Intel Arc A580 vs NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB Comparison

The Intel Arc A580 and the NVIDIA Quadro M6000 24 GB occupy very different points in GPU history, yet the database shows them separated by less than one might expect in overall percentile terms: the A580 sits in the 87th percentile against all recorded GPUs with an average benchmark score of 57756, while the Quadro M6000 24 GB lands in the 83rd percentile with an average of 43262. The details behind those aggregate numbers, however, tell a story of a generational mismatch in compute, tempered by the Quadro's substantial memory advantage. What follows is a breakdown of how these two cards compare on architecture, use cases, specifications, and recorded benchmark results.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU is faster in the recorded benchmarks?

A: The Intel Arc A580 wins every head-to-head test in the database. It takes Geekbench OpenCL by 128.6 percent (91657 vs 40098) and Geekbench Vulkan by 71 percent (79381 vs 46425), giving it a clean 2-0 record in direct comparisons.

Q: How do their overall database standings compare?

A: The A580 ranks in the 87th percentile of all GPUs with an average score of 57756. The Quadro M6000 24 GB sits in the 83rd percentile with an average of 43262. The A580's nearest rival by average score is the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM (58085, just 0.6 percent ahead of it), while the Quadro's closest peer is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile at 43268, effectively a dead heat.

Q: Which card has more memory?

A: The Quadro M6000 24 GB, by a wide margin. It carries 24 GB of GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus, whereas the A580 has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus.

Q: Does either card support hardware ray tracing?

A: Only the Arc A580, which includes 24 RT cores as part of its Xe-HPG architecture and supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (feature level 12_2). The Quadro M6000 24 GB is a Maxwell 2.0 design with no RT cores and supports DirectX 12 at feature level 12_1.

Q: Are both cards still in production?

A: No. The Arc A580 is listed as Active, released on October 9, 2023. The Quadro M6000 24 GB is End-of-life, released on March 4, 2016, and succeeded by the Quadro Pascal generation.

Q: What is the Quadro M6000 24 GB's launch MSRP?

A: Its launch MSRP was 4,999 USD.

Architecture Differences

These two GPUs come from different eras of semiconductor design, and the gap shows in nearly every structural metric. The Arc A580 is built on TSMC's 6 nm process using the DG2-512 chip and Intel's Xe-HPG architecture, part of the Alchemist (Arc 5) generation. The Quadro M6000 24 GB uses the GM200 chip on TSMC's 28 nm process, representing NVIDIA's Maxwell 2.0 architecture in the Quadro Mx000 professional line.

The process gap translates directly into density and efficiency figures. The A580 packs 21,700 million transistors into a 406 mm² die, a density of 53.4M transistors per mm². The Quadro manages 8,000 million transistors across a much larger 601 mm² die, yielding just 13.3M per mm². In other words, the A580 fits roughly 2.7 times the transistor count into a die about two-thirds the size, a clear illustration of what seven years of process advancement delivers.

Despite the radically different underlying technology, the top-line execution resources are identical on paper: both GPUs have 3072 shading units, 192 TMUs, and 96 ROPs. The difference is in how fast those units run and what surrounds them. The A580 clocks at 1700 MHz base and 2000 MHz boost, compared to the Quadro's 988 MHz base and 1114 MHz boost. That clock advantage, combined with the modern architecture, produces double the theoretical throughput: 12.29 TFLOPS FP32 for the A580 versus 6.844 TFLOPS for the Quadro, and the A580 also supports FP16 at 24.58 TFLOPS (2:1 rate), a capability the Quadro entry does not list.

The A580 also adds fixed-function hardware the Quadro lacks entirely: 24 RT cores for ray tracing, plus DirectX 12 Ultimate support, which brings feature level 12_2 compliance. The Quadro tops out at feature level 12_1. Both support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4, interestingly, indicating the Quadro's drivers were extended well past its launch era.

Where Each One Wins

The Arc A580 wins everywhere the database has direct measurements. Both recorded head-to-head tests, Geekbench OpenCL and Geekbench Vulkan, go to the A580 by enormous margins. Its percentile standing is four points higher, and its average score of 57756 places it in the company of cards like the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE (57367, 0.7 percent behind it), the Intel Arc A570M (58239, 0.8 percent ahead), and the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT (58392, 1.1 percent ahead). It is a thoroughly modern midrange performer: capable compute throughput, ray tracing hardware, a modern API feature set, and an active production status with the Battlemage generation waiting as its successor.

