AMD Radeon PRO W7900 vs Intel Arc A770 Comparison

The Verdict

The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 and Intel Arc A770 are not direct competitors in the traditional sense, but benchmark data reveals a fascinating split. The W7900 is a professional workstation card with a 94th percentile ranking among all GPUs, while the Arc A770 sits at the 90th percentile. The most striking result is that the Intel Arc A770 wins the OpenCL benchmark decisively, scoring 109,175 versus 84,379 for the AMD card, a 22.7% advantage. However, in Vulkan, the AMD card dominates with a 45.4% lead, scoring 137,070 versus 94,284.

The verdict is clear: if your workload relies heavily on OpenCL acceleration, the Arc A770 offers superior raw compute performance at a fraction of the size and power requirements. If your applications leverage Vulkan, the W7900 is the undisputed choice, delivering 45.4% higher performance. The W7900 also carries workstation credentials with 48 GB of memory, while the Arc A770 is an end-of-life consumer product with 16 GB. Pick the W7900 for Vulkan-centric professional workflows, pick the Arc A770 for OpenCL-heavy compute tasks where budget and power constraints matter more than VRAM capacity.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs stem from entirely different architectural philosophies. The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 uses the Navi 31 chip built on RDNA 3.0 architecture, codenamed Plum Bonito, part of the Radeon Pro Navi (Navi III Series) generation. It is manufactured on a 5 nm process at TSMC, packing 57,700 million transistors on a 529 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of 109.1M per mm². The Intel Arc A770 uses the DG2-512 chip based on Xe-HPG architecture, part of the Alchemist (Arc 7) generation. It is built on a 6 nm process, also at TSMC, with 21,700 million transistors on a 406 mm² die, giving a transistor density of 53.4M per mm².

The W7900 has a boost clock of 2495 MHz and a base clock of 1760 MHz, while the Arc A770 boosts to 2400 MHz with a base of 2100 MHz. The AMD card features 6144 shading units, 384 texture mapping units, 192 render output units, and 96 ray tracing cores. The Intel card has 4096 shading units, 256 TMUs, 128 ROPs, and 32 RT cores. The FP32 compute throughput tells the story of their different design targets: the W7900 delivers 61.32 TFLOPS, while the Arc A770 delivers 19.66 TFLOPS. However, the Arc A770 achieves 39.32 TFLOPS in FP16 with a 2:1 ratio, while the W7900 does 61.32 TFLOPS in FP16 with a 1:1 ratio.

Both cards support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The W7900 is still in active production, while the Arc A770 has reached end-of-life status. The Intel card's predecessor is Xe Graphics, and its successor is Battlemage. The AMD card's predecessor is Radeon Pro Vega, and it has no recorded successor.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head benchmark results show a stark contrast between the two APIs. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Intel Arc A770 wins decisively with a score of 109,175 against the AMD Radeon PRO W7900's 84,379. This represents a 22.7% advantage for Intel. The data indicates that OpenCL workloads favor the Arc A770's architecture, likely due to its compute-oriented design and higher base clock.

In Geekbench Vulkan, the tables turn completely. The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 scores 137,070, while the Intel Arc A770 manages only 94,284. The AMD card leads by 45.4%, a substantial margin. Vulkan workloads clearly benefit from the W7900's larger memory bus, higher bandwidth, and superior rasterization throughput. The W7900 has a pixel rate of 479.0 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 958.1 GTexel/s, compared to 307.2 GPixel/s and 614.4 GTexel/s for the Intel card.

The overall average benchmark score also tells a different story. The W7900 averages 110,725 across its recorded benchmarks, placing it at the 94th percentile. The Arc A770 averages 68,809, placing it at the 90th percentile. However, the Arc A770 has three recorded benchmarks (including a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 2,969), while the W7900 has only two. This discrepancy in test coverage means the averages are not directly comparable. The nearest rivals for the W7900 include the AMD Radeon Pro Vega II (1% ahead), NVIDIA RTX A5500 Mobile (2.8% behind), AMD Radeon Pro W6600X (3.2% ahead), and NVIDIA Tesla V100 SXM2 16 GB (3.2% behind). The Arc A770's nearest rivals are NVIDIA CMP 90HX (0.3% behind), AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 (0.4% ahead), AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (1.5% behind), and NVIDIA Quadro P6000 (1.7% behind).

Specification Differences

The two cards differ across nearly every specification field. The most obvious difference is memory: the W7900 has 48 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus, delivering 864.0 GB/s bandwidth, while the Arc A770 has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, delivering 512.0 GB/s. The AMD card's memory clock is 2250 MHz (18 Gbps effective), while the Intel card runs at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective).

The W7900 is a triple-slot card measuring 280 mm in length, 110 mm in height, and 51 mm in width. It requires 2x 8-pin power connectors and a 600 W suggested PSU. The Arc A770 is a dual-slot card with no recorded dimensions. It uses 1x 6-pin plus 1x 8-pin power connectors and a 550 W suggested PSU. The W7900 has a TDP of 295 W, while the Arc A770 has a TDP of 225 W.

