AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM vs NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data shows a decisive overall victory for the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile, which wins both recorded tests against the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM. The margin is substantial in both compute and graphics API workloads, though the gap narrows considerably when moving from OpenCL to Vulkan.

In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile scores 105307, while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM manages 62427. This represents a 68.7% advantage for the NVIDIA part, a very large performance gap that reflects the fundamental differences in compute throughput between the two architectures. The A4500 Mobile's FP32 throughput of 17.66 TFLOPS versus the RX 5600 OEM's 6.390 TFLOPS explains much of this OpenCL dominance, as OpenCL workloads tend to scale heavily with raw shader compute.

The Vulkan test tells a somewhat different story in terms of relative performance, though the winner remains unchanged. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile scores 76960, and the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM scores 53743, giving the NVIDIA part a 43.2% lead. This narrower margin suggests that the AMD card handles graphics-oriented workloads comparatively better than pure compute tasks, likely due to its higher boost clock of 1560 MHz versus 1500 MHz for the NVIDIA part. Still, a 43.2% deficit is far from competitive, and the RX 5600 OEM cannot close the gap even in its stronger API.

Looking at the database-wide percentiles, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile sits at the 93rd percentile of all GPUs, while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM sits at the 87th percentile. This six-point percentile gap understates the actual score difference because the distribution of GPU scores is dense in the middle ranges, but it confirms that the A4500 Mobile is a top-tier performer while the RX 5600 OEM is merely solid upper-midrange.

The average benchmark scores reinforce the head-to-head results. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile averages 91134 across all recorded tests, while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM averages 58085. That is a 56.9% difference in average scores, consistent with the individual test results. The A4500 Mobile's nearest rival is the NVIDIA RTX A4500 (desktop variant) with an average score of 91671, a mere 0.6% difference, indicating that the mobile part essentially matches its desktop counterpart. The RX 5600 OEM's closest competitor is the Intel Arc A570M at 58239, just 0.3% behind, placing the AMD card in a tight cluster with several midrange options.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU wins the OpenCL benchmark and by how much?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile wins with a score of 105307 versus 62427 for the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM, a 68.7% advantage.

Q: Is the Vulkan gap smaller than the OpenCL gap?

A: Yes. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile leads by 43.2% in Vulkan (76960 versus 53743), compared to the 68.7% lead in OpenCL.

Q: How do these GPUs compare to their nearest rivals in the database?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile is 0.6% behind the desktop RTX A4500 and 4.2% ahead of the Quadro GP100. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM is 0.3% behind the Intel Arc A570M and 0.5% behind the RX 6950 XT.

Q: What is the memory configuration difference?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 512.0 GB/s bandwidth. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM has 6 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Do both cards support the same API levels?

A: No. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM supports DirectX 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4.

Q: Which card has higher transistor density?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has 44.4 million transistors per mm² versus 41.0 million per mm² for the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM, despite the NVIDIA part being built on an older 8 nm process.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide between these two GPUs is significant, reflecting two very different design philosophies and technology generations. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile is built on the Ampere architecture using the GA104 chip, fabricated by Samsung on an 8 nm process. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM uses the RDNA 1.0 architecture with the Navi 10 chip, manufactured by TSMC on a 7 nm process. The process node advantage goes to AMD, but the transistor counts tell a different story: NVIDIA packs 17,400 million transistors into a 392 mm² die, while AMD fits 10,300 million into 251 mm².

The NVIDIA part includes dedicated hardware features that the AMD card completely lacks. The RTX A4500 Mobile has 46 ray tracing cores and 184 tensor cores, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing and AI workloads. The RX 5600 OEM has no ray tracing cores and no tensor cores, meaning it must handle these workloads through traditional shader compute if at all. This is a fundamental capability gap that benchmarks in raw compute and graphics do not fully capture.

Shader organization also differs substantially. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has 5888 shading units, 184 texture mapping units, and 96 render output units. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM has 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. The NVIDIA card has nearly three times the shading units and substantially more texture and pixel throughput. The pixel rate for the A4500 Mobile is 144.0 GPixel/s versus 99.84 GPixel/s for the RX 5600 OEM, and the texture rate is 276.0 GTexel/s versus 199.7 GTexel/s.

Compute precision handling differs as well. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile delivers 17.66 TFLOPS for both FP32 and FP16, indicating a 1:1 ratio and no dedicated half-precision acceleration. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM delivers 6.390 TFLOPS FP32 but 12.78 TFLOPS FP16, a 2:1 ratio, showing that AMD chose to accelerate half-precision workloads. For AI and machine learning tasks that use FP16, the AMD card closes some of the gap, though the NVIDIA tensor cores provide a different kind of acceleration that the raw FP16 numbers do not reflect.

