AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 vs NVIDIA T1000 Comparison

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 and NVIDIA T1000 represent two fundamentally different approaches to graphics hardware, separated by four years of architectural evolution and targeting distinct market segments. The Vega 56 is a high-power, large-die enthusiast part from AMD’s GCN 5.0 era, while the T1000 is a low-power, compact professional card built on NVIDIA’s Turing architecture. The benchmark data shows a narrow average score gap of just 3.4% in favor of the Vega 56, yet the two cards deliver that performance in entirely different ways, with the Vega 56 dominating raw throughput metrics and the T1000 achieving comparable results at a fraction of the power draw.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 has an average benchmark score of 37,507, which is 3.4% higher than the NVIDIA T1000’s 36,289. The Vega 56 also holds a slightly better percentile ranking at 81 versus the T1000’s 80.

Q: How do the two cards compare in terms of memory bandwidth?

A: The Vega 56 offers 409.6 GB/s of memory bandwidth via 8 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus, which is 2.56 times the T1000’s 160.0 GB/s. The T1000 uses 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus.

Q: What is the power consumption difference between the two cards?

A: The T1000 has a TDP of 50 W and requires no external power connectors, while the Vega 56 has a 210 W TDP and needs two 8-pin power connectors. The suggested PSU rating is 250 W for the T1000 and 550 W for the Vega 56.

Q: Which card supports a newer version of the Vulkan API?

A: The NVIDIA T1000 supports Vulkan 1.4, while the AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 is limited to Vulkan 1.3. Both cards support DirectX 12 (12_1) and OpenGL 4.6.

Q: What are the physical size differences between the two cards?

A: The Vega 56 is 280 mm long, 111 mm tall, and 40 mm wide, occupying a dual-slot form factor. The T1000 is 156 mm long and 69 mm tall, fitting in a single-slot design with no width dimension listed.

Q: Which card has more shading units and texture mapping units?

A: The Vega 56 has 3,584 shading units and 224 TMUs, compared to the T1000’s 896 shading units and 56 TMUs. The Vega 56 also has 64 ROPs versus the T1000’s 32 ROPs.

Where Each One Wins

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 wins decisively in every raw compute and throughput metric. Its FP32 performance of 10.54 TFLOPS is 4.22 times higher than the T1000’s 2.500 TFLOPS, and its FP16 output of 21.09 TFLOPS is similarly 4.22 times greater than the T1000’s 5.000 TFLOPS. This translates directly to texture and pixel processing: the Vega 56 delivers 329.5 GTexel/s and 94.14 GPixel/s, versus 78.12 GTexel/s and 44.64 GPixel/s for the T1000. In raw shader throughput, pixel fill, and texture fill, the Vega 56 is the clear winner by factors ranging from 2.11 to 4.22.

The NVIDIA T1000 wins in efficiency and physical footprint. Its 50 W TDP is just 23.8% of the Vega 56’s 210 W, and it achieves its 80th-percentile ranking without any external power connectors. The T1000 also wins on API support, offering Vulkan 1.4 versus the Vega 56’s Vulkan 1.3, and it provides four mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs compared to the Vega 56’s single HDMI 2.0b and three DisplayPort 1.4a connections. The T1000’s single-slot, 156 mm length makes it suitable for compact or multi-GPU configurations where the Vega 56’s 280 mm dual-slot design would not fit.

The benchmark results show a nuanced picture. The Vega 56 scores 73,512 on Geekbench Metal, while the T1000 scores 37,704 on Geekbench OpenCL and 34,874 on Geekbench Vulkan. These are different APIs and workloads, so direct comparison is limited, but the Vega 56’s Metal score is 94.9% higher than the T1000’s best OpenCL result. However, the T1000’s Vulkan score of 34,874 indicates respectable cross-API performance given its much smaller hardware budget. The Vega 56 also has a 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,501, which has no direct counterpart in the T1000’s benchmark list.

Architecture Differences

The Vega 56 is built on GCN 5.0 architecture using a Vega 10 chip fabricated on a 14 nm process at GlobalFoundries. It packs 12,500 million transistors into a 495 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 25.3 million per mm². The T1000 uses NVIDIA’s Turing architecture with a TU117 chip on TSMC’s 12 nm process, containing 4,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die for a density of 23.5 million per mm². The Vega 56’s die is 2.48 times larger and holds 2.66 times more transistors, but its density is only 7.7% higher, reflecting the different design philosophies.

Memory architecture is a major differentiator. The Vega 56 uses 8 GB of HBM2 on a 2048-bit memory bus, achieving 409.6 GB/s of bandwidth. The T1000 uses 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128-bit bus, delivering 160.0 GB/s. The Vega 56’s memory clock is 800 MHz with 1600 Mbps effective speed, while the T1000 runs at 1250 MHz with 10 Gbps effective speed. Despite the T1000’s faster memory clock, the Vega 56’s vastly wider bus gives it 2.56 times the total bandwidth. Both cards lack dedicated ray tracing cores and tensor cores, as neither architecture includes these features.

