AMD Radeon RX 560X vs NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 Comparison

AMD Radeon RX 560X and NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 occupy very different corners of the GPU landscape. The RX 560X is a compact, low-power Polaris part aimed at entry-level desktop use, while the Quadro RTX 4000 is a professional Turing workstation card with ray tracing and tensor cores. Benchmark results show a stark performance gulf: the Quadro RTX 4000 wins both head-to-head tests decisively, but the RX 560X holds its own in the lower end of the percentile rankings. This analysis breaks down where each card makes sense based on the available data.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon RX 560X is not a competitive force in raw compute or graphics workloads when placed next to the Quadro RTX 4000. In the two shared benchmarks—Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan—the RX 560X loses both, with no wins in the head-to-head comparison. Its strengths lie elsewhere: it draws only 75 W, requires no power connectors, and is a dual-slot card measuring 170 mm in length. That makes it a fit for small form factor builds or systems with weak power supplies, where the Quadro’s 160 W TDP and 8-pin connector would be problematic. The RX 560X also supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3, which covers modern gaming and light productivity needs.

The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 wins outright in every measurable performance category from the data. It delivers 74,540 in Geekbench OpenCL versus the RX 560X’s 17,020—a 77.2% advantage—and 78,844 in Vulkan versus 20,231, a 74.3% lead. Its 8 GB GDDR6 memory with 416.0 GB/s bandwidth dwarfs the RX 560X’s 4 GB GDDR5 at 112.0 GB/s. The Quadro also brings 36 ray tracing cores and 288 tensor cores, features absent from the RX 560X entirely. For professional workloads like CAD, rendering, or AI inference, the Quadro is the clear choice. Its single-slot design and 241 mm length make it more suitable for workstation chassis, and it supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) and Vulkan 1.4, which the RX 560X cannot match.

FAQ

Q: Which card has higher benchmark scores overall?

A: The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 has a higher average benchmark score of 17,789 compared to the RX 560X’s 18,626, but this is misleading because the RX 560X only has two benchmarks while the Quadro has ten. In direct head-to-head tests, the Quadro wins both Geekbench OpenCL (74,540 vs 17,020) and Vulkan (78,844 vs 20,231).

Q: Does the RX 560X beat the Quadro in any benchmark?

A: No. The head-to-head data shows zero wins for the RX 560X and two wins for the Quadro RTX 4000. The RX 560X’s closest rival is the AMD FirePro D500, which scores 18,533, just 0.5% higher.

Q: What is the memory difference between the two cards?

A: The RX 560X has 4 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 112.0 GB/s bandwidth. The Quadro RTX 4000 has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 416.0 GB/s—nearly four times the bandwidth.

Q: Which card is better for ray tracing?

A: Only the Quadro RTX 4000 supports ray tracing, with 36 dedicated RT cores. The RX 560X has no RT cores listed, so it cannot hardware-accelerate ray tracing workloads.

Q: How do their power requirements compare?

A: The RX 560X has a 75 W TDP and needs no power connectors, with a suggested PSU of 250 W. The Quadro RTX 4000 has a 160 W TDP, requires one 8-pin connector, and suggests a 450 W PSU.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life. The RX 560X was released on 2018-04-10, and the Quadro RTX 4000 on 2018-11-12.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The only two benchmarks shared between these cards are Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, and the results are lopsided. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Quadro RTX 4000 scores 74,540 against the RX 560X’s 17,020. That is a delta of -77.2% for the AMD card, meaning the Quadro delivers more than four times the compute performance. The gap narrows slightly in Vulkan, where the Quadro hits 78,844 and the RX 560X manages 20,231—a -74.3% difference. These are not marginal wins; they represent a fundamental class difference. The RX 560X’s 2.611 TFLOPS FP32 performance is less than half of the Quadro’s 7.119 TFLOPS, and its texture rate of 81.60 GTexel/s is under a third of the Quadro’s 222.5 GTexel/s.

