NVIDIA L4 vs NVIDIA RTX A5500 Mobile Comparison

NVIDIA’s L4 and RTX A5500 Mobile occupy very different corners of the professional GPU market, and the benchmark data reflects that split clearly. The L4, built on the Ada Lovelace architecture, is a low-power, single-slot server accelerator designed for density and efficiency, while the RTX A5500 Mobile is an end-of-life Ampere-generation part aimed at high-performance mobile workstations. Across the two available Geekbench tests, the L4 wins both, but the margin and the context of each card’s design goals matter more than the raw scores alone.

Where Each One Wins

The NVIDIA L4 wins every head-to-head benchmark in this comparison, and it does so with decisive margins. In the Geekbench OpenCL test, the L4 scores 140,838 against the RTX A5500 Mobile’s 124,287, a 13.3% lead. The Vulkan gap is even wider: 121,306 versus 103,601, which translates to a 17.1% advantage for the L4. If your workload is built around compute APIs like OpenCL or Vulkan, the L4 is the stronger choice on pure performance.

However, the RTX A5500 Mobile has its own territory where it wins by design philosophy rather than raw score. It carries 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus, yielding 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth — significantly higher than the L4’s 300.1 GB/s over a 192-bit bus. For memory-bound tasks that rely on large datasets streaming through the bus, the A5500 Mobile’s bandwidth advantage is a real asset, even if its compute throughput is lower. The A5500 Mobile is also the only one of the two with display outputs (portable device dependent), meaning it can drive screens directly in a laptop chassis, whereas the L4 has no outputs at all and is meant for server racks.

The L4 wins on efficiency and physical footprint. Its 72 W TDP is less than half of the A5500 Mobile’s 165 W, and it fits in a single-slot 169 mm length with no power connectors required. The A5500 Mobile’s dimensions are not listed, but its 165 W TDP implies a larger cooling solution and power delivery system. In a dense server environment where power and space are at a premium, the L4 is the clear winner before you even look at performance numbers.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has higher raw compute performance?

A: The NVIDIA L4. It delivers 30.29 TFLOPS of FP32 and FP16 (1:1) compute, compared to the RTX A5500 Mobile’s 22.27 TFLOPS in both metrics. This aligns with the benchmark results, where the L4 leads by 13.3% in OpenCL and 17.1% in Vulkan.

Q: Does the RTX A5500 Mobile have any advantage in memory bandwidth?

A: Yes, and it is substantial. The A5500 Mobile offers 512.0 GB/s of bandwidth from its 16 GB GDDR6 memory on a 256-bit bus. The L4 has 300.1 GB/s from 24 GB GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus. That is a 70% bandwidth advantage for the A5500 Mobile, which can help in memory-heavy workloads despite its lower compute scores.

Q: Which card is more power-efficient?

A: The L4 by a wide margin. Its TDP is 72 W versus 165 W for the RTX A5500 Mobile. The L4 also achieves higher benchmark scores at that lower power draw, making its performance-per-watt far superior in this comparison.

Q: Are these cards comparable in terms of production status?

A: No. The NVIDIA L4 is listed as Active production, while the RTX A5500 Mobile is End-of-life. The A5500 Mobile’s release date is 2022-03-21, and the L4 followed on 2023-03-20, roughly a year later.

Q: What is the architectural generation difference?

A: The L4 uses Ada Lovelace architecture on a 5 nm TSMC process with an AD104 chip. The RTX A5500 Mobile uses Ampere architecture on an 8 nm Samsung process with a GA103 chip. The L4 is the newer design by one generation.

Q: Which card has more shading units and RT cores?

A: Both cards have 7,424 shading units. The L4 has 60 RT cores and 240 tensor cores, while the A5500 Mobile has 58 RT cores and 232 tensor cores. The L4 leads slightly in both ray tracing and tensor core counts.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The Geekbench OpenCL test is the first and most telling measurement. The L4 posts 140,838 points, beating the A5500 Mobile’s 124,287 by 13.3%. This is not a marginal win; it is a clear generational leap. The L4’s higher boost clock of 2040 MHz versus 1500 MHz on the A5500 Mobile contributes directly to this gap, as do the extra RT and tensor cores. In real-world terms, any OpenCL-based compute task — from rendering to scientific simulation — will finish noticeably faster on the L4.

The Vulkan test widens the gap further. The L4 scores 121,306 against 103,601, a 17.1% delta. Vulkan is often used in gaming and real-time graphics, but in a professional context, it appears in certain rendering pipelines and compute workloads. The larger margin here suggests the L4’s architecture is more efficient at handling Vulkan’s low-level command structures, likely due to its newer Ada Lovelace design and higher texture rate of 489.6 GTexel/s versus 348.0 GTexel/s on the A5500 Mobile.

