AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 vs Intel Arc A550M Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 56 and the Intel Arc A550M are two professionally-oriented GPUs separated by a wide gulf in design philosophy, yet their benchmark scores land within striking distance of each other in the database rankings. The recorded data shows the Vega 56 sitting at the 89th percentile of all measured GPUs with an average benchmark score of 63693, while the Arc A550M occupies the 86th percentile with an average of 49737. That three-point percentile gap translates into a decisive advantage for the AMD card in the two head-to-head tests where both parts have recorded results, but the underlying silicon tells a more complicated story of an older, power-hungry professional card against a newer, far more efficient mobile design.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in the recorded benchmarks?

A: The Radeon Pro Vega 56 wins both shared tests. It leads the geekbench_opencl contest 61930 to 49894, a 24.1 percent margin, and the geekbench_vulkan contest 66004 to 49580, a 33.1 percent margin.

Q: How do the two compare in compute throughput?

A: The Vega 56 delivers 8.960 TFLOPS of FP32 against 8.397 TFLOPS for the Arc A550M. FP16 performance follows the same 2:1 ratio on both parts, at 17.92 TFLOPS for AMD and 16.79 TFLOPS for Intel.

Q: Which has more memory bandwidth?

A: The Vega 56, by a wide margin. Its HBM2 memory provides 402.4 GB/s across a 2048-bit bus, while the Arc A550M's GDDR6 provides 224.0 GB/s across a 128-bit bus. Both carry 8 GB of memory.

Q: How large is the power difference?

A: The Vega 56 has a TDP of 210 W. The Arc A550M has a TDP of 60 W. The Intel part is designed for mobile environments where that difference is decisive.

Q: Do either of these GPUs support ray tracing?

A: Only the Arc A550M. It has 16 RT cores. The Vega 56 has no RT cores listed in the database, consistent with its older GCN 5.0 architecture.

Q: Are these products still in production?

A: No. The database lists both as end-of-life. The Vega 56 carries a release date of August 13, 2017; no release date is recorded for the Arc A550M.

Architecture Differences

The architectural contrast between these two parts spans nearly a full decade of semiconductor progress. The Vega 56 is built on the Vega 10 chip using GCN 5.0 architecture, fabricated at GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm process. It packs 12,500 million transistors into a 495 mm² die, working out to a transistor density of 25.3M per square millimeter. The Arc A550M uses the DG2-512 chip on Intel's Xe-HPG architecture, fabricated at TSMC on a 6 nm process. Despite the smaller process, its die is only modestly smaller at 406 mm², but it holds far more circuitry: 21,700 million transistors, giving a density of 53.4M per square millimeter, more than double the Vega 56's figure.

That density advantage is visible in the feature set. The Arc A550M includes 16 dedicated RT cores for hardware ray tracing and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate with feature level 12_2, alongside Vulkan 1.4. The Vega 56 tops out at DirectX 12 with feature level 12_1 and Vulkan 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6. On the API front, the Intel card is the more modern platform.

Clocking strategies diverge sharply. The Vega 56 runs a base clock of 1138 MHz with a boost of 1250 MHz, a narrow range typical of its era. The Arc A550M starts at 900 MHz but boosts to 2050 MHz, a much wider range reflecting newer power-management techniques in a mobile design. Memory clocks differ correspondingly: the Vega 56's HBM2 runs at 786 MHz for an effective 1572 Mbps, while the Arc A550M's GDDR6 runs at 1750 MHz for an effective 14 Gbps.

The rendering resource allocation also reflects the different eras. The Vega 56 fields 3584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The Arc A550M counters with 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and the same 64 ROPs. With its much higher boost clock, the Intel part actually achieves a higher pixel fill rate, 131.2 GPixel/s versus 80.00 GPixel/s for AMD, while the Vega 56 holds the texture rate edge at 280.0 GTexel/s against 262.4 GTexel/s.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head record is short but lopsided: two tests, two wins for the Radeon Pro Vega 56, zero for the Arc A550M.

In geekbench_opencl, the Vega 56 scores 61930 against 49894 for the Arc A550M. That is a 24.1 percent lead, a substantial gap in a compute-oriented API test. The pattern repeats in geekbench_vulkan, where the Vega 56 posts 66004 against 49580, a 33.1 percent margin. The Vulkan result is particularly striking because it is the Vega 56's best recorded score of its three benchmark entries, while Vulkan is the Arc A550M's weaker of two entries, slightly below its OpenCL result of 49894.

