AMD Radeon RX 590 GME vs NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile Comparison

The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile and AMD Radeon RX 590 GME occupy very different positions in the hardware landscape, with the former being a low-power mobile workstation solution and the latter a desktop consumer card from an older generation. The recorded benchmark data reveals a split decision: each card wins one of the two head-to-head tests, and the margins are substantial in both directions. The RTX A500 Mobile posts an average benchmark score of 39,568, placing it in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, while the RX 590 GME averages 32,601, sitting in the 77th percentile. These figures alone suggest the NVIDIA part holds a general performance advantage, but the specific test results tell a more nuanced story about API preferences and workload characteristics.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two cards split their head-to-head matchups exactly, with one win apiece. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile scores 41,263 against the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME’s 36,294. That is a 13.7% advantage for the NVIDIA card, a meaningful margin that reflects its newer architecture and higher efficiency in compute-heavy OpenCL workloads. The RTX A500 Mobile’s average score of 39,568 across all benchmarks also exceeds the RX 590 GME’s average of 32,601 by roughly 21%, which aligns with its higher percentile ranking.

The Vulkan results reverse the outcome decisively. The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME scores 60,508 in Geekbench Vulkan, while the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile manages only 37,873. That represents a 37.4% deficit for the NVIDIA card, a massive gap that flips the overall narrative. The RX 590 GME’s Vulkan score is nearly double its OpenCL score, suggesting that AMD’s GCN architecture in this configuration is particularly well optimized for Vulkan’s draw-call handling and asynchronous compute features. Interestingly, the RTX A500 Mobile’s Vulkan score of 37,873 is actually lower than its OpenCL score of 41,263, which is unusual for a modern GPU and points to driver or hardware limitations in the Vulkan path for this mobile part.

When placed against their nearest rivals from the database, both cards show competitive positioning. The RTX A500 Mobile’s nearest rival is the AMD Radeon Pro 575 with an average score of 39,555, a delta of 0% relative to the NVIDIA part’s 39,568. The AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100 scores 40,063, putting it 1.2% ahead of the RTX A500 Mobile, while the AMD Radeon Pro 580 scores 40,318, which is 1.9% ahead. This places the RTX A500 Mobile in a tight cluster of professional-grade GPUs where performance differences are within a few percentage points. The RX 590 GME’s nearest rivals include the AMD FirePro S9300 X2 at 32,540 (0.2% behind the RX 590 GME), the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE at 32,456 (0.4% behind), and the NVIDIA T600 Mobile at 32,849 (0.8% ahead of the RX 590 GME). These deltas are all small, indicating that the RX 590 GME sits in a crowded mid-range segment where wins and losses come down to single-digit percentage differences.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile wins in scenarios that favor its Ampere architecture and modern feature set. Its OpenCL victory suggests it is better suited for general-purpose compute tasks, scientific workloads, and applications that rely on OpenCL for GPU acceleration. The 13.7% lead in that test is significant enough to matter in production environments where every percentage point of throughput counts. The RTX A500 Mobile also carries dedicated ray tracing cores and tensor cores, which the RX 590 GME lacks entirely, making the NVIDIA card the only option for workloads that leverage those hardware units. Its 8 nm process node from Samsung, compared to the RX 590 GME’s 14 nm node from GlobalFoundries, contributes to its lower power draw of 30 W versus 175 W, which is a decisive factor for mobile or compact systems where thermal and power budgets are constrained.

The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME wins decisively in Vulkan-based applications. Its 37.4% lead in the Geekbench Vulkan test is not a marginal edge but a dominant one, indicating that games or renderers built on Vulkan will perform dramatically better on this card. This advantage likely stems from the RX 590 GME’s higher texture rate of 204.5 GTexel/s compared to the RTX A500 Mobile’s 98.37 GTexel/s, as well as its larger memory bus of 256 bit versus 64 bit, which provides 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth against the NVIDIA part’s 96.00 GB/s. For users running Vulkan-based titles or Vulkan-accelerated productivity software, the RX 590 GME is the clear choice despite its older GCN 4.0 architecture. The card also offers 8 GB of VRAM versus 4 GB, which allows it to handle larger textures and datasets without spilling to system memory.

In terms of pure rasterization throughput, the RX 590 GME has a higher FP32 compute of 6.543 TFLOPS versus 6.296 TFLOPS for the RTX A500 Mobile, a small but real advantage. Its texture units count 144 against 64 for the NVIDIA part, and its pixel rate of 45.44 GPixel/s is only slightly lower than the RTX A500 Mobile’s 49.18 GPixel/s. The RX 590 GME’s higher shading unit count of 2,304 versus 2,048 also gives it more raw shading capacity, though the NVIDIA architecture’s efficiency partially compensates for the lower count.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile has an average benchmark score of 39,568, while the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME averages 32,601. The NVIDIA card also ranks in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, compared to the 77th percentile for the AMD card.

