NVIDIA RTX A5500 vs NVIDIA Tesla V100 SXM2 32 GB Comparison

NVIDIA’s RTX A5500 and Tesla V100 SXM2 32 GB represent two distinct generations of professional GPU design, separated by four years of architectural evolution. The benchmark data shows a clear overall winner, but the specific workloads each card targets tell a more nuanced story. The RTX A5500 leads in every recorded test, yet the Tesla V100 retains a niche for memory-capacity-bound tasks that the newer card cannot match. Below, the numbers from the FACT PACK are analyzed to show where each GPU excels, how they compare directly, and what their specifications reveal about their intended roles.

Where Each One Wins

The RTX A5500 wins both head-to-head benchmark tests, making it the stronger choice for general compute and graphics workloads in the Geekbench suite. In OpenCL, it scores 174,637 against the V100’s 131,696, a 32.6% advantage. That gap narrows significantly in Vulkan, where the A5500 scores 155,797 versus 143,765, an 8.4% lead. The A5500 also holds a higher average benchmark score of 165,217 compared to 137,731 for the V100, and it ranks in the 97th percentile of all GPUs versus the V100’s 96th. For users running OpenCL-accelerated applications—common in scientific simulation, rendering, and data analytics—the A5500 delivers substantially more throughput.

The Tesla V100 SXM2 32 GB, despite losing both benchmark tests, wins on memory capacity. It offers 32 GB of HBM2 memory versus 24 GB of GDDR6 on the A5500. Furthermore, the V100’s memory bandwidth of 898.0 GB/s exceeds the A5500’s 768.0 GB/s. This makes the V100 better suited for workloads where the entire dataset must reside in GPU memory, such as training very large neural networks or processing massive point clouds, where the extra 8 GB and higher bandwidth reduce the need for data paging. The V100 also has double the tensor cores (640 versus 320), which historically accelerates matrix operations, though the A5500’s newer Tensor Core design may offset raw count differences. In short, the A5500 wins on speed and efficiency in tested benchmarks, while the V100 wins on capacity and raw memory throughput.

FAQ

Q: Which GPU has the higher average benchmark score?

A: The RTX A5500 averages 165,217 across benchmarks, while the Tesla V100 SXM2 32 GB averages 137,731. The A5500 leads by approximately 20% in this aggregate measure.

Q: How much faster is the RTX A5500 in OpenCL?

A: The A5500 scores 174,637 in Geekbench OpenCL, which is 32.6% higher than the V100’s 131,696.

Q: Does the Tesla V100 offer any advantage in memory?

A: Yes, the V100 has 32 GB of HBM2 memory with 898.0 GB/s bandwidth, compared to the A5500’s 24 GB GDDR6 at 768.0 GB/s. The V100 provides 8 GB more capacity and 17% more bandwidth.

Q: What is the difference in FP32 compute performance?

A: The A5500 delivers 34.10 TFLOPS FP32, more than double the V100’s 15.67 TFLOPS. This explains the A5500’s large lead in OpenCL.

Q: Which GPU has more shading units?

A: The RTX A5500 has 10,240 shading units, while the Tesla V100 has 5,120. The A5500 doubles the V100 in this metric.

Q: Are both GPUs still in production?

A: No, both are listed as end-of-life. The A5500 was released on 2022-03-21, and the V100 on 2018-03-26.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The two recorded benchmarks show a consistent winner: the RTX A5500 outperforms the Tesla V100 in both OpenCL and Vulkan. The OpenCL test is the most decisive, with the A5500 scoring 174,637 against 131,696. That 42,941-point difference translates to a 32.6% delta, a massive margin that aligns with the A5500’s 34.10 TFLOPS FP32 versus the V100’s 15.67 TFLOPS. The A5500’s dual FP32 execution on Ampere effectively doubles throughput per clock compared to Volta, and the benchmark results confirm this theoretical advantage. For compute-heavy tasks that scale with raw FP32, the A5500 is nearly one-third faster.

