AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile Comparison

The Verdict

The data separates these two mobile GPUs into completely different performance classes. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile is the overwhelming choice for anyone needing serious compute or graphics horsepower in a laptop. Its average benchmark score of 25740 places it in the 71st percentile of all GPUs, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 sits at 23250, in the 68th percentile. That percentile gap looks modest, but the actual benchmark deltas are enormous.

The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile wins both recorded head-to-head tests decisively. In Geekbench OpenCL it scores 117866 versus 18268, a 545.2% advantage. In Geekbench Vulkan it scores 107502 versus 21832, a 392.4% lead. There is no scenario in the database where the Radeon Pro Vega 16 comes out ahead.

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 is an older, lower-power part from 2018 with 4 GB of HBM2 memory and a 75 W TDP. It is suited only to light workloads, basic display output, or legacy Mac applications that specifically benefit from its Metal API support, where it scores 29650 in Geekbench Metal. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile, with 16 GB of GDDR6, a 115 W TDP, and a 2022 release date, is the pick for modern gaming, 3D rendering, GPU compute, or any task where raw throughput matters. If the workload fits within the Vega 16's capabilities and the platform requires it, the AMD part remains serviceable, but the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile is the superior product by every measured metric.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile scores 25740 on average, which is 10.7% higher than the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16's 23250.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the head-to-head tests?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile leads by 545.2% in Geekbench OpenCL and by 392.4% in Geekbench Vulkan, winning both recorded head-to-head comparisons.

Q: Does the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 support any API that the NVIDIA card does not?

A: The AMD card supports Metal, scoring 29650 in Geekbench Metal. The database does not list a Metal benchmark result for the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile, so Metal is the AMD card's only distinct API advantage.

Q: What are the memory configurations of these two GPUs?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 512.0 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 has 4 GB of HBM2 on a 1024-bit bus with 307.2 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which GPU has the higher boost clock?

A: The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile boosts to 1260 MHz, while the Radeon Pro Vega 16 boosts to 1190 MHz. The AMD card has a slightly higher base clock at 815 MHz versus 810 MHz.

Q: Are both GPUs still in production?

A: No, both are listed as end-of-life. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile was released on January 24, 2022, and the Radeon Pro Vega 16 on November 13, 2018.

Architecture Differences

The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile uses NVIDIA's Ampere architecture on the GA103 chip, fabricated on an 8 nm process at Samsung. It packs 22,000 million transistors onto a 496 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 44.4M per mm². The architecture includes 7424 shading units, 232 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 58 RT cores, and 232 tensor cores. This is a full modern GPU design with dedicated hardware for ray tracing and AI-accelerated workloads. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

The Radeon Pro Vega 16 uses AMD's GCN 5.0 architecture on the Vega 12 chip, built on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. The database does not list its transistor count or die size. It has 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. It has no RT cores and no tensor cores. Its feature set is older: DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3. The GCN architecture predates AMD's RDNA designs and lacks dedicated ray tracing hardware.

The process node difference is significant. The 8 nm Samsung node used for the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile allows far higher transistor density than the 14 nm GlobalFoundries node of the Vega 16. That density advantage, combined with a much larger chip, explains the massive compute gap. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile also has dedicated RT and tensor cores, which the Vega 16 completely lacks, making the NVIDIA part the only one of the two capable of hardware-accelerated ray tracing or tensor-based AI workloads.

The Vega 16 does have one architectural advantage: its FP16 throughput is double its FP32 rate, listed at 4.874 TFLOPS versus 2.437 TFLOPS. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile runs FP16 at a 1:1 ratio with FP32, both at 18.71 TFLOPS. For workloads that can use packed FP16 math, the AMD card's 2:1 ratio is more efficient per shader, but the NVIDIA card's raw FP16 output is still nearly four times higher.

Specification Differences

The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile and Radeon Pro Vega 16 differ in nearly every major specification field. The NVIDIA card has a base clock of 810 MHz and a boost clock of 1260 MHz. The AMD card has a base clock of 815 MHz and a boost clock of 1190 MHz. The AMD part starts slightly higher but boosts lower.

