GPU Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro VII and NVIDIA RTX A4500 are both professional workstation GPUs, yet benchmark data shows they serve distinctly different performance profiles. The Radeon Pro VII, built on a 7nm process with HBM2 memory, posts an average benchmark score of 97,131, while the RTX A4500, on an 8nm node with GDDR6, averages 91,671. This places the AMD card 6% ahead of the NVIDIA card in the nearestRivals comparison, though the head-to-head benchmark data tells a more complex story, with the RTX A4500 winning both shared tests by substantial margins.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro VII scores 97,131 on average, which is 6% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A4500’s 91,671. Both cards sit at the 93rd percentile when compared against all GPUs.

Q: In the shared head-to-head benchmarks, who wins?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 wins both tests. In Geekbench OpenCL, it scores 141,837 versus the Radeon Pro VII’s 90,148, a 36.4% advantage. In Geekbench Vulkan, it scores 129,980 versus 92,862, a 28.6% lead.

Q: How do their memory subsystems differ?

A: The Radeon Pro VII uses 16 GB of HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus, delivering 1.02 TB/s of bandwidth. The RTX A4500 uses 20 GB of GDDR6 on a 320-bit bus, providing 640.0 GB/s. Despite the smaller capacity, the AMD card offers nearly 60% more memory bandwidth.

Q: What are the transistor counts and die sizes?

A: The Radeon Pro VII packs 13,230 million transistors on a 331 mm² die, while the RTX A4500 has 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die. The NVIDIA chip has more than double the transistors and nearly double the die area.

Q: Which card has more shading units and higher FP32 throughput?

A: The RTX A4500 has 7,168 shading units and delivers 23.65 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The Radeon Pro VII has 3,840 shading units and 13.06 TFLOPS FP32. The NVIDIA card offers 81% more raw FP32 compute.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life products. The Radeon Pro VII was released on 2020-05-12, and the RTX A4500 followed on 2021-11-22.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two cards is fundamental. The AMD Radeon Pro VII is built on the Vega 20 chip using the GCN 5.1 architecture, manufactured on a 7nm process at TSMC. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 uses the GA102 chip with the Ampere architecture, fabricated on an 8nm process at Samsung. This process difference is notable: AMD’s 7nm node allows a smaller 331 mm² die despite the 13,230 million transistor count, giving a transistor density of 40.0M per mm². NVIDIA’s 8nm node requires a 628 mm² die for 28,300 million transistors, yielding a slightly higher density of 45.1M per mm².

Feature support diverges sharply. The RTX A4500 includes 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores, hardware that the Radeon Pro VII entirely lacks. This is reflected in API support: NVIDIA lists DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while AMD only reaches DirectX 12 (12_1). Vulkan support also differs, with NVIDIA at version 1.4 and AMD at 1.3. Both support OpenGL 4.6.

Memory architecture is another major split. The Radeon Pro VII uses 16 GB of HBM2 across a full 4096-bit bus, achieving a massive 1.02 TB/s bandwidth. The RTX A4500 uses 20 GB of GDDR6 on a 320-bit bus, delivering 640.0 GB/s. The memory clock difference is stark: AMD runs at 1000 MHz (2 Gbps effective), while NVIDIA runs at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The wider bus on the AMD card more than compensates for the slower clock speed.

Compute capability diverges in interesting ways. The Radeon Pro VII has 3,840 shading units, 240 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The RTX A4500 has 7,168 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. NVIDIA has nearly double the shading units but slightly fewer texture units. FP16 performance is also asymmetric: AMD offers 26.11 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), while NVIDIA offers 23.65 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio), meaning the AMD card has a dedicated FP16 advantage despite lower FP32.

Where Each One Wins

The data clearly splits the use cases. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 dominates compute-heavy workloads in the shared benchmarks. Its Geekbench OpenCL score of 141,837 and Vulkan score of 129,980 both crush the Radeon Pro VII’s corresponding 90,148 and 92,862. For applications that leverage OpenCL or Vulkan acceleration, the RTX A4500 is the clear choice, offering 36.4% and 28.6% advantages respectively.

The Radeon Pro VII’s strengths lie elsewhere. Its average benchmark score of 97,131 is higher than the RTX A4500’s 91,671, driven by its strong Geekbench Metal result of 108,383. This suggests the AMD card performs well in Metal-based workflows, which is relevant for macOS ecosystems. Additionally, the 1.02 TB/s memory bandwidth and 4096-bit bus make it suitable for memory-bandwidth-sensitive tasks like large dataset manipulation or high-resolution rendering, even if raw compute is lower.

The RTX A4500’s 20 GB memory capacity versus 16 GB gives it an edge in memory-hungry applications that require fitting larger models or scenes into VRAM. The NVIDIA card also has hardware ray tracing and tensor cores, which the AMD card lacks entirely, making it the only option here for RT-accelerated rendering or AI inference workloads. The 23.65 TFLOPS FP32 versus 13.06 TFLOPS further cements NVIDIA’s lead in general-purpose compute that doesn’t rely on specialized FP16 paths.

