 12 GB of GDDR6 memory provides 48% more bandwidth and 3× the capacity, and its 20 RT cores enable ray tracing that the AMD card cannot perform at all. The DirectX 12 Ultimate support and Vulkan 1.4 compliance make it a future-proof choice for current-generation games.

However, the average benchmark scores tell a more nuanced story. The AMD card's 23,250 average score actually edges out Intel's 23,021, a 1% difference. This suggests that in the broader benchmark database, the AMD card's strengths in certain legacy workloads keep it competitive. But the head-to-head data shows Intel winning both Geekbench tests decisively — by 80.3% in OpenCL and 80.1% in Vulkan. For modern API workloads, Intel is overwhelmingly faster.

The pick depends entirely on context. For a legacy system requiring a low-power IGP with HBM2 memory characteristics, the AMD part remains a functional choice. For any new build requiring contemporary gaming, ray tracing, or compute performance, the Intel Arc B580 is the only rational selection from this data.

Specification Differences

| Specification | AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 | Intel Arc B580 |

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

| Architecture | GCN 5.0 | Xe2-HPG |

| Process Node | 14 nm | 5 nm |

| Foundry | GlobalFoundries | TSMC |

| Transistors | Not listed | 19,600 million |

| Die Size | Not listed | 272 mm² |

| Base Clock | 815 MHz | 2670 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 1190 MHz | 2670 MHz |

| Memory Size | 4 GB | 12 GB |

| Memory Type | HBM2 | GDDR6 |

| Memory Bus | 1024 bit | 192 bit |

| Memory Bandwidth | 307.2 GB/s | 456.0 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 1024 | 2560 |

| TMUs | 64 | 160 |

| ROPs | 32 | 80 |

| RT Cores | None | 20 |

| Pixel Rate | 38.08 GPixel/s | 213.6 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 76.16 GTexel/s | 427.2 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 2.437 TFLOPS | 13.67 TFLOPS |

| FP16 | 4.874 TFLOPS (2:1) | 27.34 TFLOPS (2:1) |

| TDP | 75 W | 190 W |

| Slot Width | IGP | Dual-slot |

| Power Connector | None | 1x 8-pin |

| Bus Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x8 |

| DirectX | 12 (12_1) | 12 Ultimate (12_2) |

| Vulkan | 1.3 | 1.4 |

| Production Status | End-of-life | Active |

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head data contains two benchmark comparisons, and the Intel Arc B580 dominates both. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Intel card scores 92,821 against AMD's 18,268, a delta of -80.3% from AMD's perspective. This means the AMD card delivers less than 20% of Intel's OpenCL performance. The gap translates to real-world implications for compute workloads using OpenCL, where Intel's 5 nm node and 2,560 shading units provide overwhelming parallel throughput.

The Geekbench Vulkan result is similarly lopsided. The Intel Arc B580 scores 109,672, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 scores 21,832, a delta of -80.1%. This near-identical percentage gap suggests the performance difference is consistent across different compute APIs, pointing to a fundamental architectural superiority rather than API-specific optimization. Intel's Vulkan 1.4 support and modern Xe2-HPG design simply outclass AMD's GCN 5.0 implementation.

Beyond these head-to-head results, the broader benchmark suites available for each card reinforce the pattern. The Intel Arc B580's Passmark G3D score of 15,748 and GPU compute score of 7,729 demonstrate strong general 3D performance. Its DirectX 9 score of 183 versus DirectX 11 score of 128 shows interesting scaling, while AMD's Geekbench Metal score of 29,650 indicates its heritage as a Mac-oriented part with Apple's Metal API optimization.

The wins tally confirms the verdict: Intel wins 2, AMD wins 0. The only reason AMD's average benchmark score remains competitive is the inclusion of its Metal benchmark and different test weighting, but in shared workloads, the Arc B580 is categorically superior. The 68th percentile ranking for both cards is a statistical artifact of AMD's specialized Mac benchmarks inflating its average, masking the 5.6× FP32 advantage Intel holds in every compute metric.