AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 vs NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile Comparison

AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 and NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile represent two very different generations of mobile graphics, and the benchmark data leaves no doubt about the hierarchy between them. The NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile is decisively faster in every directly comparable test, with the AMD part trailing by margins that range from 70% to over 81% in compute workloads. However, the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 holds a notable advantage in its average benchmark score percentile, ranking in the 68th percentile of all GPUs compared to the RTX A4000 Mobile’s 66th percentile, a quirk driven by the different benchmark suites each card was tested with.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The most striking contrast appears in the Geekbench OpenCL test, where the RTX A4000 Mobile delivers a score of 97,178 against the Radeon Pro Vega 16’s 18,268. That is a delta of -81.2% from the AMD card’s perspective, meaning the NVIDIA solution is roughly 4.3 times faster in raw OpenCL compute throughput. This is not a close contest; it is a generational gap made visible in a single number. The RTX A4000 Mobile’s 5,120 shading units, 160 texture mapping units, and 80 render output units simply overwhelm the Radeon Pro Vega 16’s 1,024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs.

The Vulkan results tell a similar story, though with a slightly narrower margin. The RTX A4000 Mobile scores 73,002 in Geekbench Vulkan, while the Radeon Pro Vega 16 manages 21,832, a delta of -70.1%. Even at its best relative showing, the AMD GPU still trails by more than two-thirds. This disparity in Vulkan performance is particularly telling because both cards support modern API versions — the Radeon Pro Vega 16 lists Vulkan 1.3 support while the RTX A4000 Mobile supports Vulkan 1.4 — yet the execution resources are so lopsided that API maturity cannot compensate for raw hardware throughput.

It is notably the head-to-head data only includes two tests, and the AMD card wins zero of them. The RTX A4000 Mobile wins both, with an average win margin that is not calculated but is clearly dominated by the OpenCL result. The Radeon Pro Vega 16’s own benchmark suite includes a Geekbench Metal score of 29,650, but no comparable Metal result exists for the NVIDIA card, so that number cannot be used for direct comparison. Similarly, the RTX A4000 Mobile has a suite of Passmark scores — including 14,796 in G3D and 6,394 in GPU compute — that have no AMD counterpart in the provided data.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16 has an average benchmark score of 23,250, which is higher than the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile’s average of 21,379. This is despite the NVIDIA card winning every head-to-head test, because the averages are computed across different benchmark sets that are not directly comparable.

Q: How large is the performance gap in OpenCL?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile scores 97,178 in Geekbench OpenCL versus 18,268 for the Radeon Pro Vega 16, a delta of -81.2% from the AMD card’s perspective. This means the NVIDIA GPU delivers over four times the OpenCL performance.

Q: Does the Radeon Pro Vega 16 have any API advantage?

A: No. The AMD card supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, while the RTX A4000 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The NVIDIA card has the more advanced DirectX and Vulkan feature sets.

Q: What is the transistor density difference?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile has a transistor density of 44.4 million transistors per square millimeter, while the Radeon Pro Vega 16 does not have a listed transistor density figure in the data.

Q: Which GPU has more memory bandwidth?

A: The RTX A4000 Mobile has 384.0 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is higher than the Radeon Pro Vega 16’s 307.2 GB/s. The NVIDIA card also has double the memory capacity at 8 GB versus 4 GB.

Q: Are both GPUs still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life products. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 was released on November 13, 2018, and the RTX A4000 Mobile was released on April 11, 2021.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile wins in every directly comparable benchmark scenario. Its dominance in OpenCL and Vulkan makes it the clear choice for any workload that leverages those APIs, which covers most general-purpose GPU compute tasks, machine learning inference, and modern game engines that use Vulkan. The 5120 shading units provide massive parallel throughput for shader-heavy applications, and the 40 RT cores plus 160 tensor cores give it hardware acceleration for ray tracing and AI workloads that the AMD card simply cannot match — the Radeon Pro Vega 16 has no RT or tensor core counts listed at all.

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 16’s only wins come from its average benchmark score (23,250 vs. 21,379) and its percentile ranking (68th vs. 66th). This is a statistical artifact of the benchmark selection rather than a real performance advantage, but it does mean that in a database-wide comparison of all GPUs, the AMD card sits slightly higher relative to its peers. For a user running Metal-based applications on macOS, the Radeon Pro Vega 16’s Metal score of 29,650 is the only data point available for that API, making it a relevant option in Apple-centric workflows even though no NVIDIA comparison exists.

