NVIDIA GB10 vs NVIDIA RTX A5500 Comparison

The NVIDIA RTX A5500 and NVIDIA GB10 occupy very different positions in the workstation and server landscape, yet both carry the NVIDIA brand. The RTX A5500 is an end-of-life Ampere-generation professional card, while the GB10 is an active, Blackwell-based server processor. Benchmark data from the FACT PACK shows a clear performance hierarchy, but the specification sheets reveal that these are designed for entirely different workloads and physical environments.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The head-to-head benchmark results are unambiguous: the RTX A5500 wins both recorded tests by substantial margins. In Geekbench OpenCL, the A5500 scores 174,637 against the GB10’s 120,137, a delta of 45.4%. This is not a marginal victory; it is a dominant one. The Vulkan test tells a similar story, with the A5500 posting 155,797 versus 114,648 for the GB10, a 35.9% advantage.

These scores place the A5500 at the 97th percentile of all GPUs, while the GB10 sits at the 95th. That two-percentile gap understates the raw performance difference. The A5500’s average benchmark score is 165,217, while the GB10’s is 117,393 — a difference of roughly 40%. In practical terms, the A5500 delivers significantly higher compute throughput in both OpenCL and Vulkan workloads.

The GB10’s closest rival is the NVIDIA RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation, which averages 117,088 — a mere 0.3% difference. This places the GB10 in the company of compact, power-efficient workstation cards rather than full-size workhorses. The A5500, by contrast, is flanked by the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 (164,894, a 0.2% difference) and the NVIDIA RTX 4500 Ada Generation (166,094, a -0.5% difference). The A5500 also leads the NVIDIA A100 PCIe 40 GB by 1.7%, a notable result given that the A100 is a data-center heavyweight.

The deltaPct figures between the two cards are the largest in either rival list. No rival of the A5500 comes within 20% of it, and no rival of the GB10 comes within 15% of it. The head-to-head data indicates that any workload which is compute-bound will strongly favor the A5500.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A5500 has an average benchmark score of 165,217, compared to 117,393 for the NVIDIA GB10. The A5500 also holds the 97th percentile versus the GB10’s 95th.

Q: How large is the performance gap in the Vulkan test?

A: The RTX A5500 scores 155,797 in Geekbench Vulkan, while the GB10 scores 114,648. This represents a 35.9% advantage for the A5500.

Q: Does the GB10 have any benchmark win over the A5500?

A: No. The head-to-head data shows two wins for the A5500 and zero for the GB10 in the recorded Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan tests.

Q: What is the GB10’s closest competitor according to average score?

A: The GB10’s nearest rival is the NVIDIA RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation, with an average score of 117,088 — a 0.3% difference. This suggests the GB10 competes in the compact workstation segment.

Q: How does the A5500 compare to the NVIDIA A100 PCIe 40 GB?

A: The A5500 averages 165,217, which is 1.7% higher than the A100 PCIe 40 GB’s 162,504. This puts the A5500 ahead of a well-known data-center GPU in these benchmarks.

Q: What is the production status of each card?

A: The RTX A5500 is marked as end-of-life, while the GB10 is active. The GB10 also has a successor listed (Server Rubin), whereas the A5500’s successor is Workstation Ada.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX A5500 is the clear winner for raw compute performance. Its FP32 throughput is 34.10 TFLOPS, which is 14.8% higher than the GB10’s 29.71 TFLOPS. The texture rate also favors the A5500 in terms of pixel throughput: 159.8 GPixel/s versus 116.1 GPixel/s for the GB10, a 37.6% advantage. For any application that relies on shading, pixel fill, or general-purpose GPU compute, the A5500 is the stronger choice.

The GB10 wins in memory capacity and connectivity. It offers 128 GB of LPDDR5X memory, compared to 24 GB of GDDR6 on the A5500. That is more than five times the memory capacity, which is decisive for very large datasets that cannot fit in the A5500’s frame buffer. The GB10 also supports PCIe 5.0 x16, while the A5500 uses PCIe 4.0 x16 — a full generation newer bus interface.

