AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 vs NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Comparison

The data places the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 and the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 at opposite ends of the hardware timeline, and the benchmark results reflect that gap decisively. The RTX 5090 holds a 92nd percentile ranking among all GPUs, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 sits just one point lower at the 91st percentile, yet the raw performance delta between them is anything but close. The RTX 5090’s average benchmark score of 79,842 dwarfs the Radeon Pro Vega 64’s 72,379, a difference that becomes stark when examining the two shared tests.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the RTX 5090 scores 334,370 against the Radeon Pro Vega 64’s 71,094. That is a delta of 370.3 percent, meaning the NVIDIA card delivers nearly 4.7 times the compute throughput in this API. The Vulkan result is even more lopsided: the RTX 5090 posts 376,728 versus 74,174, a 407.9 percent advantage. Both wins belong to NVIDIA, giving it a clean 2-0 sweep in the head-to-head comparison.

These aren’t marginal victories. The OpenCL margin alone exceeds the entire average score of the Radeon Pro Vega 64’s nearest rival, the NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal, which sits at 72,098. The RTX 5090’s Vulkan score is more than five times the Radeon Pro Vega 64’s, and its closest competitor in that metric is not the AMD card but its own OpenCL result. The data suggests the Radeon Pro Vega 64 is not just slower; it operates in a different performance class entirely.

When placed against their respective nearest rivals, the picture clarifies further. The RTX 5090’s average score is 0.3 percent above the NVIDIA Tesla P100 PCIe 16 GB (79,605) and 0.6 percent ahead of the Tesla P100 PCIe 12 GB (79,396). It also leads the AMD Radeon RX 6850M XT (78,940) by 1.1 percent. The only rival ahead of it is the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X at 80,959, which beats the RTX 5090 by 1.4 percent. For the Radeon Pro Vega 64, its average score is 0.4 percent above the NVIDIA TITAN X Pascal (72,098) and 0.9 percent above the AMD Radeon RX 6650M (71,768). It trails the AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (73,370) by 1.4 percent and leads the AMD Radeon RX 6600 LE (70,829) by 2.2 percent.

Architecture Differences

The fundamental gap begins with the manufacturing process. The RTX 5090 uses a 5 nm node from TSMC, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 relies on a 14 nm node from GlobalFoundries. That three-generation jump in lithography translates directly to transistor density: the RTX 5090 packs 92,200 million transistors into a 750 mm² die, yielding 122.9 million transistors per square millimeter. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 contains 12,500 million transistors across 495 mm², for a density of 25.3 million per square millimeter. The NVIDIA chip is nearly five times denser, which explains how it fits 21,760 shading units onto its die versus just 4,096 on the AMD part.

The architecture names tell the story of their eras. The RTX 5090 is built on Blackwell 2.0, the latest GeForce 50-series design, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 uses GCN 5.0 from the Vega 10 chip. The NVIDIA card includes 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores, features entirely absent from the AMD card, which lists no ray tracing or tensor core hardware. The RTX 5090 also has 680 texture mapping units and 176 raster operation pipelines, compared to 256 TMUs and 64 ROPs on the Radeon Pro Vega 64.

Memory architecture differs just as sharply. The RTX 5090 uses 32 GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus, delivering 1.79 TB/s of bandwidth. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 uses 16 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus, but its bandwidth is only 402.4 GB/s. The NVIDIA card’s memory clock runs at 1750 MHz (28 Gbps effective), while the AMD part’s memory clock is 786 MHz (1572 Mbps effective). The RTX 5090’s pixel rate is 423.6 GPixel/s and its texture rate is 1,636.8 GTexel/s; the Radeon Pro Vega 64 manages 86.40 GPixel/s and 345.6 GTexel/s respectively.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous. The RTX 5090 wins every shared benchmark by margins of at least 370 percent, and its architectural advantages in process node, transistor count, memory bandwidth, and specialized cores are overwhelming. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 is an end-of-life product from 2017, while the RTX 5090 is an active product released in early 2025. For any workload represented by Geekbench OpenCL or Vulkan, the RTX 5090 is the only rational choice.