The Vega 56’s compute layout consists of 3,584 shading units, 224 TMUs, and 64 ROPs, while the T1000 has 896 shading units, 56 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. The Vega 56 has exactly four times the shading units and TMUs, and double the ROPs. Clock speeds are similar, with the Vega 56 boosting to 1471 MHz and the T1000 boosting to 1395 MHz, but the Vega 56’s massive parallelism advantage dominates. The Vega 56 is manufactured by AMD, while the T1000 is an NVIDIA product, and their predecessor/successor lineages diverge: the Vega 56 follows Polaris and leads to Navi, while the T1000 follows Quadro Volta and leads to Workstation Ampere.

Specification Differences

The most striking specification gap is power consumption: the Vega 56 draws 210 W versus the T1000’s 50 W, a 4.2 times difference. This drives the physical design apart, with the Vega 56 requiring dual-slot cooling and two 8-pin connectors, while the T1000 is single-slot with no power connectors. The suggested PSU ratings are 550 W and 250 W respectively. Memory capacity differs by 2 times, with 8 GB versus 4 GB, and the bus widths differ by 16 times, at 2048-bit versus 128-bit. Bandwidth is 409.6 GB/s versus 160.0 GB/s.

Compute resources differ by exactly 4 times for shading units (3,584 vs 896) and TMUs (224 vs 56), while ROPs differ by 2 times (64 vs 32). FP32 performance is 10.54 TFLOPS versus 2.500 TFLOPS, a 4.22 times gap, and FP16 performance is 21.09 TFLOPS versus 5.000 TFLOPS, also a 4.22 times gap. The Vega 56’s pixel rate of 94.14 GPixel/s is 2.11 times the T1000’s 44.64 GPixel/s, and its texture rate of 329.5 GTexel/s is 4.22 times the T1000’s 78.12 GTexel/s. Both cards share PCIe 3.0 x16 interfaces and DirectX 12 (12_1) support.

Physical dimensions differ substantially: the Vega 56 measures 280 mm by 111 mm by 40 mm, while the T1000 is 156 mm by 69 mm with no listed width. The Vega 56 has a launch MSRP of 399 USD, while the T1000 has no launch MSRP listed. The Vega 56 was released on 2017-08-13, and the T1000 on 2021-05-05. The Vega 56’s display outputs include 1x HDMI 2.0b and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a, while the T1000 offers 4x mini-DisplayPort 1.4a. Both cards support OpenGL 4.6, but the T1000’s Vulkan 1.4 support is newer than the Vega 56’s Vulkan 1.3.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Direct head-to-head benchmark comparisons are limited because the two cards were tested under different benchmark suites. The Vega 56 was evaluated with 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12, scoring 1,501, and Geekbench Metal, scoring 73,512. The T1000 was tested with Geekbench OpenCL, scoring 37,704, and Geekbench Vulkan, scoring 34,874. There is no overlap in test names, so the benchmark results must be interpreted through the lens of each card’s nearest rivals and aggregate scores.

The average benchmark scores provide the clearest comparison. The Vega 56’s 37,507 average is 3.4% higher than the T1000’s 36,289. Looking at nearest rivals, the Vega 56 sits within 1.6% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile (38,135) and within 0.4% of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 (37,648). The T1000 is within 0.7% of the AMD Radeon RX 5300M (36,529) and within 0.7% of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN X (36,530). This places the two cards in adjacent performance tiers, with the Vega 56 marginally ahead despite its massive compute advantage.

The Vega 56’s 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 score of 1,501 indicates its DirectX 12 performance capability, while the T1000’s Geekbench Vulkan score of 34,874 shows its Vulkan efficiency. The T1000’s Geekbench OpenCL score of 37,704 is notably close to its average benchmark score, suggesting consistency across workloads. The Vega 56’s Geekbench Metal score of 73,512 is the single highest individual result between the two cards, but it reflects Apple’s Metal API rather than a cross-platform standard.

In terms of percentile rankings, the Vega 56 outperforms 81% of all GPUs, while the T1000 outperforms 80%. This 1-percentile difference aligns with the 3.4% average score gap. The Vega 56’s nearest rival list includes the Tesla P4, which is only 0.3% behind, and the Radeon PRO W6400, which is 0.9% behind. The T1000’s closest rival is the Radeon RX 5300M at 0.7% behind, with the Radeon Pro Duo 1.2% ahead and the Quadro GV100 2.2% ahead. These rival comparisons show that both cards are tightly clustered in their respective performance neighborhoods, with no single competitor dominating either card by more than 2.2%.

The benchmark data confirms that the Vega 56’s architectural advantages in memory bandwidth, shader count, and raw compute do not translate into a proportional performance lead in the average benchmark score. The 4.22 times FP32 advantage yields only a 3.4% average score advantage, indicating that the T1000’s Turing architecture extracts significantly more practical performance per unit of compute. Conversely, the T1000 achieves 96.8% of the Vega 56’s average score while consuming only 23.8% of the power and occupying a fraction of the physical space. This makes the T1000 a remarkable efficiency champion, while the Vega 56 remains the raw throughput leader, particularly for workloads that leverage its 2.56 times memory bandwidth advantage.