Intel Arc A310 vs NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 72 GB Blackwell Comparison

Where Each One Wins

The benchmark data splits this comparison into two completely different worlds. The Intel Arc A310 does not win a single recorded test in the head-to-head suite. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 72 GB Blackwell takes all seven benchmark wins. The gap is not subtle. It is a generational and architectural chasm that shows up in every single category.

The Intel Arc A310 is an entry-level, end-of-life product. It was designed for basic graphics output, light media work, and casual use cases. Its best showing comes in the DirectX 9 test, where it scores 69 points. That is still 77.8% behind the RTX PRO 5000, but it is relatively the closest margin for the Intel part. The Arc A310 also posts a Passmark G2D score of 625, which is its second-best result relative to the NVIDIA card. Those two scores suggest that for very old APIs and simple 2D desktop tasks, the gap, while still huge, narrows somewhat.

The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 72 GB Blackwell is a professional workstation flagship. It wins every benchmark by a massive margin. Its smallest win is in Passmark DirectX 12, where it leads by 62.8%. Its largest wins are in compute and legacy DX10, where it leads by 86.2% and 82.3% respectively. This card is designed for compute-heavy professional loads, AI inference, and the highest-end rendering tasks. The data shows that it dominates across every API level, from DirectX 9 through 12, and in compute.

The use-case split is clear. If a workload is any type of 3D rendering, compute, or modern gaming, the NVIDIA is the only viable option. The Intel Arc A310 should only be considered for basic display output, office productivity, or as a placeholder card in a system that does not need any real graphics performance. The database's average benchmark score confirms this: the Intel card averages 7550 points, while the NVIDIA averages 6407 points, but the NVIDIA's average is dragged down by its bizarrely low DirectX 12 PassMark score of 78, while its 3D score is 24310. This is an anomaly in the data, as the head-to-head results show the NVIDIA winning by 62.8% at minimum.

The Verdict

Anyone building a professional workstation for serious 3D work, AI, or video rendering should pick the NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 72 GB Blackwell without hesitation. It wins 100% of the benchmarks in this comparison. It offers 14080 shading units, 110 ray tracing cores, and 72 GB of GDDR7 memory with a 1.34 TB/s bandwidth. That is a level of capability that the Intel card cannot approach. The NVIDIA is currently an active, in-market product while the Intel is end-of-life. The RTX PRO card is the only rational choice for anyone who needs compute performance.

Who should pick the Intel Arc A310? It only makes sense for extremely low-profile, low-power systems. It uses no external power connectors, and has a TDP of 30 W. It is single-slot, it does not require a PSU beyond a 200 W recommendation. If the job is 2D desktop work, basic video playback, or running an older legacy application that only uses DirectX 9, the Intel card can handle it. But that is the entire list. For any modern DirectX 12 workload, the Intel card scores just 29 points, versus 78 for the NVIDIA, a 62.8% difference. The data says the Arc A310 is a display adapter, not a graphics accelerator.

There is no middle ground. The scores do not overlap. The NVIDIA wins every single category with deltas ranging from 31.6% to 86.2%. The verdict is simple: get the NVIDIA for any serious use case. The Intel is obsolete and should be avoided for new builds unless the specific requirement is a fanless or ultra-low-power display output.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The most important head-to-head result is the PassMark G3D score. The Intel Arc A310 scores 5433 points, while the NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 scores 24310 points. That is a 77.7% deficit for the Intel. This is the overall graphics performance metric, and it is not close. The NVIDIA card is 4.5 times faster in raw 3D rendering performance.

The GPU compute test is the biggest gap. Intel scores 2157 points, NVIDIA scores 15667 points. The delta is 86.2%. This benchmark is critical for professionals who use GPU acceleration for physics, simulations, or AI. The NVIDIA tensor cores, 440 of them, are not even measured in this test, but they are the reason it is so dominant. The Intel card has no tensor cores at all.

In legacy DirectX 9, the NVIDIA scores 311 points, Intel scores 69 points. That is a 77.8% advantage for NVIDIA. In DirectX 10, NVIDIA scores 175, Intel scores 31, a delta of 82.3%. In DirectX 11, NVIDIA scores 219, Intel scores 33, a delta of 84.9%. The only slightly narrower gap is in DirectX 12, where NVIDIA scores 78, Intel scores 29, still a 62.8% difference. Final DirectX 12 result is the most surprising because the NVIDIA is so far ahead in hardware but only manages this modest score in this specific PassMark test, but the data is the data.

The 2D test is the closest comparison. The NVIDIA scores 914 points, the Intel scores 625 points, which is a 31.6% delta. That is the smallest gap in the entire suite. For basic 2D desktop drawing, the Intel is relatively much more competitive, but it still loses.

The average benchmark score from the database also tells a story. The Intel averages 7550 points and sits at the 40th percentile of all GPUs. The NVIDIA averages 6407 points and sits at the 37th percentile, which is confusing because the NVIDIA wins every head-to-head test. The reason is that the average is calculated over a different set of tests, and the NVIDIA's DirectX 12 PassMark score of 78 is an outlier that drags its average down. When comparing the rival cards, the Intel is within 1% of the AMD Radeon R7 250 and 1.4% of the AMD Radeon HD 8850M. The NVIDIA is within 0.3% of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE and 1.1% of the AMD Radeon Vega 10 Mobile. So the NVIDIA's average is actually in the same league as a 2011 GTX 580M, which is a massive anomaly, but the head-to-head results are the more reliable source.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in the 3D rendering test?

