AMD Radeon RX 6700 vs NVIDIA RTX A4000 Comparison

The AMD Radeon RX 6700 and NVIDIA RTX A4000 are two end-of-life cards from 2021 that landed in overlapping territory despite serving different markets: one is a consumer gaming GPU from the Radeon RX 6000 series, the other a workstation part from NVIDIA's Ampere-based Ax000 line. The recorded data shows a clear overall pattern. The A4000 wins 8 of 10 head-to-head benchmarks, but the margins vary widely, and the RX 6700 holds its ground in legacy DirectX workloads. Both cards sit in a similar neighborhood in the database rankings, with the RX 6700 at the 75th percentile against all GPUs and the A4000 at the 72nd.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The A4000's biggest win comes in Geekbench Vulkan, where it scores 127645 against the RX 6700's 83974, a 34.2 percent gap. That is not a close result; it is a rout in a modern graphics API. The 3DMark Steel Nomad DirectX 12 test tells a similar story: 2604 for the A4000 versus 2014 for the RX 6700, a 22.7 percent advantage for the workstation card. Compute is another strong suit for the A4000, which posts 9760 in PassMark GPU Compute against 8240 for the RX 6700, a 15.6 percent lead that reflects its much larger raw compute resources.

Geekbench OpenCL goes to the A4000 as well, 105739 to 97841, a 7.5 percent margin. PassMark DirectX 10 favors the A4000 by 8.7 percent (126 versus 115), and PassMark 2D Graphics shows the same pattern with a 8.6 percent gap (1024 versus 936), which matters for desktop composition and windowed 2D work rather than gaming.

The two tests where the RX 6700 wins are both legacy DirectX paths. In PassMark DirectX 11 it scores 166 against 158, a 5.1 percent edge. In PassMark DirectX 9 it leads 250 to 240, or 4.2 percent. These are modest wins, but they are consistent: older game engines and applications built on those APIs run slightly better on the Radeon card.

The two remaining tests are close to dead heats. PassMark G3D, the broad graphics score, lands at 19459 for the A4000 versus 18931 for the RX 6700, a 2.7 percent difference that is within the range where driver revisions could shuffle the result. PassMark DirectX 12 (the PassMark-specific scene, distinct from the 3DMark test) is a 1.4 percent gap, 72 versus 71, effectively a tie.

Note one asymmetry in the recorded data: the RX 6700 has a Geekbench Metal score of 122223 in the database, while the A4000 has no Metal result listed, so that test cannot be compared head-to-head here.

Architecture Differences

These cards come from completely different lineages. The RX 6700 uses AMD's Navi 22 chip on the RDNA 2.0 architecture, built on TSMC's 7 nm process. The A4000 uses NVIDIA's GA104 chip on the Ampere architecture, built on Samsung's 8 nm process. The process difference shows in density figures: the Navi 22 die packs 17,200 million transistors into 335 mm² for 51.3 million transistors per square millimeter, while the GA104 carries 17,400 million transistors across a larger 392 mm² die at 44.4 million per square millimeter. Nearly identical transistor budgets, but AMD's denser node delivers them in a smaller chip.

The internal resource split is where the two diverge sharply. The A4000 has 6144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, 96 render output units, 48 ray tracing cores, and 192 tensor cores. The RX 6700 has 2304 shading units, 144 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 36 RT cores, with no tensor cores at all. NVIDIA's CUDA-core-per-shading-unit accounting explains some of that numerical gap, but the tensor core count is a genuine architectural difference: the A4000 has dedicated hardware for machine learning and AI-accelerated workloads that the RX 6700 simply lacks.

Clocking philosophies differ too. The RX 6700 runs high: 1941 MHz base, 2174 MHz game clock, and 2450 MHz boost. The A4000 runs far lower at 735 MHz base and 1560 MHz boost, a conservative profile typical of workstation validation.

Memory subsystems favor the A4000 on capacity and bandwidth. It carries 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus at 14 Gbps effective, yielding 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The RX 6700 has 10 GB of GDDR6 on a narrower 160-bit bus at 16 Gbps effective, for 320.0 GB/s. The extra 6 GB of capacity on the A4000 is significant for professional workloads with large scenes and datasets.

Theoretical throughput numbers split depending on what you measure. The A4000 wins FP32 at 19.17 TFLOPS against 11.29 TFLOPS. The RX 6700 actually wins FP16 at 22.58 TFLOPS thanks to its 2:1 rate, versus 19.17 TFLOPS at 1:1 on the A4000. Pixel rate favors the RX 6700, 156.8 GPixel/s against 149.8 GPixel/s, while texture rate favors the A4000, 299.5 GTexel/s against 352.8 GTexel/s on the Radeon.