The Quadro’s advantage extends to pixel throughput as well. It renders 98.88 GPixel/s compared to the RX 560X’s 20.40 GPixel/s, a nearly 5x difference that matters in high-resolution display workloads. In the broader benchmark suite, the Quadro posts a Passmark G3D score of 15,117 and a GPU compute score of 6,176, though no comparable RX 560X numbers exist in the pack. The Quadro’s average benchmark score of 17,789 places it in the 61st percentile of all GPUs, while the RX 560X sits at the 62nd percentile with an average of 18,626—a quirk driven by the different test counts and the RX 560X’s strong showing in its two tests.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every specification field. The RX 560X uses the Polaris 21 chip on a 14 nm process from GlobalFoundries, with 3,000 million transistors on a 123 mm² die. The Quadro RTX 4000 uses the TU104 chip on a 12 nm TSMC process, packing 13,600 million transistors onto 545 mm². Transistor density is similar—24.4M/mm² for AMD versus 25.0M/mm² for NVIDIA—but the sheer scale is different. Clock speeds also diverge: the RX 560X runs at 1175 MHz base and 1275 MHz boost, while the Quadro has a lower 1005 MHz base but a much higher 1545 MHz boost. Memory clocks are 1750 MHz (7 Gbps effective) for the RX 560X versus 1625 MHz (13 Gbps effective) for the Quadro, with the latter’s faster GDDR6 and wider bus yielding 416.0 GB/s versus 112.0 GB/s.

Processing units tell the story of compute capability. The RX 560X has 1,024 shading units, 64 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. The Quadro RTX 4000 has 2,304 shading units, 144 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, plus 36 RT cores and 288 tensor cores that the AMD card lacks entirely. FP16 performance also differs: the RX 560X offers 2.611 TFLOPS (1:1 ratio), while the Quadro provides 14.24 TFLOPS (2:1 ratio), making it far more capable in mixed-precision workloads. Physical specifications are equally distinct: the RX 560X is a 170 mm dual-slot card with no power connectors, while the Quadro is a 241 mm single-slot card requiring one 8-pin connector. The RX 560X offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0b, and 1x DisplayPort 1.4a; the Quadro provides 3x DisplayPort 1.4a and 1x USB Type-C. The Quadro’s launch MSRP is 899 USD.

Architecture Differences

Architecturally, these cards represent two different generations and philosophies. The RX 560X uses GCN 4.0, built on the Polaris architecture from the RX 500X generation. It is a 14 nm design with a modest 3,000 million transistors, focused on efficiency and entry-level performance. GCN 4.0 does not include ray tracing or tensor cores, and its FP16 throughput matches FP32 at a 1:1 ratio, indicating no dedicated half-precision hardware. The card’s bus interface is PCIe 3.0 x8, which limits bandwidth to the host system compared to the Quadro’s PCIe 3.0 x16.

The Quadro RTX 4000 is built on the Turing architecture, specifically the Quadro Turing (Tx000) generation. Turing introduces dedicated RT cores for ray tracing and tensor cores for AI acceleration, neither of which exists in GCN 4.0. The TU104 chip is massive—13,600 million transistors on 545 mm²—and fabricated on a 12 nm TSMC process. Turing also delivers FP16 at a 2:1 ratio, doubling the throughput to 14.24 TFLOPS. The Quadro supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), which includes features like variable rate shading and mesh shaders, while the RX 560X is limited to DirectX 12 (12_0). Vulkan support also differs: the Quadro supports 1.4, the RX 560X only 1.3. The Quadro’s predecessor is Quadro Volta, and its successor is Workstation Ampere, whereas the RX 560X follows Polaris and precedes Vega. These architectural differences explain the performance chasm: the Quadro is a professional compute and graphics tool, while the RX 560X is a basic consumer card with a 62nd percentile standing among all GPUs, just one point above the Quadro’s 61st percentile despite the massive performance gap.