The Radeon Pro Vega 64’s only statistical claim to relevance is its 91st percentile ranking, which is nearly identical to the RTX 5090’s 92nd percentile. That near-parity in percentile is misleading, however, because the percentile reflects position relative to all GPUs, not direct comparison. Against the RTX 5090 specifically, the Radeon Pro Vega 64 loses by a factor of four or five. The RTX 5090 also has a higher average benchmark score than any of its four nearest rivals except the Radeon Pro Vega 64X, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64’s average score sits below two of its four nearest rivals.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every measurable specification. The RTX 5090 has a base clock of 2017 MHz and a boost clock of 2407 MHz, versus 1250 MHz base and 1350 MHz boost on the Radeon Pro Vega 64. The NVIDIA card’s FP32 throughput is 104.8 TFLOPS, compared to 11.06 TFLOPS on the AMD card. FP16 performance is 104.8 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio) on the RTX 5090, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 achieves 22.12 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio). Power draw is 575 W for the RTX 5090 and 250 W for the Radeon Pro Vega 64.

The RTX 5090 is a dual-slot card requiring a 16-pin power connector and a 950 W suggested PSU, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 is an IGP (integrated graphics processor) with no power connectors and no suggested PSU listed. The RTX 5090 uses PCIe 5.0 x16, whereas the Radeon Pro Vega 64 uses PCIe 3.0 x16. Display outputs are 1x HDMI 2.1b and 3x DisplayPort 2.1b on the NVIDIA card, versus “Portable Device Dependent” on the AMD card. The RTX 5090 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4; the Radeon Pro Vega 64 supports DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6. The RTX 5090 measures 304 mm in length, 137 mm in height, and 40 mm in width; the Radeon Pro Vega 64 has no listed dimensions.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the RTX 5090 in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The RTX 5090 scores 334,370 versus 71,094 for the Radeon Pro Vega 64, a 370.3 percent advantage.

Q: Does the Radeon Pro Vega 64 win any benchmark against the RTX 5090?

A: No. In the two shared tests (Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan), the RTX 5090 wins both, with the head-to-head tally at 2 wins for NVIDIA and 0 for AMD.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference?

A: The RTX 5090 has 32 GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus with 1.79 TB/s bandwidth. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 has 16 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus with 402.4 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which card has more shading units?

A: The RTX 5090 has 21,760 shading units, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 has 4,096.

Q: How do their transistor counts compare?

A: The RTX 5090 contains 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 contains 12,500 million transistors on a 495 mm² die.

Q: What is the production status of each card?

A: The RTX 5090 is listed as Active, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 is End-of-life.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX 5090 wins every workload represented in the shared benchmark data. Its OpenCL score of 334,370 indicates dominant compute performance for general-purpose GPU tasks, and its Vulkan score of 376,728 points to strong cross-platform graphics and compute capability. The card’s 170 ray tracing cores and 680 tensor cores provide dedicated hardware for ray-traced rendering and AI acceleration, features that the Radeon Pro Vega 64 lacks entirely. With 32 GB of GDDR7 memory and 1.79 TB/s bandwidth, the RTX 5090 is positioned for large datasets and high-resolution textures.

The Radeon Pro Vega 64 has no benchmark wins against the RTX 5090, so its use cases are defined by absence rather than advantage. It is a 250 W IGP with no power connectors, making it potentially suitable for systems where discrete power delivery is unavailable, and its 16 GB of HBM2 offers a compact memory solution. Its FP16 throughput of 22.12 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio) is double its FP32 rate, suggesting some efficiency in half-precision workloads, but even that figure is less than a quarter of the RTX 5090’s FP16 performance of 104.8 TFLOPS. The Radeon Pro Vega 64’s 91st percentile ranking places it above many other GPUs, but against the RTX 5090 specifically, the data shows no scenario where the AMD card comes out ahead.