Both cards support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, Vulkan 1.4, and PCIe 4.0 x16, so there is no API-level incompatibility between them.

Where Each One Wins

The RX 6700's case rests on gaming in older engines. Its wins in DirectX 9 and DirectX 11, combined with a near-tie in PassMark G3D, indicate a card that plays classic titles and last-generation game libraries at essentially the same level as the A4000, with a slight edge. Its higher pixel rate also suggests competent raw fill-rate performance. Against its own peer group, the database ranks it near the NVIDIA CMP 70HX (average score 30476 versus 30433, a 0.1 percent gap), the NVIDIA Tesla M60 (0.2 percent), and slightly ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 (1.1 percent) and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti (1.6 percent), all at the 75th percentile.

The A4000's case rests on modern APIs and compute. Its 34.2 percent Vulkan lead and 22.7 percent Steel Nomad lead mean any DirectX 12 or Vulkan-native workload, current games included, runs substantially faster on it. Its 15.6 percent compute win plus 192 tensor cores make it the clear pick for GPU compute, machine learning inference, and professional rendering. Its peer group includes the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary (0.5 percent gap), NVIDIA GeForce MX550 (1 percent), AMD Radeon 860M (1.1 percent), and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 (1.3 percent).

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster in modern DirectX 12 games?

A: The RTX A4000. It scores 2604 versus 2014 in 3DMark Steel Nomad DirectX 12, a 22.7 percent advantage, though the PassMark DirectX 12 scene is effectively tied at 72 versus 71.

Q: Which is better for older games?

A: The RX 6700. It wins PassMark DirectX 11 by 5.1 percent and DirectX 9 by 4.2 percent.

Q: Which card uses less power?

A: The A4000, at a 140 W TDP with a single 6-pin connector and a 300 W suggested PSU. The RX 6700 has a 175 W TDP, one 8-pin connector, and a 450 W suggested PSU.

Q: How do their memory configurations compare?

A: The A4000 has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. The RX 6700 has 10 GB on a 160-bit bus with 320.0 GB/s.

Q: Can either card accelerate machine learning workloads?

A: Only the A4000. It has 192 tensor cores; the RX 6700 has none. The A4000 also wins PassMark GPU Compute by 15.6 percent.

Q: Do they differ physically?

A: Yes. The A4000 is a single-slot card, 241 mm long and 112 mm tall. The RX 6700 is a dual-slot card, 267 mm long and 110 mm tall.

The Verdict

Pick the RX 6700 if the workload is gaming, especially in DirectX 11 and DirectX 9 titles where it wins, and if the broader database ranking matters: it sits at the 75th percentile versus the A4000's 72nd, with an average benchmark score of 30433 against 26683. Pick the A4000 if the workload involves Vulkan or modern DirectX 12 rendering, where it leads by double digits, or any compute task, where its tensor cores, higher FP32 throughput, and larger memory footprint give it capabilities the RX 6700 cannot match. The overall benchmark tally of 8 wins to 2 favors the A4000, but the two Radeon wins plus two near-ties mean the gaming picture is far more competitive than the raw count suggests.

Specification Differences

• Manufacturer and market: AMD Radeon RX 6000 series (consumer) versus NVIDIA workstation Ampere (Ax000)
• Chip: Navi 22 versus GA104
• Architecture: RDNA 2.0 versus Ampere
• Process: TSMC 7 nm, 335 mm², 51.3M transistors/mm² versus Samsung 8 nm, 392 mm², 44.4M transistors/mm²
• Shading units: 2304 versus 6144
• TMUs: 144 versus 192
• ROPs: 64 versus 96
• RT cores: 36 versus 48
• Tensor cores: none versus 192
• Clocks: 1941/2450 MHz base/boost (2174 MHz game) versus 735/1560 MHz
• Memory: 10 GB GDDR6, 160-bit, 16 Gbps, 320.0 GB/s versus 16 GB GDDR6, 256-bit, 14 Gbps, 448.0 GB/s
• FP32: 11.29 TFLOPS versus 19.17 TFLOPS
• FP16: 22.58 TFLOPS (2:1) versus 19.17 TFLOPS (1:1)
• Pixel rate: 156.8 GPixel/s versus 149.8 GPixel/s
• TDP and power: 175 W, 1x 8-pin, 450 W PSU versus 140 W, 1x 6-pin, 300 W PSU
• Slot width: dual-slot versus single-slot
• Length: 267 mm versus 241 mm
• Display outputs: 1x HDMI 2.1 and 3x DisplayPort 1.4a versus 4x DisplayPort 1.4a
• Release: June 2021 versus April 2021; both end-of-life