AMD Radeon PRO W6600 vs NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 Comparison

The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 and AMD Radeon PRO W6600 represent two distinct approaches to professional graphics, separated by three years of architectural evolution and targeting very different segments of the workstation market. The data shows a clear overall winner in raw compute, but the comparison is more nuanced than a simple scoreboard, as the Radeon PRO W6600 counters with vastly superior efficiency and a much smaller physical footprint.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two cards share only one common benchmark result in the data, with the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 taking the win in both recorded tests. In Geekbench OpenCL, the older Turing-based card edges out its RDNA 2.0 rival by a razor-thin margin of 0.9%, scoring 74,179 against 73,514. This near-tie is remarkable given the architectural gap between the two, and it suggests that the Radeon PRO W6600’s higher clocks and newer instruction set largely neutralize the Quadro’s massive core-count advantage in this particular workload.

The second result is a decisive blow. In Geekbench Vulkan, the Quadro RTX 6000 posts a staggering 129,564 points, while the Radeon PRO W6600 manages only 78,428. That is a 65.2% advantage for the NVIDIA card, a margin that dwarfs anything seen in the OpenCL test. The data does not provide per-test details on why this gap exists, but the sheer size of the delta indicates that the Quadro’s older Turing architecture is significantly better optimized for Vulkan’s low-level API, or that its raw hardware resources—4608 shading units versus 1792—simply overwhelm the Radeon when driver overhead is minimized. The Quadro RTX 6000 wins both head-to-head matchups, giving it a 2-0 record.

Looking at the wider benchmark context, the Quadro RTX 6000’s average benchmark score of 101,872 places it in the 94th percentile of all GPUs. Its nearest rivals include the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II Duo, which is 4.6% faster, and the AMD Radeon Pro W6600X, which is 5.1% faster. On the other side, the Radeon PRO W6600’s average score of 81,995 lands it in the 92nd percentile, with its closest competitor being the AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64X at just 1.3% behind. Notably, the Radeon PRO W6600 sits only 2.7% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 in the aggregate data, which is a peculiar data point given that the RTX 5090 is a consumer gaming card. The Quadro’s 94th percentile versus the Radeon’s 92nd percentile reflects the former’s higher absolute performance, but the 24.3% difference in average scores (101,872 vs 81,995) is far more telling than the percentile gap.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in Geekbench OpenCL?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 wins by a margin of 0.9%, scoring 74,179 versus the AMD Radeon PRO W6600’s 73,514 points.

Q: What is the performance difference in Geekbench Vulkan?

A: The Quadro RTX 6000 is significantly faster, posting 129,564 points against the Radeon PRO W6600’s 78,428, which represents a 65.2% advantage for the NVIDIA card.

Q: How do their overall average benchmark scores compare?

A: The Quadro RTX 6000 has an average benchmark score of 101,872, while the Radeon PRO W6600 averages 81,995. This puts the Quadro in the 94th percentile of all GPUs, compared to the Radeon’s 92nd percentile.

Q: Does the Radeon PRO W6600 have any benchmark advantage in the data?

A: The head-to-head data shows zero wins for the Radeon PRO W6600 across the two shared tests. However, the Radeon PRO W6600 does have a recorded Geekbench Metal score of 94,042, which is a test the Quadro RTX 6000 does not have data for.

Q: Which card has a higher memory bandwidth?

A: The Quadro RTX 6000 offers 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth, which is three times the Radeon PRO W6600’s 224.0 GB/s, a direct result of its 384-bit bus versus a 128-bit bus.

Q: Which card is more power-efficient?

A: The Radeon PRO W6600 has a TDP of 100 W, which is 160 W lower than the Quadro RTX 6000’s 260 W TDP. This makes the Radeon substantially more efficient per watt, despite delivering roughly 57% of the Quadro’s FP32 throughput (9.247 TFLOPS vs 16.31 TFLOPS).

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs are built on fundamentally different architectures and process nodes. The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 uses the TU102 chip, fabricated on a 12 nm process at TSMC, with a massive 754 mm² die containing 18,600 million transistors. Its transistor density is 24.7 million per mm². In contrast, the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 uses the Navi 23 chip on TSMC’s 7 nm node, packing 11,060 million transistors onto a much smaller 237 mm² die, achieving a density of 46.7 million per mm². The Radeon’s density is nearly double that of the Quadro, reflecting the newer process technology.

The compute architectures differ significantly. The Quadro RTX 6000 is based on Turing, NVIDIA’s architecture that introduced dedicated RT (ray tracing) cores and Tensor cores. It has 4608 shading units, 288 texture mapping units (TMUs), and 96 render output units (ROPs), along with 72 RT cores and 576 Tensor cores. The Radeon PRO W6600 uses RDNA 2.0, AMD’s second-generation Navi architecture, which also includes ray accelerators but has no Tensor core equivalent. It features 1792 shading units, 112 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, with 28 ray tracing cores. The Quadro has 2.57 times the shading units, 2.57 times the TMUs, and 1.5 times the ROPs of the Radeon.