The Quadro M6000 24 GB's case rests on capacity rather than speed. Its 24 GB of GDDR5 dwarfs the A580's 8 GB, which matters for workloads that genuinely need frame buffers of that size, such as large 3D scenes, massive texture sets, or certain compute datasets. It was engineered as a professional workstation card in the Quadro Maxwell line, sitting between Quadro Kepler and Quadro Pascal in NVIDIA's lineage, and its display configuration (1x DVI plus 4x DisplayPort 1.2) reflects that workstation orientation. That said, the recorded data offers no benchmark where this capacity advantage converts into a win, and its 317.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth falls well short of the A580's 512.0 GB/s despite the wider bus.

Specification Differences

The specification table highlights where the two diverge. On process and silicon: 6 nm versus 28 nm, 406 mm² versus 601 mm², 21,700 million versus 8,000 million transistors. On clocks: 1700/2000 MHz base/boost for the A580 versus 988/1114 MHz for the Quadro. On memory: 8 GB GDDR6 at 512.0 GB/s on a 256-bit bus versus 24 GB GDDR5 at 317.4 GB/s on a 384-bit bus, with effective memory data rates of 16 Gbps versus 6.6 Gbps.

Throughput figures follow the same pattern. The A580 delivers 192.0 GPixel/s and 384.0 GTexel/s against the Quadro's 106.9 GPixel/s and 213.9 GTexel/s, roughly an 80 percent advantage in both fill-rate categories. The A580 lists 24 RT cores; the Quadro lists none. Neither card lists tensor cores.

Power and platform requirements also differ. The A580 has a 175 W TDP, draws from 2x 8-pin connectors, and carries a suggested PSU of 450 W on a PCIe 4.0 x16 interface. The Quadro has a 250 W TDP, a single 8-pin connector, a 600 W suggested PSU, and PCIe 3.0 x16. Both are dual-slot cards. Display output favors modern connectivity on the A580 (1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 2.0) versus the Quadro's 1x DVI and 4x DisplayPort 1.2. Physical dimensions are recorded only for the Quadro: 267 mm long and 111 mm tall.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only two tests appear in the direct comparison, and both are decisive. In Geekbench OpenCL, the Arc A580 scored 91657 against the Quadro M6000 24 GB's 40098, a 128.6 percent victory. That is not a close result: the A580 more than doubles the Quadro's compute throughput in a general-purpose GPU compute workload, consistent with its 12.29 TFLOPS FP32 rating sitting far above the Quadro's 6.844 TFLOPS. OpenCL results also track with the A580's much higher memory bandwidth and clock speeds.

Geekbench Vulkan narrows the gap but does not change the outcome. The A580 scored 79381 to the Quadro's 46425, a 71 percent win. Notably, this is the one test where the Quadro performs relatively closer, and it is also the test where the Quadro's own score exceeds its OpenCL result, suggesting the older card fares better in graphics API workloads than in raw compute. Even so, a 71 percent deficit is a rout by any standard.

The A580 also holds a Steel Nomad DirectX 12 result of 2229 in the database, a test for which no Quadro comparison exists. The overall records stand at two wins for the A580 and zero for the Quadro.

Context from each card's rival set sharpens the picture. The A580's average score of 57756 sits within about one percent of the AMD Radeon RX 5600 OEM (58085), the Radeon RX 9070 GRE (57367), the Arc A570M (58239), and the Radeon RX 6950 XT (58392), placing it in a dense midrange cluster. The Quadro's 43262 average puts it alongside the GeForce RTX 5050 Mobile (43268, a 0 percent delta), the Quadro M6000 (43301), the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER (43223), and the RTX 4090 Mobile (43667), a cluster it matches on aggregate scores despite its age. The verdict from the recorded data is straightforward: the Arc A580 dominates on performance and features, and the Quadro M6000 24 GB's remaining appeal is its 24 GB frame buffer and workstation heritage.