AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 vs NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation Comparison

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation records an average benchmark score of 184,664, placing it in the 98th percentile of all GPUs. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 averages 72,379, which lands in the 91st percentile.

Q: How large is the performance gap in OpenCL compute workloads?

A: The RTX 5000 Ada scores 175,286 in Geekbench OpenCL versus 71,094 for the Radeon Pro Vega 64. This represents a 146.6% advantage for the NVIDIA card.

Q: What about Vulkan performance?

A: In Geekbench Vulkan, the RTX 5000 Ada reaches 194,041 points, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 manages 74,174. The delta is 161.6% in favor of NVIDIA.

Q: Does the Radeon Pro Vega 64 have any benchmark where it wins?

A: The recorded data shows zero wins for the AMD card across the two shared tests. It does have a Geekbench Metal score of 71,868, but the NVIDIA card has no corresponding Metal result in the database.

Q: How do the memory subsystems differ?

A: The RTX 5000 Ada uses 32 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 576.0 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 uses 16 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus with 402.4 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which card is more recent and what are the production statuses?

A: The RTX 5000 Ada was released in August 2023 and remains Active in production. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 launched in June 2017 and is marked End-of-life.

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data is unambiguous: the RTX 5000 Ada Generation wins both head-to-head tests outright. Its OpenCL score of 175,286 and Vulkan score of 194,041 both dwarf the Radeon Pro Vega 64's corresponding results. There is no compute workload in the shared test set where the AMD card takes the lead.

However, the Radeon Pro Vega 64 does hold one advantage in the database: its Geekbench Metal score of 71,868. This is a proprietary Apple framework benchmark, and the RTX 5000 Ada has no Metal entry in our measurements. For environments that rely exclusively on Metal, such as certain macOS workflows, the Vega 64 at least has a recorded result, though it is far below the NVIDIA card's OpenCL and Vulkan figures.

The RTX 5000 Ada also wins on architectural headroom. Its 98th percentile standing among all GPUs places it near the very top of the database, while the Vega 64's 91st percentile, while respectable, is a tier below. The NVIDIA card's nearest rivals include the A100 SXM4 80 GB (0.5% higher average score) and the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell (1.4% lower), which shows it competes with flagship data-center silicon. In contrast, the Vega 64's closest competitors are consumer and older workstation parts like the TITAN X Pascal (0.4% higher) and the RX 6650M (0.9% lower).

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs come from fundamentally different design eras. The RTX 5000 Ada is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using the AD102 chip, fabricated on a 5 nm process at TSMC. It packs 76,300 million transistors into a 609 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 125.3 million per square millimeter. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 uses the older GCN 5.0 architecture with the Vega 10 chip, built on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. That die contains 12,500 million transistors across 495 mm², for a density of just 25.3 million per square millimeter.

The Ada chip is a fundamentally different beast in compute organization. It has 12,800 shading units, 400 texture mapping units, and 176 raster operation pipelines. It also carries dedicated hardware: 100 RT cores for ray tracing and 400 tensor cores for AI acceleration. The Vega 10 chip has 4,096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with no RT cores or tensor cores listed in its specifications.

Feature support diverges as well. The RTX 5000 Ada supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the Vega 64 is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6. The NVIDIA card's API compliance is more modern, which matters for newer titles and compute frameworks that target the latest feature levels.

The memory technology also reflects the generational gap. The RTX 5000 Ada uses GDDR6 with an 18 Gbps effective data rate, while the Vega 64 uses HBM2 at 1572 Mbps effective. The Vega's HBM2 does offer a much wider 2048-bit bus, but the combination of capacity, speed, and interface still favors the newer card.

Specification Differences

The specification table shows a clean split between the two cards. The RTX 5000 Ada has 32 GB of memory versus 16 GB on the Vega 64. Memory bandwidth is 576.0 GB/s versus 402.4 GB/s. The NVIDIA card has a 256-bit bus, while AMD uses a 2048-bit bus, but the GDDR6 speed advantage overcomes the narrower interface.

Compute throughput is dramatically different. The RTX 5000 Ada delivers 65.28 TFLOPS of FP32 and the same 65.28 TFLOPS of FP16 (at a 1:1 ratio). The Vega 64 offers 11.06 TFLOPS FP32 and 22.12 TFLOPS FP16 (at a 2:1 ratio). That means the NVIDIA card has roughly 5.9 times the FP32 throughput and roughly 2.95 times the FP16 throughput.