Display outputs differ: the W7900 offers 3x DisplayPort 2.1 plus 1x mini-DisplayPort 2.1, while the Arc A770 offers 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 2.0. The W7900 was released on 2023-05-25, while the Arc A770 was released on 2022-10-11. The AMD card is still active in production, while the Intel card is end-of-life with Battlemage as its successor.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has higher average benchmark performance?

A: The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 has an average benchmark score of 110,725, placing it at the 94th percentile. The Intel Arc A770 averages 68,809, placing it at the 90th percentile. However, the W7900 has only two recorded benchmarks while the Arc A770 has three, so the averages reflect different test sets.

Q: Why does the Intel Arc A770 win in OpenCL despite being a lower-tier card?

A: In Geekbench OpenCL, the Arc A770 scores 109,175 versus 84,379 for the W7900, a 22.7% advantage. This suggests the Arc A770's Xe-HPG architecture and higher base clock of 2100 MHz provide better OpenCL compute efficiency, despite having fewer shading units (4096 versus 6144) and lower FP32 throughput (19.66 TFLOPS versus 61.32 TFLOPS).

Q: How do the two cards compare in Vulkan performance?

A: The W7900 dominates Vulkan with a score of 137,070 versus 94,284 for the Arc A770, a 45.4% lead. The W7900's larger memory bus (384-bit versus 256-bit), higher bandwidth (864.0 GB/s versus 512.0 GB/s), and more ROPs (192 versus 128) contribute to this substantial advantage.

Q: Which card has more VRAM and what does that mean?

A: The W7900 has 48 GB of GDDR6 memory, three times the 16 GB on the Arc A770. This makes the W7900 suitable for large datasets and multi-application professional workloads, while the Arc A770's 16 GB is more typical for consumer gaming and moderate compute tasks.

Q: What are the power requirements for each card?

A: The W7900 has a TDP of 295 W and requires a 600 W suggested PSU with 2x 8-pin connectors. The Arc A770 has a TDP of 225 W and requires a 550 W suggested PSU with 1x 6-pin plus 1x 8-pin connectors. The Intel card is more power-efficient per watt of compute in OpenCL, while the AMD card delivers far higher absolute FP32 throughput.

Q: Which card is still in production?

A: The AMD Radeon PRO W7900 is listed as Active in production status, while the Intel Arc A770 is End-of-life. The Arc A770's successor is Battlemage, while the W7900 has no recorded successor.

Where Each One Wins

AMD Radeon PRO W7900 wins in:

• Vulkan compute: 45.4% ahead of the Arc A770 in Geekbench Vulkan (137,070 versus 94,284).
• Memory capacity: 48 GB versus 16 GB, three times the VRAM for large professional workloads.
• Memory bandwidth: 864.0 GB/s versus 512.0 GB/s, critical for data-intensive rendering.
• Rasterization throughput: 479.0 GPixel/s versus 307.2 GPixel/s, and texture rate of 958.1 GTexel/s versus 614.4 GTexel/s.
• FP32 compute: 61.32 TFLOPS versus 19.66 TFLOPS, more than three times the raw single-precision throughput.
• Overall benchmark percentile: 94th versus 90th.
• Professional ecosystem: still in active production with workstation-class DisplayPort 2.1 outputs.
• Power headroom: 295 W TDP allows for higher sustained performance.

Intel Arc A770 wins in:

• OpenCL compute: 22.7% ahead of the W7900 in Geekbench OpenCL (109,175 versus 84,379).
• FP16 efficiency: 39.32 TFLOPS at a 2:1 ratio versus 61.32 TFLOPS at 1:1, meaning the Intel card gets more FP16 work done per FP32 unit.
• Physical footprint: dual-slot versus triple-slot, easier to fit in standard chassis.
• Power requirements: 225 W TDP and 550 W suggested PSU versus 295 W and 600 W, lower system demands.
• Release timing: launched earlier on 2022-10-11, with a successor (Battlemage) already announced.
• Display flexibility: includes HDMI 2.1 output alongside three DisplayPort 2.0 connections.
• Transistor efficiency: despite lower density, the 6 nm process allows a more compact die at 406 mm² versus 529 mm².

The use-case split is clear from the data. For Vulkan-based rendering engines, scientific visualization, or any professional workload that leverages Vulkan compute, the W7900 is the superior choice with its 45.4% performance lead, massive 48 GB memory pool, and active production status. For OpenCL-heavy compute tasks such as certain machine learning inference, video processing, or general-purpose GPU compute, the Arc A770 delivers better raw performance at lower power and physical footprint. The Arc A770 also makes sense for builders prioritizing OpenCL throughput over VRAM capacity, as its 16 GB is sufficient for many compute workloads while its 22.7% OpenCL advantage over the W7900 is substantial. The W7900 remains the workstation-class option for professionals who need maximum memory bandwidth, Vulkan performance, and sustained compute in a triple-slot form factor.