For power-constrained environments, the Radeon Pro Vega 16 has a 75 W TDP versus 115 W for the RTX A4000 Mobile. That 40 W difference could matter in thin-and-light chassis where thermal headroom is limited, though the performance penalty is severe. The AMD card is also an integrated GPU (IGP) form factor, while the RTX A4000 Mobile lists no slot width, implying it is a discrete mobile solution.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ on nearly every core specification. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 uses 4 GB of HBM2 memory on a 1024-bit bus, while the RTX A4000 Mobile uses 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus. Despite the narrower bus, the NVIDIA card achieves higher bandwidth (384.0 GB/s vs. 307.2 GB/s) due to faster memory clocks: 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) versus 1200 MHz (2.4 Gbps effective). The RTX A4000 Mobile’s boost clock is 1680 MHz versus 1190 MHz for the AMD card, and its base clock is 1140 MHz versus 815 MHz.

The compute resource gap is enormous. The RTX A4000 Mobile has 5,120 shading units, 160 TMUs, and 80 ROPs, while the Radeon Pro Vega 16 has 1,024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. Pixel rate favors the NVIDIA card at 134.4 GPixel/s versus 38.08 GPixel/s, and texture rate is 268.8 GTexel/s versus 76.16 GTexel/s. FP32 performance is 17.20 TFLOPS for the RTX A4000 Mobile versus 2.437 TFLOPS for the Radeon Pro Vega 16, a 7x difference. FP16 performance is 17.20 TFLOPS (1:1) for NVIDIA versus 4.874 TFLOPS (2:1) for AMD.

The RTX A4000 Mobile also lists 40 RT cores and 160 tensor cores, while the Radeon Pro Vega 16 lists none. The bus interface differs: PCIe 4.0 x16 for NVIDIA versus PCIe 3.0 x16 for AMD. Power connectors are listed as “None” for the RTX A4000 Mobile, while the AMD card has no power connector data.

Architecture Differences

The fundamental architecture gap is generational. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 is built on GCN 5.0, AMD’s Graphics Core Next architecture, using a 14 nm process from GlobalFoundries. It has 1,024 shading units arranged in a Vega 12 chip that was designed for the Radeon Pro Mac series. The RTX A4000 Mobile uses NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture on an 8 nm Samsung process, with a GA104 chip that contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 44.4 million per square millimeter.

The memory technologies reflect the same generational split: HBM2 on the AMD side versus GDDR6 on the NVIDIA side. HBM2 offers a very wide 1024-bit interface but lower clocks, while GDDR6 uses a narrower 256-bit bus at much higher effective speeds. The RTX A4000 Mobile’s transistor count is not listed for the Radeon Pro Vega 16, but the 14 nm process versus 8 nm process difference alone explains much of the performance gap.

Feature support diverges sharply. The RTX A4000 Mobile includes dedicated RT cores for ray tracing and tensor cores for AI acceleration, which are absent from the AMD card’s spec sheet. The DirectX support also differs: 12 Ultimate (12_2) for NVIDIA versus 12 (12_1) for AMD, meaning the NVIDIA card supports the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set including hardware ray tracing and mesh shaders. Vulkan support is 1.4 for NVIDIA versus 1.3 for AMD. Both support OpenGL 4.6. The RTX A4000 Mobile’s predecessor is listed as Quadro Turing-M and its successor as Ada-MW, while the Radeon Pro Vega 16 has no listed predecessor or successor.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA RTX A4000 Mobile is the superior GPU for any workload that uses OpenCL or Vulkan. In OpenCL, it outperforms the Radeon Pro Vega 16 by 81.2%, and in Vulkan, it leads by 70.1%. The RTX A4000 Mobile also offers double the memory (8 GB vs. 4 GB), higher bandwidth (384.0 GB/s vs. 307.2 GB/s), more than double the pixel rate (134.4 GPixel/s vs. 38.08 GPixel/s), and 7x the FP32 throughput (17.20 TFLOPS vs. 2.437 TFLOPS). For professionals running compute-heavy applications, 3D rendering, or any modern game engine, the choice is clearly the RTX A4000 Mobile.

The Radeon Pro Vega 16 retains two narrow advantages. First, its 75 W TDP makes it more suitable for power-constrained laptops, though the performance trade-off is severe. Second, its 68th percentile ranking and higher average benchmark score (23,250 vs. 21,379) suggest that in the broader database context, it punches above its weight relative to the full GPU landscape. Additionally, its Metal score of 29,650 is the only Metal benchmark available, making it the only option in this comparison for macOS Metal workloads.

Ultimately, the RTX A4000 Mobile is the verdict for anyone who needs performance. The Radeon Pro Vega 16 is a legacy part from 2018 that, in 2021 terms, is outclassed by a factor of four or more in the tests that matter. Pick the RTX A4000 Mobile for compute, graphics, and future-proofing; pick the Radeon Pro Vega 16 only if your workflow is exclusively Metal-based or if power consumption is the absolute priority and you can accept 70-80% lower performance. The data does not support any other conclusion.