AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X vs NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile Comparison

FAQ

Q: How do the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile and AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X compare in overall benchmark performance?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has an average benchmark score of 91,134, placing it in the 93rd percentile of all GPUs, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X averages 80,959, sitting in the 92nd percentile. The RTX A4500 Mobile holds a 12.6% advantage in average score.

Q: Which GPU wins in the only head-to-head benchmark test available?

A: In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile scores 105,307 compared to 78,467 for the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X, a decisive 34.2% victory for the NVIDIA part.

Q: What are the closest rivals to each card according to the data?

A: The RTX A4500 Mobile's nearest competitor is the NVIDIA RTX A4500, which trails by just 0.6%. The Radeon Pro Vega 64X's closest rival is the AMD Radeon PRO W6600, which is 1.3% behind it.

Q: How does the RTX A4500 Mobile perform in Vulkan, and does the Vega 64X have an equivalent?

A: The RTX A4500 Mobile scores 76,960 in Geekbench Vulkan. The Radeon Pro Vega 64X has no Vulkan benchmark listed, but instead posts a Geekbench Metal score of 83,450, reflecting its macOS-oriented design.

Q: What are the key architectural differences in terms of process node and transistor density?

A: The RTX A4500 Mobile uses an 8 nm Samsung process with 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, yielding a density of 44.4M transistors per mm². The Vega 64X uses a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process with 12,500 million transistors on a larger 495 mm² die, giving a density of just 25.3M per mm².

Q: Which card supports more advanced DirectX features?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, while the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X is limited to DirectX 12 (12_1) and Vulkan 1.3. This gives the NVIDIA card a generational feature advantage.

The Verdict

The benchmark data clearly favors the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile as the more powerful GPU. Its average benchmark score of 91,134 versus 80,959 for the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X translates to a 12.6% overall performance lead. In the single head-to-head OpenCL test, the margin expands dramatically to 34.2% in favor of NVIDIA.

For professionals running OpenCL workloads, the RTX A4500 Mobile is the obvious choice. Its 105,307 OpenCL score places it comfortably ahead of the Vega 64X's 78,467, and it even edges out its own desktop counterpart, the RTX A4500, which averages 91,671. The Vega 64X, meanwhile, sits closer to mid-range competitors like the Radeon PRO W6600, which trails by only 1.3%.

The Vega 64X does have one niche advantage: its Metal score of 83,450 suggests it may be better suited for macOS environments, consistent with its "Radeon Pro Mac" generation label. However, for raw compute performance, the RTX A4500 Mobile wins on every measurable axis.

Users who need maximum compute throughput, modern API support, and higher transistor density should choose the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile. Those working specifically in Metal-based Apple ecosystems might prefer the Vega 64X, but they would be sacrificing significant OpenCL performance — a 34.2% deficit — to do so.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only direct comparison available is the Geekbench OpenCL test, and the results are lopsided. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile delivers 105,307 points against 78,467 for the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X, a delta of 34.2%. This is not a marginal win; it is a substantial generational gap that reflects the underlying architecture differences between the two cards.

In the broader benchmark landscape, the RTX A4500 Mobile's average score of 91,134 puts it in the 93rd percentile of all GPUs. It outperforms the NVIDIA Quadro GP100 (87,445) by 4.2% and the AMD Radeon PRO W7600 (87,108) by 4.6%. Its closest rival is the desktop RTX A4500 at 91,671, which is only 0.6% faster — a negligible difference that suggests the mobile variant loses very little to its full-size counterpart.

The Vega 64X, by contrast, averages 80,959 and sits in the 92nd percentile. Its direct rivals are clustered tightly around it: the Radeon PRO W6600 at 81,995 (1.3% behind), the GeForce RTX 5090 at 79,842 (1.4% ahead of the Vega), and the Tesla P100 variants at 79,605 and 79,396 (1.7% and 2.0% ahead, respectively). The Vega 64X is therefore competitive with its immediate peers, but it is not in the same performance class as the RTX A4500 Mobile.

The RTX A4500 Mobile's 34.2% OpenCL advantage over the Vega 64X is consistent with its higher average score and superior percentile ranking. Even accounting for the Vega 64X's Metal score of 83,450 — which has no direct NVIDIA equivalent in this dataset — the NVIDIA card's overall compute capability is clearly superior.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every specification category, reflecting their different design philosophies and release timelines.

