AMD Radeon PRO W7800 vs NVIDIA RTX A5500 Comparison

The NVIDIA RTX A5500 and AMD Radeon PRO W7800 are two workstation cards that land virtually on top of each other in aggregate performance, yet they achieve that parity through very different strengths. The data shows an average benchmark score of 161,075 for the RTX A5500 against 160,108 for the Radeon PRO W7800, a delta of just 0.6%. Both cards sit in the 98th percentile of all GPUs, placing them firmly in the professional high-end tier. However, a split test suite reveals a clear division of labor: NVIDIA wins decisively in OpenCL workloads, while AMD dominates in Vulkan.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The most striking result is the OpenCL gap. The NVIDIA RTX A5500 scores 174,637 in Geekbench OpenCL, while the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 trails at 154,366. That is a 13.1% advantage for the Ampere card, a substantial margin that suggests NVIDIA’s architecture handles the compute-heavy, general-purpose OpenCL workload with significantly more efficiency. This is not a marginal win; it is a decisive one that will matter for applications relying on OpenCL for rendering, simulation, or scientific computing.

Flip the API, and the tables turn completely. In Geekbench Vulkan, the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 posts 165,849, eclipsing the NVIDIA RTX A5500’s 147,513. The delta here is 11.1% in AMD’s favor, making the Vulkan result almost a mirror image of the OpenCL outcome. For workloads that leverage Vulkan — increasingly common in real-time visualization and game-engine-based rendering — the Radeon PRO W7800 holds a clear edge. The two cards split the head-to-head benchmarks at one win apiece, but the magnitude of each victory is nearly identical, underscoring how closely matched they are overall.

Aggregate scores confirm the near-tie. The RTX A5500’s average of 161,075 puts it just 0.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon Pro W6800X, 0.6% ahead of both the Radeon PRO W7800 and the Radeon Pro W6900X, and 3% behind the AMD Radeon PRO W7900. The Radeon PRO W7800, for its part, sits 0.6% behind the RTX A5500, 0.1% behind the Radeon Pro W6800X, and dead even with the Radeon Pro W6900X, while trailing the Radeon PRO W7900 by 3.6%. These deltas are small enough that real-world application choice, not raw compute, will likely decide which card is faster in a given task.

The Verdict

The data points to a simple conclusion: pick the NVIDIA RTX A5500 if your software stack leans on OpenCL, and pick the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 if Vulkan is your primary API. The 13.1% OpenCL advantage for NVIDIA is too large to ignore for users running OpenCL-based CAD, DCC, or analysis tools. Conversely, the 11.1% Vulkan lead for AMD makes it the obvious choice for real-time rendering pipelines or any workflow that has migrated to Vulkan.

For a mixed workload environment, the decision is harder. The aggregate scores are separated by a mere 0.6%, and both cards hold the 98th percentile ranking, meaning neither is a slouch. The RTX A5500’s 24 GB of memory may be sufficient for many tasks, but the Radeon PRO W7800’s 32 GB offers headroom for larger datasets. If memory capacity is the bottleneck, AMD wins; if OpenCL compute is the priority, NVIDIA wins. The production status also matters: the RTX A5500 is end-of-life, while the Radeon PRO W7800 remains active, which could influence long-term driver support and availability. The Radeon PRO W7800 also carries a launch MSRP of 2,499 USD.

Architecture Differences

The two cards come from fundamentally different design philosophies. The NVIDIA RTX A5500 uses the GA102 chip built on Samsung’s 8 nm process, packing 28,300 million transistors into a 628 mm² die for a transistor density of 45.1 million per square millimeter. The AMD Radeon PRO W7800, by contrast, uses the Navi 31 chip (codename Plum Bonito) fabricated by TSMC on a 5 nm node, with 57,700 million transistors on a smaller 529 mm² die, yielding a much higher density of 109.1 million per square millimeter. The node advantage is clear: AMD crams over twice as many transistors per area onto a physically smaller chip.

