AMD Radeon RX 6800S vs NVIDIA RTX A4000 Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data presents a remarkably one-sided contest. Across all ten recorded head-to-head tests, the NVIDIA RTX A4000 wins outright. There is no test in the database where the AMD Radeon RX 6800S manages to pull ahead. The average benchmark score for the RTX A4000 is 26,683, against 24,063 for the RX 6800S, a gap of roughly 10.9%.

The most dramatic separation appears in compute workloads. In Passmark GPU Compute, the RTX A4000 scores 9,760 versus 6,144 for the RX 6800S, a delta of 58.9%. This is the largest proportional advantage in the entire comparison. The same pattern holds in the Vulkan API test, where the RTX A4000 posts 127,645 against 81,272, a 57.1% lead. In Geekbench OpenCL, the NVIDIA part scores 105,739 versus 73,202, for a 44.4% advantage. These three tests all point to the same conclusion: the RTX A4000 has substantially more raw compute throughput available.

The 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 test shows a 54.2% lead for the RTX A4000, with scores of 2,604 against 1,689. This is a modern DirectX 12 workload, and the margin there is nearly as large as the compute gap. It suggests the NVIDIA card is not just stronger in theoretical throughput but also in real-world gaming and rendering API execution.

Smaller but still consistent wins appear in the legacy DirectX tests. In Passmark DirectX 10, the RTX A4000 scores 126 versus 91, a 38.5% lead. Passmark DirectX 9 shows 240 versus 200, a 20% advantage. Passmark DirectX 11 shows 158 versus 139, a 13.7% lead. Even Passmark DirectX 12, the closest contest in the whole set, sees the RTX A4000 ahead at 72 versus 65, a 10.8% margin. The RX 6800S never gets closer than that.

The 2D and general 3D tests follow the same trend. Passmark G2D scores 1,024 for the RTX A4000 and 732 for the RX 6800S, a 39.9% delta. Passmark G3D shows 19,459 for NVIDIA and 15,908 for AMD, a 22.3% lead. Even in a pure rasterization throughput sense, the NVIDIA card is comfortably ahead.

Percentile placement in the full GPU hierarchy reinforces this. The RTX A4000 sits at the 72nd percentile of all GPUs in the database. The RX 6800S sits at the 69th percentile, a modest difference but still meaningful. For reference, the RTX A4000's average score of 26,683 places it roughly 0.5% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary and 1.3% ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060. The RX 6800S, meanwhile, lands within a fraction of a percent of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER, trailing it by 0.4%, and it is 0.8% ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 9070. The two cards are not competing in the same performance tier despite the RX 6800S being a mobile part.

The Verdict

The data is unambiguous. The NVIDIA RTX A4000 wins every benchmark in the comparison, with deltas ranging from 10.8% to 58.9%. Anyone choosing between these two for a fixed workload should take the RTX A4000 if performance is the only consideration. Its 72nd percentile standing versus the RX 6800S's 69th percentile, combined with a 10-test sweep, leaves no room for a nuanced performance argument in favor of the AMD card.

The RX 6800S is not without a role, but its role is defined by constraints other than raw speed. The RTX A4000 is a single-slot desktop board with a 140 W TDP and a 1x 6-pin power connector. The RX 6800S is an integrated graphics package for laptops, with a 100 W TDP and no power connectors, described in the database as "IGP" with portable-device-dependent display outputs. If the target platform is a thin mobile chassis, the RX 6800S is the only one of the two that fits at all. The RTX A4000 is a 241 mm long, 112 mm tall add-in card, not a mobile solution.

For desktop builders or workstation users with a PCIe slot available, the RTX A4000 is the clear choice. It offers more memory (16 GB versus 8 GB), a wider memory bus (256 bit versus 128 bit), higher memory bandwidth (448.0 GB/s versus 256.0 GB/s), and a massive shading unit advantage (6,144 versus 2,048). It also carries dedicated tensor cores, which the RX 6800S lacks entirely.

For laptop buyers who have no option to install a discrete desktop card, the RX 6800S is the fallback. It is end-of-life, as is the RTX A4000, but it exists in a form factor the NVIDIA card cannot match. The verdict depends entirely on the platform. On a desktop, the RTX A4000 wins outright. In a laptop, the RX 6800S is the only viable option, despite its lower scores.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX A4000 wins every workload category present in the benchmark set. Compute-heavy tasks benefit the most: the 58.9% lead in Passmark GPU Compute and the 57.1% lead in Geekbench Vulkan show that the NVIDIA architecture has significantly more throughput for GPGPU-style work. The 44.4% lead in Geekbench OpenCL reinforces this. For rendering, simulation, or any task that offloads parallel math to the GPU, the RTX A4000 is the stronger part.

Modern 3D workloads also favor the RTX A4000. The 54.2% lead in 3DMark Steel Nomad DX12 indicates that DirectX 12 gaming and real-time rendering performance is substantially higher. The 22.3% lead in Passmark G3D confirms the general 3D advantage. Even the legacy DirectX tests, from DirectX 9 to DirectX 11, show the NVIDIA card ahead by 13.7% to 20%. There is no reverse case to make.

The RX 6800S wins in exactly one category: system integration. It is a 100 W mobile part with no external power requirement, no slot width constraint, and no length or height dimensions listed. It is designed to be soldered into a portable device. For a user building a laptop, the RX 6800S is the only option, and its 10.8% to 58.9% deficits against the RTX A4000 are irrelevant if no PCIe slot exists for a desktop card.