Process and Die: The RTX A4500 Mobile is built on an 8 nm Samsung process, while the Vega 64X uses a 14 nm GlobalFoundries node. The NVIDIA chip packs 17,400 million transistors into a 392 mm² die, whereas the AMD chip contains 12,500 million transistors on a larger 495 mm² die.

Memory: Both cards feature 16 GB of memory with identical 512.0 GB/s bandwidth. However, the RTX A4500 Mobile uses GDDR6 with a 256-bit bus and 2000 MHz memory clock (16 Gbps effective), while the Vega 64X uses HBM2 with a much wider 2048-bit bus and 1000 MHz clock (2 Gbps effective).

Compute Units: The RTX A4500 Mobile has 5,888 shading units, 184 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The Vega 64X has 4,096 shading units, 256 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. NVIDIA also includes 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores; AMD has none of either.

Performance Rates: The RTX A4500 Mobile achieves 144.0 GPixel/s pixel rate and 276.0 GTexel/s texture rate, with 17.66 TFLOPS FP32 and 17.66 TFLOPS FP16 (1:1 ratio). The Vega 64X manages 93.95 GPixel/s and 375.8 GTexel/s, with 12.03 TFLOPS FP32 and 24.05 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1 ratio). NVIDIA wins on pixel rate and FP32; AMD wins on texture rate and FP16.

Power and Interface: The RTX A4500 Mobile has a 140 W TDP, while the Vega 64X draws 250 W — a significant efficiency advantage for NVIDIA. The RTX card uses PCIe 4.0 x16; the Vega uses PCIe 3.0 x16. Both have no power connectors and portable-device-dependent display outputs.

API Support: NVIDIA supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. AMD supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is fundamental. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile is built on the Ampere architecture (chip GA104), a modern design that prioritizes both traditional rasterization and accelerated compute features. The AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X uses the older GCN 5.0 architecture (chip Vega 10), which lacks dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware entirely.

The RTX A4500 Mobile's 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores are absent from the Vega 64X, which has null values for both in the specification data. This means the NVIDIA card can accelerate ray-traced workloads and AI-based tasks (via tensor operations) in hardware, while the AMD card must handle these through general-purpose shader units. The result is a clear feature-set advantage for NVIDIA in modern workloads that leverage these dedicated cores.

The manufacturing process also tells a story of generational progress. The RTX A4500 Mobile's 8 nm Samsung node enables a transistor density of 44.4M per mm², nearly double the Vega 64X's 25.3M per mm² on 14 nm GlobalFoundries. Despite the AMD chip being physically larger at 495 mm² versus 392 mm², it holds far fewer transistors — 12,500 million versus 17,400 million. This density advantage translates directly into the RTX card's higher FP32 throughput (17.66 vs 12.03 TFLOPS) and lower power draw (140 W vs 250 W).

Clock speeds are another point of divergence. The Vega 64X runs at a higher base clock of 1250 MHz versus 930 MHz for the RTX card, but the boost clocks are close: 1468 MHz for AMD and 1500 MHz for NVIDIA. The Vega's higher base clock does not compensate for its lower shader count and older architecture.

Memory architecture differs as well. The Vega 64X relies on HBM2 with a 2048-bit bus, a wide-but-slow configuration at 2 Gbps effective. The RTX A4500 Mobile uses GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus at 16 Gbps effective. Both achieve the same 512.0 GB/s bandwidth, but NVIDIA achieves it with a narrower, faster memory subsystem, while AMD uses a wider, slower one.

The Vega 64X's FP16 performance of 24.05 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio) exceeds the RTX card's 17.66 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). This is a notable AMD advantage for workloads that can leverage half-precision math, but it does not translate into better real-world benchmark scores in the data available.

The RTX A4500 Mobile's release date of 2022-03-21 comes roughly three years after the Vega 64X's 2019-03-18 release. That timeline explains the architectural leap: Ampere is a direct successor to NVIDIA's Turing generation, while GCN 5.0 was already on its way out when Vega launched. The RTX card's predecessor is listed as Quadro Turing-M and its successor as Ada-MW, while the Vega 64X has no listed predecessor or successor, marking it as a one-off product for the Mac ecosystem.

The Vega 64X's slot width of "IGP" confirms its integrated design for Apple systems, while the RTX A4500 Mobile is a discrete mobile GPU. This form-factor difference, combined with the Vega's 250 W TDP, suggests the AMD part was designed for a very specific chassis, whereas the NVIDIA part is a more conventional professional mobile GPU.