The average benchmark scores tell a similar story. The L4’s average across both tests is 131,072, while the A5500 Mobile averages 113,944. That is a 15% overall advantage for the L4. The L4 also sits at the 95th percentile of all GPUs, versus the 94th percentile for the A5500 Mobile. In the context of their nearest rivals, the L4 is 0.7% behind the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti (which averages 131,938) and 3.1% behind the RTX 4000 Ada Generation. The A5500 Mobile, meanwhile, is 0.4% behind the Tesla V100 SXM2 16 GB and 2.7% behind the RTX 4000 SFF Ada Generation.

Specification Differences

The memory subsystem is where the two cards diverge most sharply. The L4 has 24 GB of GDDR6 on a 192-bit bus, providing 300.1 GB/s of bandwidth. The A5500 Mobile has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, providing 512.0 GB/s. The A5500 Mobile’s memory clock is 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective), while the L4 runs at 1563 MHz (12.5 Gbps effective). The L4 wins on capacity, but the A5500 Mobile wins decisively on bandwidth.

Compute resources are nearly identical in count but different in configuration. Both have 7,424 shading units. The L4 has 240 TMUs and 80 ROPs, while the A5500 Mobile has 232 TMUs and 96 ROPs. The L4 leads in TMUs but trails in ROPs. The L4’s pixel rate is 163.2 GPixel/s versus 144.0 GPixel/s on the A5500 Mobile, and its texture rate is 489.6 GTexel/s versus 348.0 GTexel/s.

Clock speeds favor the L4 in boost but not in base. The L4’s base clock is 795 MHz with a boost of 2040 MHz. The A5500 Mobile has a higher base clock of 975 MHz but a much lower boost of 1500 MHz. The L4’s boost clock is 36% higher, which explains its superior FP32 performance of 30.29 TFLOPS versus 22.27 TFLOPS.

Physical and power characteristics are completely different. The L4 is a 72 W, single-slot card that is 169 mm long and 56 mm high, with no power connectors and a suggested 250 W PSU. The A5500 Mobile is a 165 W mobile chip with no listed dimensions or slot width, also using no power connectors but designed for laptop integration. The L4’s bus interface is PCIe 4.0 x16, and so is the A5500 Mobile’s.

Architecture Differences

The L4 is built on the Ada Lovelace architecture using an AD104 chip fabricated on a 5 nm TSMC process. The A5500 Mobile uses the Ampere architecture with a GA103 chip on an 8 nm Samsung process. This process difference is fundamental: the L4 packs 35,800 million transistors into a 294 mm² die, achieving a transistor density of 121.8 million per mm². The A5500 Mobile has 22,000 million transistors on a much larger 496 mm² die, with a density of only 44.4 million per mm². The L4’s density advantage is almost 3x, a direct result of the more advanced 5 nm node.

The L4’s generation is listed as “Server Ada (Lxx),” while the A5500 Mobile is “Ampere-MW (Ax000).” The L4’s predecessor is Server Ampere and its successor is Server Hopper, placing it in a server-specific product line. The A5500 Mobile’s predecessor is Quadro Turing-M and its successor is Ada-MW, indicating a mobile workstation lineage.

Both cards support the same API levels: DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4. The L4 has no display outputs, while the A5500 Mobile’s outputs are listed as “Portable Device Dependent,” meaning they vary by laptop design. The L4’s tensor core count is 240 versus 232 on the A5500 Mobile, and its RT core count is 60 versus 58. These small core count advantages, combined with the architectural improvements of Ada Lovelace, contribute to the L4’s benchmark lead.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous: the NVIDIA L4 wins every benchmark in this comparison and does so by a meaningful margin. Its 13.3% lead in OpenCL and 17.1% lead in Vulkan, combined with a 30.29 TFLOPS FP32 compute rating, make it the faster card for compute-intensive professional workloads. Its 24 GB of memory is also 50% larger than the A5500 Mobile’s 16 GB, which matters for large models or datasets that exceed 16 GB.

The RTX A5500 Mobile is not without merit, but its strengths are narrower. The 512.0 GB/s memory bandwidth is a significant advantage for streaming data, and its 256-bit bus is wider than the L4’s 192-bit bus. In a laptop environment where the card must also drive displays, the A5500 Mobile is the only viable option of the two, since the L4 has no outputs.

For a server build where power consumption and physical space are constrained, the L4 is the obvious pick. Its 72 W TDP is less than half of the A5500 Mobile’s 165 W, and its single-slot form factor with no power connectors allows for dense multi-GPU configurations. The L4 is also actively produced, while the A5500 Mobile is end-of-life, making the L4 the safer long-term investment.

For a mobile workstation, the choice is forced: the A5500 Mobile is the only one designed for that purpose, with display outputs and a portable form factor. But if you are comparing these two on raw compute capability, the L4 wins outright. It is faster, more efficient, newer, and offers more memory. The A5500 Mobile’s only true advantage is memory bandwidth, which may help in specific memory-bound tasks, but it cannot overcome the L4’s superior compute throughput and architectural efficiency. Choose the L4 for performance and longevity; choose the A5500 Mobile only if you need a mobile form factor with display support.