Clock speeds tell the opposite story. The Radeon PRO W6600 runs at a base clock of 2331 MHz and a boost clock of 2580 MHz, which are significantly higher than the Quadro’s 1440 MHz base and 1770 MHz boost. This high clock speed partially compensates for the Radeon’s lower core count, but not enough to overcome the Quadro’s raw resource advantage in most workloads. The Radeon’s pixel rate of 165.1 GPixel/s is nearly identical to the Quadro’s 169.9 GPixel/s, despite the former having fewer ROPs, because of its higher clock speed. However, the Quadro’s texture rate of 509.8 GTexel/s is 76% higher than the Radeon’s 289.0 GTexel/s, driven by its superior TMU count.

Both cards support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so there is no API feature gap in the data. The Radeon PRO W6600 has a Metal benchmark score, indicating macOS compatibility, while the Quadro RTX 6000 does not list a Metal result.

Specification Differences

The most glaring difference is memory. The Quadro RTX 6000 has 24 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit bus, yielding 672.0 GB/s bandwidth. The Radeon PRO W6600 has only 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, capping bandwidth at 224.0 GB/s. This is a threefold difference in both capacity and bandwidth, which will heavily impact large dataset workloads like rendering, simulation, and machine learning inference.

Physical and power characteristics diverge sharply. The Quadro RTX 6000 is a dual-slot card with a 260 W TDP, requiring a 600 W power supply and two power connectors (1x 6-pin and 1x 8-pin). It measures 267 mm in length and 111 mm in height. The Radeon PRO W6600 is a single-slot card with a 100 W TDP, needing only a 300 W power supply and a single 6-pin connector. It is shorter at 241 mm in length, and its height is not specified in the data. The Radeon is clearly designed for compact workstations, while the Quadro is built for maximum performance in larger chassis.

The bus interface also differs: the Quadro uses PCIe 3.0 x16, while the Radeon uses PCIe 4.0 x8. The newer PCIe 4.0 standard offers double the bandwidth per lane, so the Radeon’s x8 interface theoretically provides the same bandwidth as PCIe 3.0 x16, which may offset its lower lane count. Display outputs are similar, with both cards offering 4x DisplayPort 1.4a, but the Quadro adds a USB Type-C port that the Radeon lacks.

Production status and release dates also differ. The Quadro RTX 6000 was released on 2018-08-12, while the Radeon PRO W6600 came nearly three years later on 2021-06-07. Both are now marked as end-of-life. The Quadro’s predecessor is Quadro Volta, and its successor is Workstation Ampere. The Radeon’s predecessor is Radeon Pro Vega, and no successor is listed in the data. Finally, the launch MSRP for the Quadro RTX 6000 was 6,299 USD, while the Radeon PRO W6600 launched at 649 USD.

The Verdict

The data paints a clear picture: the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 6000 is the more powerful card by a wide margin in aggregate, with a 24.3% higher average benchmark score and a 65.2% lead in Vulkan. It is the only card that wins any of the shared head-to-head tests, taking both available matchups. For professionals who need maximum compute throughput, massive memory capacity (24 GB), and the highest percentile ranking (94th), the Quadro RTX 6000 is the definitive choice. Its 4608 shading units, 576 Tensor cores, and 672.0 GB/s of bandwidth make it suitable for heavy compute, AI inference, and large-scale visualization tasks where the Radeon’s 8 GB memory and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth would be a severe bottleneck.

The AMD Radeon PRO W6600, however, is not without merit. Its 100 W TDP is less than half of the Quadro’s 260 W, and its single-slot, 241 mm length make it ideal for dense, power-constrained environments. Its higher clock speeds (2580 MHz boost) allow it to nearly match the Quadro in OpenCL (within 0.9%) and achieve similar pixel throughput (165.1 vs 169.9 GPixel/s). The Radeon’s 92nd percentile ranking is still respectable, and its 649 USD launch MSRP is dramatically lower than the Quadro’s 6,299 USD, although pricing is not a factor in performance analysis. For users running Metal-based workflows, the Radeon has a recorded score of 94,042, which the Quadro lacks entirely.

The choice comes down to workload requirements. If the task demands extreme memory bandwidth, high FP32 throughput (16.31 TFLOPS vs 9.247 TFLOPS), or Vulkan performance, the Quadro RTX 6000 is the only option. If the priority is low power draw, compact size, and sufficient performance for less demanding professional tasks, the Radeon PRO W6600 offers a capable alternative that is more than three years newer and built on a far more efficient 7 nm process. The data does not support the Radeon as a performance competitor, but it does support it as a pragmatic, efficient workstation card.