Architecturally, NVIDIA’s Ampere generation relies on a massive array of 10,240 shading units, 320 texture mapping units, and 96 ROPs, complemented by 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores. AMD’s RDNA 3.0 design takes a different route with just 4,480 shading units but a wider 128 ROPs and 280 TMUs, plus 70 RT cores and no tensor cores at all. Despite fewer shaders, the Radeon PRO W7800 achieves higher raw throughput in some metrics: it delivers 45.25 TFLOPS FP32 against the RTX A5500’s 34.10 TFLOPS, and its FP16 rate of 90.50 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio) dwarfs the RTX A5500’s 34.10 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio). The RTX A5500’s tensor cores, however, provide dedicated hardware for AI workloads that AMD lacks entirely.

Clock speeds reflect the process difference. The Radeon PRO W7800 runs a base clock of 1895 MHz and boosts to 2525 MHz, far above the RTX A5500’s 1080 MHz base and 1665 MHz boost. That higher frequency, combined with the newer node, explains how AMD achieves higher pixel and texture rates: 323.2 GPixel/s and 707.0 GTexel/s for the Radeon PRO W7800 versus 159.8 GPixel/s and 532.8 GTexel/s for the RTX A5500. The NVIDIA card’s pixel rate is roughly half of AMD’s, a direct consequence of its lower clock and narrower ROP count relative to the AMD design.

Specification Differences

Memory configurations diverge significantly. The RTX A5500 offers 24 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus, delivering 768.0 GB/s of bandwidth with memory clocked at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The Radeon PRO W7800 steps up to 32 GB of GDDR6 on a narrower 256-bit bus, which limits bandwidth to 576.0 GB/s despite a higher memory clock of 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective). The result is a trade-off: AMD provides more capacity, while NVIDIA provides more bandwidth — a 192.0 GB/s difference in favor of the RTX A5500.

Power and physical requirements also differ. The RTX A5500 draws a 230 W TDP with a single 8-pin power connector and a suggested 550 W PSU, while the Radeon PRO W7800 has a 260 W TDP, requires two 8-pin connectors, and suggests a 600 W PSU. Both are dual-slot cards, but the AMD card is slightly longer at 280 mm (11 inches) versus 267 mm (10.5 inches) for NVIDIA; heights are nearly identical at 110 mm (4.3 inches) and 112 mm (4.4 inches), respectively. The Radeon PRO W7800 also has a listed width of 40 mm (1.6 inches), a dimension the RTX A5500 does not specify.

Display outputs reflect different I/O strategies. The RTX A5500 uses four DisplayPort 1.4a connections, while the Radeon PRO W7800 offers three DisplayPort 2.1 plus one mini-DisplayPort 2.1. The newer DisplayPort 2.1 standard on the AMD card supports higher bandwidth for future high-resolution displays. Both cards use a PCIe 4.0 x16 bus interface and support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so API compatibility is a non-issue.

Release timing and lifecycle differ as well. The RTX A5500 launched on March 21, 2022, and is now end-of-life, with a successor in the Workstation Ada line and a predecessor in Quadro Turing. The Radeon PRO W7800 launched over a year later on April 12, 2023, remains active in production, and lists its predecessor as Radeon Pro Vega with no successor named. The NVIDIA card’s end-of-life status may be a concern for buyers seeking long-term driver updates, while AMD’s active status suggests continued support.

FAQ

Q: Which card has a higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A5500 averages 161,075, which is 0.6% higher than the AMD Radeon PRO W7800’s 160,108.

Q: How do the cards compare in OpenCL performance?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A5500 scores 174,637 in Geekbench OpenCL, beating the Radeon PRO W7800’s 154,366 by 13.1%, a decisive advantage for NVIDIA.

Q: Which card wins in Vulkan benchmarks?

A: The AMD Radeon PRO W7800 scores 165,849 in Geekbench Vulkan, outperforming the NVIDIA RTX A5500’s 147,513 by 11.1%.

Q: What are the memory capacity and bandwidth differences?

A: The Radeon PRO W7800 has 32 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 576.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the RTX A5500 has 24 GB on a 384-bit bus with 768.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which card has a higher transistor density?

A: The AMD Radeon PRO W7800, built on a 5 nm TSMC process, achieves 109.1 million transistors per mm², far exceeding the RTX A5500’s 45.1 million per mm² on Samsung’s 8 nm node.

Q: Is the RTX A5500 still in production?

A: No, the NVIDIA RTX A5500 is end-of-life, whereas the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 is listed as active in production.