NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile vs NVIDIA T550 Mobile Comparison

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The benchmark data shows a clear overall winner in this comparison. Across the two recorded Geekbench compute tests, the NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile wins both, with a combined margin that leaves the NVIDIA T550 Mobile trailing. The largest gap appears in the Vulkan test, where the RTX A500 Mobile scores 37,873 against the T550 Mobile's 30,801, a delta of 23 percent. That is a substantial lead in a modern graphics API, indicating that the Ampere-based part handles compute workloads with significantly more headroom.

In the OpenCL test, the RTX A500 Mobile posts 41,263 points, while the T550 Mobile manages 35,521. The delta here is 16.2 percent. While smaller than the Vulkan gap, it is still a decisive margin. The RTX A500 Mobile's average benchmark score across all recorded tests sits at 39,568, compared to the T550 Mobile's 33,161. That difference, roughly 19 percent, places the two cards in different performance tiers despite both being mobile workstation parts with 4 GB of memory.

Looking at the broader database context, the RTX A500 Mobile lands in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, while the T550 Mobile sits at the 77th percentile. The RTX A500 Mobile's nearest rivals in the database are AMD professional parts: the Radeon Pro 575 (average score 39,555, delta 0 percent), the Radeon Pro 575X (39,116, delta 1.2 percent), and the Radeon Pro WX 7100 (40,063, delta -1.2 percent). In other words, the RTX A500 Mobile trades blows with these AMD cards, sitting essentially at parity with the Pro 575 and slightly ahead of the Pro 575X, while the WX 7100 edges it out by a narrow 1.2 percent. The T550 Mobile, by contrast, aligns closely with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile (average score 33,170, delta 0 percent) and the AMD Radeon Pro 570 (33,207, delta -0.1 percent). It also sits just ahead of the NVIDIA T600 Mobile (32,849, delta 1 percent). This suggests the T550 Mobile is a solid entry-level mobile workstation GPU, but the RTX A500 Mobile occupies a noticeably higher performance bracket.

The per-test breakdown reinforces this. In Vulkan, the RTX A500 Mobile's 23 percent lead is particularly telling because Vulkan is a low-overhead API that often exposes raw shader throughput and driver efficiency. The RTX A500 Mobile's advantage here is not marginal; it is a clear step up. In OpenCL, the 16.2 percent gap is smaller but still consistent. No test in the database shows the T550 Mobile winning. The wins tally is 2 for the RTX A500 Mobile, 0 for the T550 Mobile.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile, with an average score of 39,568, versus the NVIDIA T550 Mobile's 33,161.

Q: How much faster is the RTX A500 Mobile in the Vulkan test?

A: It scores 37,873 versus 30,801, a 23 percent advantage.

Q: What is the closest rival to the RTX A500 Mobile in the database?

A: The AMD Radeon Pro 575, which has an average score of 39,555 and a delta of 0 percent relative to the RTX A500 Mobile.

Q: Does the T550 Mobile beat the RTX A500 Mobile in any benchmark?

A: No, the recorded data shows the RTX A500 Mobile winning both the OpenCL and Vulkan tests.

Q: How does the T550 Mobile compare to the NVIDIA T600 Mobile?

A: The T550 Mobile has an average score of 33,161, which is 1 percent higher than the T600 Mobile's 32,849.

Q: What percentile does each GPU fall into in the database?

A: The RTX A500 Mobile is in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, while the T550 Mobile is in the 77th percentile.

Architecture Differences

The two GPUs come from different architectural generations, and that explains much of the performance gap. The NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile is built on the Ampere architecture, specifically the GA107S chip, fabricated on Samsung's 8 nm process. The NVIDIA T550 Mobile uses the Turing architecture with the TU117 chip, built on TSMC's 12 nm process. The node difference is significant: 8 nm versus 12 nm allows the Ampere part to pack far more transistors into the same die area. The RTX A500 Mobile contains 8,700 million transistors on a 200 mm² die, yielding a transistor density of 43.5 million per square millimeter. The T550 Mobile has 4,700 million transistors on the same 200 mm² die, for a density of 23.5 million per square millimeter. In plain terms, the RTX A500 Mobile fits nearly twice as many transistors in the same physical space.

That transistor budget goes into compute resources. The RTX A500 Mobile has 2,048 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 32 raster output units. The T550 Mobile has 1,024 shading units, also 64 TMUs, and 32 ROPs. So the shading unit count doubles in the Ampere part, while the texture and pixel pipelines stay the same. The RTX A500 Mobile also includes 16 ray tracing cores and 64 tensor cores, features that are entirely absent from the T550 Mobile, which lists null values for both. This is a generation-defining difference: Ampere adds dedicated hardware for ray tracing and AI acceleration, while Turing's TU117 lacks those blocks entirely.

The FP32 compute throughput reflects this. The RTX A500 Mobile delivers 6.296 TFLOPS of FP32 performance, while the T550 Mobile delivers 3.410 TFLOPS. The FP16 situation is interesting: the RTX A500 Mobile achieves 6.296 TFLOPS at a 1:1 ratio with FP32, meaning it does not double throughput in half precision. The T550 Mobile, by contrast, reaches 6.820 TFLOPS at a 2:1 ratio, so it can do more FP16 work per clock. This suggests the Turing part has a different compute balance, favoring half-precision throughput, while the Ampere part is more balanced across precisions.