Pixel and texture rates follow the same pattern. The RTX 5000 Ada achieves 448.8 GPixel/s and 1,020.0 GTexel/s. The Vega 64 manages 86.40 GPixel/s and 345.6 GTexel/s. Clock speeds are interesting: the Vega 64 has a higher base clock (1250 MHz versus 1155 MHz) but a much lower boost clock (1350 MHz versus 2550 MHz). The NVIDIA card's boost clock is nearly double the AMD part's.

Power and physical specs differ too. Both are rated at 250 W TDP, but the RTX 5000 Ada is a dual-slot card requiring a 16-pin power connector and a 600 W suggested PSU. The Vega 64 is an integrated graphics processor (IGP) with no power connectors and no suggested PSU listed. The NVIDIA card is 267 mm long and 112 mm tall, while the AMD card has no dimensions recorded. The RTX 5000 Ada uses PCIe 4.0 x16; the Vega 64 uses PCIe 3.0 x16. Display outputs are 4x DisplayPort 1.4a on NVIDIA, while AMD's are listed as "Portable Device Dependent."

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The OpenCL result is the first and most telling comparison. The RTX 5000 Ada scores 175,286, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 scores 71,094. That is a 146.6% delta, meaning the NVIDIA card more than doubles the AMD card's OpenCL performance. In real terms, this affects any compute workload that uses OpenCL: rendering, simulation, and scientific computing all scale with this metric.

The Vulkan result is even more lopsided. The RTX 5000 Ada reaches 194,041 points, against 74,174 for the Vega 64. The 161.6% delta is the largest margin in the head-to-head set. Vulkan is increasingly used in modern game engines and cross-platform compute, so this gap matters for both interactive and batch workloads.

Contextualizing these scores against the nearest rivals adds depth. The RTX 5000 Ada's average of 184,664 sits within 1.4% of the RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell (182,109) and within 0.5% of the A100 SXM4 80 GB (183,725). It is 3.7% ahead of the GeForce RTX 4090 D (178,050). This is flagship territory. The Vega 64's average of 72,379 is only 0.4% behind the TITAN X Pascal (72,098) and 0.9% ahead of the RX 6650M (71,768). It sits 1.4% behind the Vega Frontier Edition (73,370). The AMD card is competitive with its own generation, but it is not in the same class as the Ada part.

The RTX 5000 Ada also wins on consistency. Its two benchmark scores (175,286 OpenCL and 194,041 Vulkan) are relatively close, indicating stable performance across different compute APIs. The Vega 64's scores span 71,094 to 74,174, which is a tighter relative spread but at a much lower absolute level. The NVIDIA card's Vulkan score exceeds its OpenCL score by about 10.7%, while the AMD card's Vulkan result is about 4.3% above its OpenCL result.

The Verdict

The data points to one clear conclusion: the NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation is the superior compute GPU in this pairing, and the margin is not close. It wins both shared benchmarks by over 146% and sits in the 98th percentile of all GPUs, while the Radeon Pro Vega 64 remains in the 91st percentile. Anyone choosing between these two for OpenCL or Vulkan workloads should select the NVIDIA card without hesitation.

The RTX 5000 Ada's advantages extend beyond raw scores. It has twice the memory capacity (32 GB versus 16 GB), higher bandwidth (576.0 GB/s versus 402.4 GB/s), and nearly six times the FP32 throughput. It includes RT and tensor cores that the Vega 64 lacks entirely, making it suitable for ray tracing and AI-accelerated tasks that the AMD part cannot accelerate at all. Its 5 nm process and 76,300 million transistors represent a modern design, while the Vega 64's 14 nm process and 12,500 million transistors are from an older generation.

The Radeon Pro Vega 64 does have a reason to exist in specific contexts. Its Metal benchmark score of 71,868, while far below the NVIDIA card's other numbers, at least provides a recorded data point for Apple-centric workflows. Its IGP form factor and lack of power connectors may also suit certain integrated systems where a discrete card cannot be installed. These are niche advantages, but they are real.

For most users, however, the verdict is straightforward. The RTX 5000 Ada Generation is a modern, active-production workstation GPU with flagship-level compute performance. The Radeon Pro Vega 64 is an end-of-life part from 2017 that, while still respectable in its own percentile tier, cannot match the newer card in any shared benchmark. The data shows a 146.6% to 161.6% performance gap, and no amount of architectural nostalgia can close that. Choose the RTX 5000 Ada for any new purchase or deployment where OpenCL or Vulkan performance matters.