Power efficiency is another area where the GB10 leads. Its TDP is 140 W, versus 230 W for the A5500. The GB10 requires no power connectors and is an IGP form factor, meaning it can be integrated directly into a system board. The A5500 needs a dual-slot cooler and a single 8-pin connector. For dense server deployments where space and power are constrained, the GB10’s lower footprint is a meaningful advantage.

The GB10 also has a higher boost clock (2418 MHz versus 1665 MHz) and more TMUs (384 versus 320), which contributes to its texture rate of 928.5 GTexel/s — substantially higher than the A5500’s 532.8 GTexel/s. In texture-heavy workloads, the GB10 can actually outperform the A5500 despite lower overall compute scores.

Specification Differences

The two cards differ in nearly every fundamental specification. The RTX A5500 uses a GA102 chip on an 8 nm Samsung process, while the GB10 uses a GB20B chip on a 5 nm TSMC process. The A5500 has 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die; the GB10’s transistor count is unknown, but its die is 382 mm².

Memory configurations are starkly different. The A5500 has 24 GB of GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus, yielding 768.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The GB10 has 128 GB of LPDDR5X on a 256-bit bus, with 273.2 GB/s of bandwidth. The A5500 has nearly three times the memory bandwidth, which is critical for bandwidth-bound workloads.

Compute units also diverge. The A5500 has 10,240 shading units, 80 RT cores, and 320 tensor cores. The GB10 has 6,144 shading units, 48 RT cores, and 384 tensor cores. The A5500 has more shading units and RT cores, while the GB10 has more tensor cores. The A5500’s pixel rate is 159.8 GPixel/s versus 116.1 GPixel/s for the GB10, but the GB10’s texture rate of 928.5 GTexel/s is significantly higher than the A5500’s 532.8 GTexel/s.

Physical dimensions and power delivery are also distinct. The A5500 measures 267 mm in length and 112 mm in height, is dual-slot, and requires a 550 W suggested PSU. The GB10 measures 150 mm by 51 mm by 150 mm, is an IGP, and has no power connectors, with a 300 W suggested PSU. Display outputs differ as well: the A5500 has four DisplayPort 1.4a connectors, while the GB10 has a single HDMI.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide is generational. The A5500 is built on Ampere, NVIDIA’s workstation architecture from the Ax000 series. The GB10 is built on Blackwell 2.0, from the Server Blackwell (Bxx) series. The process node has shrunk from 8 nm to 5 nm, and the foundry has changed from Samsung to TSMC.

The GB10’s Blackwell architecture brings a different compute profile. It has 384 tensor cores versus 320 on the A5500, and its FP16 performance matches its FP32 at 29.71 TFLOPS (1:1). The A5500 also has 1:1 FP16/FP32 at 34.10 TFLOPS. The GB10’s higher TMU count (384 versus 320) suggests a hardware emphasis on texture processing, which aligns with its superior texture rate.

API support is a critical differentiator. The A5500 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The GB10 lists N/A for all three APIs. This means the GB10 is not designed for traditional graphics rendering workloads that rely on these APIs; it is a compute-oriented part. The A5500, by contrast, is a full-featured workstation GPU capable of both graphics and compute.

The GB10’s memory type is LPDDR5X, which is typically used in integrated or low-power contexts, while the A5500 uses discrete GDDR6. The GB10’s 128 GB capacity is unusual for a GPU and points toward large in-memory data processing rather than real-time rendering. The A5500’s 24 GB is more conventional for a professional graphics card.

The production lifecycles also differ. The A5500 was released in March 2022 and is now end-of-life, with its predecessor being Quadro Turing and its successor being Workstation Ada. The GB10 was released in October 2025, is active, and sits between Server Hopper (predecessor) and Server Rubin (successor). The GB10 has a launch MSRP of 3,999 USD.

The data shows two capable but divergent products. The A5500 is a traditional workstation GPU with strong compute and graphics performance. The GB10 is a low-power, high-capacity server processor with a modern architecture and faster clock speeds, but it lacks graphics API support and trails in raw benchmark scores. Buyers should choose based on workload: compute-heavy graphics work favors the A5500, while large-memory, low-power server tasks point to the GB10.