Memory architecture is another differentiator. The NVIDIA part uses a 256-bit memory bus with 16 GB of GDDR6 running at 16 Gbps effective, yielding 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The AMD part uses a 192-bit bus with 6 GB of GDDR6 at 12 Gbps effective, producing 288.0 GB/s. The NVIDIA card has nearly double the memory bandwidth and nearly triple the capacity, which matters for large datasets and high-resolution textures.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every specification category. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile uses the GA104 chip, while the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM uses Navi 10. Process nodes differ: 8 nm Samsung for NVIDIA versus 7 nm TSMC for AMD. The NVIDIA part has 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, while the AMD part has 10,300 million on 251 mm².

Clock speeds show a mixed picture. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has a base clock of 930 MHz and a boost clock of 1500 MHz. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM has a higher base of 1130 MHz and a higher boost of 1560 MHz, plus a game clock of 1375 MHz. Despite lower clocks, the NVIDIA card achieves far higher throughput due to its larger shader count.

Memory specifications diverge completely. The NVIDIA card has 16 GB GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 512.0 GB/s bandwidth and 16 Gbps effective memory speed. The AMD card has 6 GB GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus with 288.0 GB/s bandwidth and 12 Gbps effective speed.

Compute resources favor NVIDIA overwhelmingly: 5888 shading units, 184 TMUs, 96 ROPs, 46 RT cores, and 184 tensor cores versus 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs with no RT or tensor cores. The resulting throughput figures are 17.66 TFLOPS FP32 for NVIDIA versus 6.390 TFLOPS for AMD, and 17.66 TFLOPS FP16 versus 12.78 TFLOPS respectively.

Power and physical specifications also differ. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has a 140 W TDP with no power connectors, as it is designed for mobile integration. The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM has a 125 W TDP, is dual-slot, uses a single 8-pin power connector, and suggests a 300 W PSU. The AMD card has fixed display outputs of 1x HDMI 2.0b and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the NVIDIA card's outputs are portable device dependent. Both use PCIe 4.0 x16.

DirectX support differs: NVIDIA offers 12 Ultimate (12_2), while AMD offers 12 (12_1). Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The release dates are over two years apart, with the AMD card launching in January 2020 and the NVIDIA card in March 2022.

The Verdict

The data supports a clear choice for most users: the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile is the stronger GPU by every measured metric. It wins both head-to-head benchmarks with margins of 68.7% and 43.2%, has substantially more memory, more bandwidth, more compute units, and adds ray tracing and tensor core capabilities that the AMD card lacks entirely.

The AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM does have advantages in clock speed and process node, with a smaller 7 nm die and higher boost clock of 1560 MHz versus 1500 MHz. It also draws 15 W less power at 125 W versus 140 W and generates significantly less heat per transistor. However, these advantages do not translate into benchmark wins. The RX 5600 OEM's nearest rival in the database is the Intel Arc A570M, which sits just 0.3% ahead, placing it in a competitive midrange cluster. The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile, by contrast, sits near its desktop equivalent, the RTX A4500, trailing by only 0.6%.

For workloads that rely on raw compute, memory capacity, or ray tracing and AI acceleration, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile is the only sensible choice between these two. The AMD card is competitive only in scenarios where power draw is the primary constraint and where its 2:1 FP16 ratio can be exploited for half-precision workloads. Even then, the NVIDIA tensor cores offer a different and often more effective path for AI tasks.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile wins in every benchmark category recorded in the database, so the distinctions below are based on the magnitude of its advantages and the architectural features that extend beyond the measured tests.

For OpenCL compute workloads, the NVIDIA card is in a different class. A 68.7% lead indicates that large-scale compute tasks, scientific simulations, and data processing will heavily favor the A4500 Mobile. Its 512.0 GB/s memory bandwidth and 16 GB capacity allow it to handle datasets that would completely exhaust the RX 5600 OEM's 6 GB frame buffer. The 184 tensor cores also position the NVIDIA card for machine learning inference and training tasks that the AMD card cannot accelerate in hardware.

For Vulkan graphics workloads, the NVIDIA card still wins with a 43.2% margin, but this is the AMD card's closest performance. The RX 5600 OEM's higher boost clock of 1560 MHz helps it in latency-sensitive graphical tasks, and its 2:1 FP16 ratio of 12.78 TFLOPS gives it a niche advantage in applications that use half-precision shaders. The AMD card also draws less power at 125 W versus 140 W, making it slightly more efficient in pure rasterization workloads where its full shader count is utilized.

For ray tracing and future-proofing, the NVIDIA RTX A4500 Mobile has no competition here. Its 46 RT cores provide hardware-accelerated ray tracing that the RX 5600 OEM cannot perform at all. For DirectX 12 Ultimate features, the NVIDIA card supports the full 12_2 feature set while the AMD card is limited to 12_1.

For legacy DirectX 12 (12_1) applications and general rasterization at moderate settings, the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM remains serviceable. Its 6.390 TFLOPS of FP32 compute is sufficient for 1080p gaming at medium settings, and its lower power draw makes it easier to cool in compact systems. However, the data shows that even in its best-case scenario, the RX 5600 OEM trails the A4500 Mobile by over 40%, making it a fallback option rather than a genuine alternative for demanding workloads.