The Vega 56 also holds a Metal result of 63145, though no corresponding Metal entry exists for the Intel card, so no direct comparison is possible there. Its three scores cluster tightly between 61930 and 66004, producing an average of 63693. The Arc A550M's two results, 49894 and 49580, are even more tightly grouped, averaging 49737.

Context from the surrounding database rankings reinforces the gap. The Vega 56's average sits within a fraction of a percent of the AMD Radeon RX 7600M (63775, -0.1 percent), the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP (63830, -0.2 percent), and the NVIDIA CMP 30HX (63842, -0.2 percent), with the AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 slightly ahead at 64212, a 0.8 percent margin. The Arc A550M's neighbors include the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti at 49957 (-0.4 percent), the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 at 50001 (-0.5 percent), the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT at 50951 (-2.4 percent), and the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT at 48477, which the A550M actually outperforms by 2.6 percent.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ on nearly every specification that matters, beginning with platform interface. The Vega 56 uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the Arc A550M uses PCIe 4.0 x16. Display connectivity differs in kind: the Vega 56 offers one HDMI 2.0b port and three DisplayPort 1.4a ports, whereas the Arc A550M's outputs are listed as portable-device dependent, an expected consequence of a mobile part whose video outputs depend on the laptop manufacturer's implementation.

Memory is the starkest divide. Both have 8 GB of VRAM, but the Vega 56's HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus delivers 402.4 GB/s, roughly 1.8 times the Arc A550M's 224.0 GB/s from GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus. That bandwidth advantage is a major factor in the Vega 56's compute benchmark wins, since throughput-heavy workloads saturate narrower buses quickly.

Power delivery is equally lopsided in the opposite direction. The Vega 56's 210 W TDP dwarfs the Arc A550M's 60 W, more than a threefold difference. Both are listed with an IGP slot width, and neither requires external power connectors according to the database records. The two parts also belong to different market segments: the Vega 56 belongs to the Radeon Pro Mac generation within the Vega Series, while the Arc A550M belongs to Intel's Alchemist generation under the Arc 5 Mobile line.

Where Each One Wins

The data allocates the wins cleanly. The Radeon Pro Vega 56 wins everything that was measured: OpenCL compute by 24.1 percent, Vulkan by 33.1 percent. Its raw texture throughput, 280.0 GTexel/s, also exceeds the Intel card's 262.4 GTexel/s, and its 8.960 TFLOPS of FP32 compute edges out the A550M's 8.397 TFLOPS. For sustained compute workloads and any task that leans on memory bandwidth, the recorded data points firmly toward the Vega 56.

The Arc A550M's victories are structural rather than reflected in the shared benchmark suite. Its 131.2 GPixel/s pixel rate comfortably beats the Vega 56's 80.00 GPixel/s, courtesy of that 2050 MHz boost clock against 1250 MHz. Its 16 RT cores provide ray tracing hardware the Vega 56 simply lacks, and its DirectX 12 Ultimate support with Vulkan 1.4 gives it the more modern API foundation. Most importantly, its 60 W TDP makes it deployable in mobile platforms where a 210 W part is a non-starter.

The Verdict

On pure measured performance, the choice is unambiguous: the Radeon Pro Vega 56 wins every shared benchmark by margins of 24.1 and 33.1 percent, ranks three percentile points higher against the full GPU population, and dominates on memory bandwidth. Compute-focused buyers with the power headroom to run a 210 W part should prefer it based on the recorded data.

The Arc A550M serves a different buyer entirely. It is a 60 W mobile GPU whose appeal rests on efficiency, hardware ray tracing, a modern feature set with DirectX 12 Ultimate and Vulkan 1.4, and a pixel fill rate that actually exceeds the Vega 56's. Users prioritizing battery-constrained performance, ray-traced rendering capability, or a contemporary software platform will find the Intel card the only compatible option of the two, even though it concedes every measured benchmark to its older rival. Both are end-of-life parts, so the decision ultimately comes down to whether measured throughput or modern mobile-friendly capability matters more.