Beyond that single advantage, the AMD part has no benchmark-based use case. Its 8 GB of memory and 256.0 GB/s bandwidth are insufficient for large texture sets or heavy compute loads compared to the RTX 4000's 16 GB and 448.0 GB/s. Its FP32 throughput of 8.602 TFLOPS is less than half of the RTX 4000's 19.17 TFLOPS. The RX 6800S does have 32 ray accelerators of its own, but the RTX 4000 has 48 ray tracing cores and 192 tensor cores on top of that. The RX 6800S wins only in the sense that it is the part you can fit into a mobile chassis.

FAQ

Q: Which card has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A4000 has an average score of 26,683, while the AMD Radeon RX 6800S has an average of 24,063. The RTX A4000 wins all ten head-to-head tests.

Q: How large is the biggest performance gap between the two?

A: The largest delta is in Passmark GPU Compute, where the RTX A4000 scores 9,760 against 6,144, a 58.9% lead. The smallest gap is only 10.8% in Passmark DirectX 12, with scores of 72 versus 65.

A: The RTX A4000 wins every benchmark in the database. The RX 6800S does not win any of the ten head-to-head tests.

Q: What are the memory configuration differences?

A: The RTX A4000 has 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256 bit bus with 448.0 GB/s bandwidth. The RX 6800S has 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128 bit bus with 256.0 GB/s bandwidth.

Q: Which card has higher FP32 compute throughput?

A: The RTX A4000 has 19.17 TFLOPS of FP32 performance. The RX 6800S has 8.602 TFLOPS. The NVIDIA card also has 192 tensor cores, which the AMD part lacks entirely.

Q: Which card has the higher transistor count?

A: The RTX A4000 uses 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, while the RX 6800S uses 11,060 million on a 237 mm² die. The AMD part uses a denser process at 46.7M transistors per mm² versus 44.4M for NVIDIA.

Architecture Differences

The two chips come from different architectural lineages. The NVIDIA RTX A4000 is built around the GA104 die, using NVIDIA's Ampere architecture, fabricated on an 8 nm process at Samsung. It contains 17,400 million transistors on a 392 mm² die, for a density of 44.4M transistors per mm². The AMD Radeon RX 6800S is built on the Navi 23 die, using RDNA 2.0 architecture, fabricated on a 7 nm process at TSMC. It uses 11,060 million transistors on a 237 mm² die, for a density of 46.7M per mm².

The execution resources differ sharply. The RTX A4000 has 6,144 shading units, 192 texture mapping units, 96 ROPs, 48 ray tracing cores, and 192 tensor cores, with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 256 bit bus and 448.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The RX 6800S has 2,048 shading units, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and 32 ray accelerators, but no tensor cores. It pairs 8 GB of GDDR6 on a 128 bit bus with 256.0 GB/s of bandwidth.

Clock behavior is also different. The RTX A4000 runs at a base clock of 735 MHz and boosts to 1560 MHz. The RX 6800S runs much faster at 1800 MHz base and 2100 MHz boost, with a game clock of 1975 MHz. The AMD part achieves its performance at higher clocks but with fewer resources, and the end result is still lower throughput. FP32 rates are 19.17 TFLOPS for NVIDIA and 8.602 TFLOPS for AMD. FP16 is 19.17 TFLOPS (1:1) for the RTX A4000 and 17.20 TFLOPS (2:1) for the RX 6800S.

The pixel and texture rates follow the same pattern. The RTX A4000 has a pixel rate of 149.8 GPixel/s and a texture rate of 299.5 GTexel/s. The RX 6800S is lower at 134.4 GPixel/s and 268.8 GTexel/s. Both support DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, so feature-level API support is the same. The RTX A4000 uses 4x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, while the RX 6800S uses portable-device-dependent outputs.

Specification Differences

The power and form factor specs show how different these products are. The RTX A4000 has a TDP of 140 W, is single-slot, uses one 6-pin power connector, and suggests a 300 W power supply. The RX 6800S has a TDP of 100 W, is listed as IGP, and has no power connectors. The RTX A4000 is a physical PCIe card at 241 mm long and 112 mm tall, connected via PCIe 4.0 x16. The RX 6800S uses PCIe 4.0 x8 and has no listed dimensions.

Memory is the clearest spec difference. The RTX A4000 offers 16 GB versus 8 GB, a 256 bit bus versus 128 bit, and 448.0 GB/s versus 256.0 GB/s. The RTX A4000 has 6,144 shading units versus 2,048, 192 TMUs versus 128, 96 ROPs versus 64, 48 ray tracing cores versus 32, and 192 tensor cores versus none. The RTX A4000 is also a generation older in release timing, with its release date in April 2021, while the RX 6800S was released in January 2022.

Process technology is the one notable spec where the AMD part is superior. The RX 6800S is on 7 nm at TSMC versus 8 nm at Samsung for the RTX A4000, with a higher transistor density of 46.7M per mm² versus 44.4M. It also has a smaller die at 237 mm² versus 392 mm². The RX 6800S has a higher boost clock of 2100 MHz versus 1560 MHz, and its memory runs at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective) versus 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective). These advantages do not compensate for the much larger gap in execution resources and memory bandwidth on the NVIDIA card.