Specification Differences

| Specification | AMD Radeon Pro VII | NVIDIA RTX A4500 |

|---|---|---|

| Chip | Vega 20 | GA102 |

| Architecture | GCN 5.1 | Ampere |

| Process Node | 7 nm | 8 nm |

| Foundry | TSMC | Samsung |

| Transistors | 13,230 million | 28,300 million |

| Die Size | 331 mm² | 628 mm² |

| Transistor Density | 40.0M / mm² | 45.1M / mm² |

| Base Clock | 1400 MHz | 1050 MHz |

| Boost Clock | 1700 MHz | 1650 MHz |

| Memory Clock | 1000 MHz (2 Gbps effective) | 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective) |

| Memory Size | 16 GB | 20 GB |

| Memory Type | HBM2 | GDDR6 |

| Memory Bus Width | 4096 bit | 320 bit |

| Memory Bandwidth | 1.02 TB/s | 640.0 GB/s |

| Shading Units | 3840 | 7168 |

| TMUs | 240 | 224 |

| ROPs | 64 | 96 |

| RT Cores | None | 56 |

| Tensor Cores | None | 224 |

| Pixel Rate | 108.8 GPixel/s | 158.4 GPixel/s |

| Texture Rate | 408.0 GTexel/s | 369.6 GTexel/s |

| FP32 | 13.06 TFLOPS | 23.65 TFLOPS |

| FP16 | 26.11 TFLOPS (2:1) | 23.65 TFLOPS (1:1) |

| TDP | 250 W | 200 W |

| Power Connectors | 1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin | 1x 8-pin |

| Suggested PSU | 600 W | 550 W |

| Display Outputs | 6x mini-DisplayPort 1.4a | 4x DisplayPort 1.4a |

| DirectX | 12 (12_1) | 12 Ultimate (12_2) |

| Vulkan | 1.3 | 1.4 |

| Dimensions | 305 mm (12 inches) | 267 mm (10.5 inches) |

| Height | 111 mm (4.4 inches) | 112 mm (4.4 inches) |

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two shared benchmark results reveal a decisive pattern. In Geekbench OpenCL, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 scores 141,837 against the Radeon Pro VII’s 90,148. This 36.4% delta is enormous in the workstation space, indicating that the RTX A4500’s 7,168 shading units and 23.65 TFLOPS FP32 provide a massive advantage in OpenCL compute. The 13.06 TFLOPS FP32 on the AMD card simply cannot keep pace.

Geekbench Vulkan shows a similar but slightly narrower gap. The RTX A4500 scores 129,980, while the Radeon Pro VII manages 92,862, a 28.6% difference. Vulkan performance benefits from the NVIDIA card’s 96 ROPs and higher pixel rate of 158.4 GPixel/s versus 108.8 GPixel/s on the AMD card. The RTX A4500’s texture rate of 369.6 GTexel/s is slightly lower than the AMD’s 408.0 GTexel/s, but the shading unit advantage dominates the workload.

These results are consistent with the nearestRivals data. The RTX A4500 sits 0.6% above its mobile counterpart, 0.9% below the AMD Radeon Instinct MI60, and 4.8% above the NVIDIA Quadro GP100. The Radeon Pro VII, by contrast, is 0.4% below the RX 7900M, 5% above the Instinct MI60, and 4.7% below the Quadro RTX 6000. The two cards are in the same performance neighborhood on average, but the NVIDIA card’s victories in both shared tests suggest it handles the most common compute APIs better.

The wins tally is lopsided: the RTX A4500 wins both head-to-head benchmarks, while the Radeon Pro VII wins none. However, the AMD card’s higher average benchmark score of 97,131 versus 91,671 indicates that its Metal benchmark result of 108,383, which has no NVIDIA counterpart, is strong enough to lift its overall average above the RTX A4500’s.

The Verdict

The data points to a clear split by workload. For users running OpenCL or Vulkan compute tasks, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 is the unequivocal choice. Its 36.4% lead in OpenCL and 28.6% lead in Vulkan are decisive, and the 23.65 TFLOPS FP32 plus 20 GB of memory provide a robust foundation for general compute. The inclusion of 56 RT cores and 224 tensor cores extends its utility into ray tracing and AI inference, areas where the Radeon Pro VII has no hardware support at all.

The AMD Radeon Pro VII is the better pick for environments that prioritize Metal performance or memory bandwidth. Its Geekbench Metal score of 108,383 is its strongest result, and the 1.02 TB/s bandwidth on a 4096-bit bus is exceptional for data-heavy workflows. The 16 GB of HBM2 may be smaller than the RTX A4500’s 20 GB, but the bandwidth advantage is substantial. The 26.11 TFLOPS FP16 performance also gives it an edge for half-precision compute, assuming the software can leverage the 2:1 ratio.

For most professional buyers, the RTX A4500’s wins in both shared benchmarks make it the safer default. The 81% higher FP32 throughput and double the shading units are difficult to ignore. Yet the Radeon Pro VII’s higher average score and Metal performance mean it should not be dismissed, particularly in Apple-centric workflows. The verdict is simple: choose the RTX A4500 for broad compute compatibility and raw FP32 power, or the Radeon Pro VII for Metal-optimized pipelines and memory-bandwidth-bound tasks.