Memory is a major differentiator. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, running at 2000 MHz with 16 Gbps effective speed, delivering 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 has 4 GB of HBM2 on a 1024-bit bus, running at 1200 MHz with 2.4 Gbps effective speed, delivering 307.2 GB/s. The NVIDIA card has four times the capacity and 66.7% more bandwidth, despite the AMD card's much wider bus.

Compute resources are heavily skewed toward NVIDIA. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile has 7424 shading units, 232 TMUs, and 96 ROPs, versus 1024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs for the Vega 16. The NVIDIA card also has 58 RT cores and 232 tensor cores; the AMD card has neither. Pixel rate is 121.0 GPixel/s versus 38.08 GPixel/s, and texture rate is 292.3 GTexel/s versus 76.16 GTexel/s. FP32 output is 18.71 TFLOPS versus 2.437 TFLOPS.

Power and interface also differ. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile has a 115 W TDP and a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 has a 75 W TDP, a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface, and is classified as an IGP (integrated graphics processor) in terms of slot width. Both are portable-device dependent for display outputs, and neither has a launch MSRP listed in the database.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The database records two direct head-to-head comparisons between these GPUs. Both are decisive wins for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Mobile.

In Geekbench OpenCL, the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile scores 117866 against the Radeon Pro Vega 16's 18268. That is a 545.2% delta. This is the largest single gap in the comparison. The OpenCL workload is compute-heavy, and the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile's 18.71 TFLOPS of FP32 throughput, combined with 232 tensor cores, simply overwhelms the Vega 16's 2.437 TFLOPS.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile scores 107502 against 21832, a 392.4% delta. Vulkan is a low-level graphics and compute API, and the NVIDIA card's Ampere architecture with hardware ray tracing support handles it far more efficiently than the older GCN 5.0 design.

There are also broader benchmark results that show where each card stands. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile has a PassMark G3D score of 19288, a PassMark GPU Compute score of 8471, and a PassMark G2D score of 818. Its DirectX-specific PassMark scores are 201 for DirectX 9, 164 for DirectX 11, 131 for DirectX 10, and 88 for DirectX 12. It also records 2869 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 has no PassMark results in the database, only its Geekbench Metal score of 29650, its Geekbench OpenCL score of 18268, and its Geekbench Vulkan score of 21832.

The average scores put the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile at 25740, which is 10.7% above the Vega 16's 23250. The nearest rivals to the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile include the AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (0.1% higher), the AMD FirePro D700 (0.4% lower), the AMD Radeon RX 6700M (0.4% higher), and the AMD FirePro W7100 (0.4% lower). The Vega 16's nearest rivals are the NVIDIA P106-100 (0% difference), the AMD Radeon RX 6600M (0.1% lower), the AMD Radeon R9 M290X (0.1% lower), and the AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700 (0.3% lower). These rival comparisons show that the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile sits in a bracket with desktop-class workstation cards, while the Vega 16 sits near older mainstream parts.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile wins every measured category where a direct comparison exists. It wins OpenCL compute by 545.2%, Vulkan by 392.4%, and has far higher pixel rate, texture rate, and FP32 throughput. It is the only card of the two with hardware ray tracing cores and tensor cores, making it the clear choice for modern DirectX 12 Ultimate titles, ray-traced games, AI inference, and GPU-accelerated rendering. Its 16 GB of GDDR6 memory and 512.0 GB/s bandwidth also make it suitable for large datasets, high-resolution textures, and machine learning workloads that exceed the Vega 16's 4 GB capacity.

The Radeon Pro Vega 16 has no benchmark wins in the database. Its only unique capability is Metal API support, where it scores 29650, and its 2:1 FP16 ratio, which doubles its FP16 throughput to 4.874 TFLOPS. The database does not list a Metal result for the RTX 3080 Ti Mobile, so for applications that require Metal, the Vega 16 is the only option of the two. Its 75 W TDP also makes it a lower-power part, suited to thin-and-light systems or Mac environments where power draw is constrained. Its 1024-bit HBM2 bus provides 307.2 GB/s of bandwidth despite the small 4 GB capacity, which helps bandwidth-sensitive workloads that fit within that memory limit.

In practical terms, the choice is simple. The RTX 3080 Ti Mobile is for anyone who needs performance: gamers, 3D artists, video editors, and compute users. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 is for anyone locked into a platform that requires Metal or that cannot accommodate the 115 W TDP of the NVIDIA card. The data does not support any other conclusion.