The Vulkan test narrows the gap considerably. The A5500 scores 155,797, while the V100 scores 143,765, a delta of 8.4%. This smaller margin suggests that Vulkan workloads are less dependent on raw FP32 and may benefit more from the V100’s higher pixel rate (195.8 GPixel/s versus 159.8 GPixel/s) and larger ROP count (128 versus 96). The V100’s higher memory bandwidth also helps in graphics tasks that access large textures. Still, the A5500 wins, likely due to its 80 RT cores (the V100 has none) and newer Vulkan 1.4 support, which matches the V100’s API level but with more modern hardware optimizations. In both tests, the A5500’s average benchmark score of 165,217 places it just 0.2% above the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 (164,894) and 1.7% above the NVIDIA A100 PCIe 40 GB (162,504), showing it sits at the top of its peer group. The V100, with an average of 137,731, is only 0.2% above the Tesla V100 PCIe 16 GB (138,063) and 0.9% above the AMD Radeon PRO V620 (136,472), indicating it remains competitive within its older generation.

Specification Differences

The two GPUs differ across nearly every core specification. The RTX A5500 uses a GA102 chip on an 8 nm Samsung process, while the V100 uses a GV100 chip on a 12 nm TSMC process. The A5500 has 28,300 million transistors on a 628 mm² die, giving a density of 45.1M transistors per mm²; the V100 has 21,100 million transistors on a larger 815 mm² die, with a lower density of 25.9M per mm². Clock speeds favor the V100 at base (1290 MHz versus 1080 MHz) but the A5500 at boost (1665 MHz versus 1530 MHz). Memory differs fundamentally: the A5500 uses 24 GB GDDR6 on a 384-bit bus at 768.0 GB/s, while the V100 uses 32 GB HBM2 on a 4096-bit bus at 898.0 GB/s. The A5500 has 10,240 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 96 ROPs; the V100 has 5,120 shading units, 320 TMUs, and 128 ROPs. The A5500 includes 80 RT cores and 320 tensor cores, while the V100 has no RT cores but 640 tensor cores. FP32 output is 34.10 TFLOPS for the A5500 versus 15.67 TFLOPS for the V100, but FP16 is nearly equal: 34.10 TFLOPS (1:1) for the A5500 and 31.33 TFLOPS (2:1) for the V100. Power consumption is similar at 230 W for the A5500 and 250 W for the V100, but the A5500 uses a standard dual-slot design with a single 8-pin connector, while the V100 is an SXM module with no power connector and requires a 600 W suggested PSU versus 550 W for the A5500.

Architecture Differences

The architectural divide is generational: Ampere versus Volta. The A5500 is built on the Ampere architecture (GA102 chip) with a 8 nm process, while the V100 is Volta (GV100 chip) on 12 nm. The A5500 supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), whereas the V100 only supports DirectX 12 (12_1)—a difference that matters for modern graphics features like hardware ray tracing, which the A5500 enables via its 80 RT cores; the V100 has none. Both cards support OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The A5500 offers 4x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, while the V100 has no display outputs at all, confirming the V100’s compute-only role. The A5500 uses PCIe 4.0 x16, doubling the bandwidth of the V100’s PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. The A5500’s FP16 performance is 1:1 with FP32, meaning it does not sacrifice precision for speed, while the V100’s FP16 is 2:1, delivering 31.33 TFLOPS but at reduced throughput relative to its FP32. The V100’s higher transistor density (45.1M/mm² for A5500 vs 25.9M/mm² for V100) reflects the newer process node, allowing more compute units in a smaller die area. The A5500’s average benchmark score places it 0.2% above the AMD Radeon PRO W7800 and 1.7% above the NVIDIA A100 PCIe 40 GB, while the V100’s score places it 0.9% above the AMD Instinct MI100 and 1.4% above the AMD Radeon Pro W6800X Duo—both cards sit near the top of their respective peer groups, but the A5500’s absolute scores are roughly 20% higher.