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

A: The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME scores 60,508 in Geekbench Vulkan, which is 37.4% higher than the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile’s 37,873. This is the largest performance gap recorded between the two cards in any test.

Q: What are the memory specifications for each card?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile has 4 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit bus, providing 96.00 GB/s of bandwidth. The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, providing 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

Q: Does either card support hardware ray tracing?

A: Yes, the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile includes 16 ray tracing cores and 64 tensor cores. The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME does not have any ray tracing or tensor cores, as its GCN 4.0 architecture predates those features.

Q: Which card has a higher pixel fill rate?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile has a pixel rate of 49.18 GPixel/s, which is higher than the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME’s 45.44 GPixel/s, despite the AMD card having a higher texture rate of 204.5 GTexel/s versus 98.37 GTexel/s.

Q: What is the power consumption difference?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile has a TDP of 30 W and uses no external power connectors, while the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME has a TDP of 175 W and requires a single 8-pin power connector with a suggested power supply of 450 W.

Specification Differences

The two cards diverge sharply across nearly every major specification. The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile uses the GA107S chip on an 8 nm Samsung process, while the AMD Radeon RX 590 GME uses the Polaris 20 chip on a 14 nm GlobalFoundries process. The NVIDIA part has 8,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, resulting in a transistor density of 43.5M per mm², whereas the AMD part has 5,700 million transistors on a larger 232 mm² die, giving a density of 24.6M per mm². Clock speeds differ significantly: the RTX A500 Mobile runs at a base of 832 MHz and a boost of 1537 MHz, while the RX 590 GME runs at a base of 1257 MHz and a boost of 1420 MHz. Memory clocks are 1500 MHz (12 Gbps effective) for the NVIDIA card and 2000 MHz (8 Gbps effective) for the AMD card.

Memory capacity and interface also differ: the RTX A500 Mobile has 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus, while the RX 590 GME has 8 GB of GDDR5 on a 256-bit bus. The resulting bandwidth is 96.00 GB/s versus 256.0 GB/s, a 2.67x advantage for the AMD card. Shading units favor AMD at 2,304 versus 2,048, texture units favor AMD at 144 versus 64, and ROPs are equal at 32 for both. The NVIDIA card includes 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores, which the AMD card lacks entirely. FP32 performance is close, with the RX 590 GME at 6.543 TFLOPS and the RTX A500 Mobile at 6.296 TFLOPS. The power envelope is drastically different: 30 W for the NVIDIA card versus 175 W for the AMD card. The RTX A500 Mobile is an IGP form factor with no power connectors and a PCIe 4.0 x8 interface, while the RX 590 GME is a dual-slot card with a single 8-pin connector, a 450 W suggested PSU, and a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Display outputs also differ, with the NVIDIA card being portable-device dependent and the AMD card offering 1x HDMI 2.0b and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a.

Architecture Differences

The architectural gap between these two GPUs is generational and fundamental. The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile is built on Ampere architecture, specifically the GA107S chip, which is designed for efficiency and mobile deployment. It supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, giving it access to the latest graphics API features including mesh shaders, variable rate shading, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The AMD Radeon RX 590 GME uses GCN 4.0 architecture on the Polaris 20 chip, which supports DirectX 12 (12_0), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.3. The older GCN design lacks dedicated ray tracing hardware and tensor cores, which means it cannot accelerate those workloads in hardware.

The transistor counts reflect the architectural differences: the NVIDIA chip packs 8,700 million transistors into a smaller 200 mm² die, achieving a density of 43.5M per mm², while the AMD chip uses 5,700 million transistors across 232 mm², for a density of 24.6M per mm². The higher density of the Ampere part enables more features per area, including the RT and tensor cores that are absent from the Polaris design. The memory architectures also differ, with GDDR6 on a narrow 64-bit bus for NVIDIA versus GDDR5 on a wide 256-bit bus for AMD. This explains why the RX 590 GME achieves 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth despite using older memory technology.

The release timeline shows the RX 590 GME came first, launching on 2020-03-08, while the RTX A500 Mobile launched later on 2022-03-21. Both are now end-of-life products. The NVIDIA card’s predecessor is the Quadro Turing-M and its successor is Ada-MW, while the AMD card’s predecessor is Arctic Islands and its successor is Vega. In terms of API support, the RTX A500 Mobile’s Vulkan 1.4 support is newer than the RX 590 GME’s Vulkan 1.3, and the DirectX 12 Ultimate designation on the NVIDIA card indicates support for the full feature set of DX12_2, whereas the AMD card only supports the baseline DX12_0. These architectural differences translate directly into the benchmark results, with the NVIDIA card excelling in OpenCL and the AMD card dominating in Vulkan due to its higher memory bandwidth and texture throughput.