A: The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 is significantly faster. It scores 24310 points in the PassMark G3D benchmark, while the Intel Arc A310 scores 5433 points, a delta of 77.7%.

Q: Is the Intel Arc A310 good for compute workloads?

A: No. In the PassMark GPU compute test, the Intel scores 2157 points, versus 15667 points for the NVIDIA, which is an 86.2% deficit. The Intel card has no tensor cores.

Q: How much VRAM does each card have?

A: The Intel Arc A310 has 4 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit bus, while the NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 has 72 GB of GDDR7 memory on a 384-bit bus. The NVIDIA's bandwidth is 1.34 TB/s, the Intel's is 124.0 GB/s.

Q: Which GPU has better DirectX 11 support?

A: The NVIDIA is the winner. It scores 219 points in the PassMark DirectX 11 benchmark, versus 33 points for the Intel, which is an 84.9% difference. Both support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2).

Q: What is the power draw difference?

A: The Intel Arc A310 has a TDP of 30 W and uses no external power connectors. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 has a TDP of 300 W and requires a single 16-pin power connector. The Intel recommends a 200 W PSU, the NVIDIA recommends a 700 W PSU.

Q: Is the NVIDIA card a dual-slot design?

A: Yes, it is a dual-slot card, measuring 267 mm in length, 111 mm in height and 40 mm in width. The Intel is a single-slot card, but its exact dimensions are not listed.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs are built on completely different architectures from different generations. The Intel Arc A310 uses the Xe-HPG architecture, specifically the DG2-128 chip, which is part of the Alchemist generation (Arc 3). This is Intel's first generation of discrete gaming GPUs. The NVIDIA RTX PRO 5000 uses the Blackwell 2.0 architecture, with the GB202 chip, and is part of the Blackwell PRO W generation. This is NVIDIA's latest professional architecture, built for the workstation market.

The process nodes are both from TSMC, but different sizes. Intel uses a 6 nm process, while NVIDIA uses a 5 nm process. The Intel chip has 7,200 million transistors on a 157 mm² die, giving it a density of 45.9 million transistors per mm². The NVIDIA chip has 92,200 million transistors on a 750 mm² die, with a density of 122.9 million transistors per mm². That is a massive difference: the NVIDIA's die is nearly 5x larger and has over 12x more transistors.

The Intel architecture is a compact, low-power design. It has 768 shading units, 32 texture mapping units, and 16 ROPs. It also has 6 ray tracing units, but no tensor cores. The NVIDIA has 14080 shading units, 440 TMUs, 160 ROPs, 110 ray tracing cores, and 440 tensor cores. The tensor cores are dedicated AI acceleration hardware, which is entirely absent from the Intel card. This explains the massive compute performance difference.

The API support is identical: both support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. So they are both modern from a software feature standpoint. The physical interface is different: the Intel uses PCIe 4.0 x8, while the NVIDIA uses PCIe 5.0 x16. That means the NVIDIA has double the PCIe bandwidth and double the lanes, which matters for data transfer to the CPU.

The production status is also a mirror: the Intel is end-of-life, while the NVIDIA is active. The Intel's predecessor is Xe Graphics, and its successor is Battlemage. The NVIDIA's predecessor is Workstation Ada, and it has no successor yet.

Specification Differences

The most obvious difference is the memory. The Intel has 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 64-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 124.0 GB/s. The NVIDIA has 72 GB of GDDR7 on a 384-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 1.34 TB/s. That is 18x more capacity and over 10x more bandwidth.

The core configuration is equally lopsided. The Intel has 768 shading units, 32 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. The NVIDIA has 14080 shading units, 440 TMUs, and 160 ROPs. The pixel rate is 28.00 GPixel/s for the Intel versus 380.3 GPixel/s for the NVIDIA. The texture rate is 56.00 GTexel/s for the Intel versus 1,045.9 GTexel/s for the NVIDIA. The FP32 compute is 2.688 TFLOPS for the Intel versus 66.94 TFLOPS for the NVIDIA.

The clock speeds are interesting. The Intel has a fixed boost clock of 1750 MHz, with a base clock of 1750 MHz. The NVIDIA has a base clock of 1740 MHz and a boost clock of 2377 MHz. So the Intel runs at a constant clock, while the NVIDIA boosts up to 637 MHz higher. The NVIDIA's memory clock is 1750 MHz, or 28 Gbps effective, while the Intel's memory clock is 1937 MHz, or 15.5 Gbps effective.

The power envelope is a major differentiator. The Intel has a TDP of 30 W and no power connectors, making it a true low-power card. The NVIDIA has a TDP of 300 W and requires a single 16-pin connector. The recommended PSU is 200 W for the Intel, and 700 W for the NVIDIA. That is a 10x difference in power consumption.

The physical design differs: the Intel is a single-slot card, the NVIDIA is dual-slot. The NVIDIA is 267 mm long, 111 mm high, and 40 mm wide. The Intel's dimensions are absent from the data. The display outputs are 4x mini-DisplayPort 2.0 for Intel, and 4x DisplayPort 2.1b for the NVIDIA. Both support four displays, but the NVIDIA uses the newer standard.

The bus interface is a major difference: the Intel is PCIe 4.0 x8, the NVIDIA is PCIe 5.0 x16. The NVIDIA also has an older release data, 2025-10-20, while the Intel's release was 2022-10-11. The Intel is end-of-life, the NVIDIA is active. The Intel has no launch MSRP, and the NVIDIA also has no launch MSRP.

All of these specs point to the same conclusion: they are not competitors. The Intel is a entry-level, low-power adapter, and the NVIDIA is a high-end, power-hungry workstation monster.