Both cards use 4 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 64-bit bus, with 96.00 GB/s of bandwidth. The memory clock is listed as 1500 MHz with 12 Gbps effective speed for both. So memory is a tie; the performance difference comes from the compute cores, not the memory subsystem.

Specification Differences

The specification sheets reveal several clear differences beyond architecture. The process node differs: 8 nm Samsung for the RTX A500 Mobile versus 12 nm TSMC for the T550 Mobile. Transistor count differs dramatically: 8,700 million versus 4,700 million. Transistor density follows: 43.5 million per square millimeter versus 23.5 million.

The clock speeds are notable because the older Turing chip runs higher. The T550 Mobile has a base clock of 1065 MHz and a boost clock of 1665 MHz. The RTX A500 Mobile runs at 832 MHz base and 1537 MHz boost. Despite lower clocks, the Ampere part wins because it has twice the shading units. Clock speed alone does not tell the performance story.

Shading units: 2048 versus 1024. TMUs: 64 on both. ROPs: 32 on both. Ray tracing cores: 16 on the RTX A500 Mobile, none on the T550 Mobile. Tensor cores: 64 on the RTX A500 Mobile, none on the T550 Mobile. Pixel rate: 49.18 GPixel/s for the RTX A500 Mobile versus 53.28 GPixel/s for the T550 Mobile. Texture rate: 98.37 GTexel/s versus 106.6 GTexel/s. Here the T550 Mobile actually leads in pixel and texture throughput due to its higher clocks, but that does not translate into a benchmark win.

FP32 throughput: 6.296 TFLOPS versus 3.410 TFLOPS. FP16 throughput: 6.296 TFLOPS (1:1) versus 6.820 TFLOPS (2:1). TDP: 30 W for the RTX A500 Mobile, 23 W for the T550 Mobile. Both are integrated into the motherboard (IGP slot width) with no power connectors. The bus interface differs: PCIe 4.0 x8 for the RTX A500 Mobile, PCIe 3.0 x16 for the T550 Mobile. The newer PCIe generation gives the Ampere part a bandwidth advantage per lane, though the T550 Mobile has more physical lanes.

DirectX support differs: the RTX A500 Mobile supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), while the T550 Mobile supports DirectX 12 (12_1). OpenGL and Vulkan versions are identical: 4.6 and 1.4, respectively. Display outputs are listed as "Portable Device Dependent" for both. Both GPUs are end-of-life in production status. The RTX A500 Mobile has a release date of 2022-03-21, while the T550 Mobile has no recorded release date. The predecessor and successor lines differ: the RTX A500 Mobile follows Quadro Turing-M and leads to Ada-MW, while the T550 Mobile follows Quadro Pascal-M and leads to Ampere-MW.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX A500 Mobile wins in every recorded benchmark, so the use-case split is straightforward for raw compute performance. If the workload is OpenCL or Vulkan based, the data indicates the RTX A500 Mobile is the stronger choice. It also has architectural advantages that matter for specific tasks: ray tracing cores and tensor cores are present on the Ampere part, which means applications that leverage RTX acceleration or tensor operations will have dedicated hardware support. The T550 Mobile lacks these blocks entirely, so any ray-traced or AI-assisted workload would fall back to shader-based processing.

The RTX A500 Mobile also wins on transistor count and density, which typically translates to better efficiency per unit of silicon area. Its 30 W TDP is higher than the T550 Mobile's 23 W, but it delivers roughly 85 percent more FP32 throughput, so the performance-per-watt ratio favors the Ampere part. The PCIe 4.0 x8 interface on the RTX A500 Mobile is newer than the T550 Mobile's PCIe 3.0 x16, which can help with data transfer in GPU-compute scenarios that stream large datasets.

The T550 Mobile is not without merits, though the benchmarks do not show it winning any test. Its higher base and boost clocks (1065/1665 MHz versus 832/1537 MHz) give it a slight edge in pixel rate and texture rate: 53.28 GPixel/s versus 49.18 GPixel/s, and 106.6 GTexel/s versus 98.37 GTexel/s. That could translate to a small advantage in fill-rate-bound scenarios, such as simple 2D compositing or certain rasterization paths, but the database shows no benchmark where that edge materializes into a win. Its FP16 throughput of 6.820 TFLOPS is higher than the RTX A500 Mobile's 6.296 TFLOPS, so workloads that rely heavily on half-precision math might see relatively better performance on the Turing part, though the 2:1 ratio indicates it is doubling up on FP32 hardware rather than using dedicated FP16 units.

The T550 Mobile also draws less power at 23 W, which could be a factor in thermally constrained thin-and-light laptops. For a workstation user who prioritizes battery life over compute throughput, the T550 Mobile might be the more conservative choice. But for anyone running GPU-accelerated rendering, machine learning inference, or Vulkan-based applications, the RTX A500 Mobile is the clear recommendation based on the recorded data. Its 23 percent Vulkan lead and 16.2 percent OpenCL lead, combined with dedicated ray tracing and tensor hardware, make it the more capable mobile workstation GPU in this pairing. The T550 Mobile, while competent and aligned with the GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile in the database, simply does not have the compute headroom to compete.