NVIDIA RTX A500 Mobile

NVIDIA’s RTX A500 Mobile is an end-of-life Ampere-generation part built for professional mobile workstations, pairing a 4 GB GDDR6 frame buffer with a 64-bit memory interface. Its benchmark profile places it in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, a surprisingly strong standing for a low-power IGP-class chip, but its memory architecture tells a more nuanced story that becomes critical at higher resolutions.

Memory Subsystem

The RTX A500 Mobile ships with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, a capacity that is sufficient for entry-level professional workloads and 1080p-class rendering but that will become a constraint in texture-heavy scenes or multi-application workflows. The memory operates at 1500 MHz with an effective data rate of 12 Gbps, and the bus width is a narrow 64-bit, yielding a total bandwidth of 96.00 GB/s. This figure is modest by modern discrete GPU standards, and it directly limits how much data can be fed to the 2048 shading units.

For high-resolution work, the bandwidth bottleneck is the defining characteristic of this GPU. At 1440p or 4K, the demand for texture fetches and geometry data scales faster than the 96 GB/s pipe can deliver, meaning actual frame rates or render times will degrade more sharply than the raw compute throughput suggests. The 4 GB capacity also caps the size of working sets; large scenes that spill beyond this limit will incur costly paging. Benchmark results indicate the GPU’s average score of 39568, but memory-bound workloads will not scale linearly with that compute figure. The 64-bit bus is a deliberate trade-off for the 30 W TDP and IGP slot width, prioritizing power efficiency over sustained high-resolution performance.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The RTX A500 Mobile is built on the Ampere architecture, which includes dedicated hardware for real-time ray tracing and AI acceleration. The chip contains 16 RT cores and 64 tensor cores, a configuration that allows hardware-accelerated ray tracing and DLSS-style tensor operations, though the low TDP will limit sustained clocks under heavy RT load. The base clock is 832 MHz, boosting to 1537 MHz, which is a substantial boost window but also indicates that the GPU relies on aggressive power management.

API support is comprehensive for its generation. The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), which includes features like variable rate shading and mesh shaders, alongside OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan 1.4. This makes it compatible with modern game engines and professional DCC applications that leverage these low-level APIs. The presence of tensor cores also enables AI-based denoising and upscaling, though the exact performance headroom is not specified in the data. The 64 tensor cores are the same count as the shading units’ ratio of 1:32, suggesting a balanced design for mixed compute workloads. The pixel rate is 49.18 GPixel/s, and the texture rate is 98.37 GTexel/s, both of which are respectable for a 30 W part but will be throttled by memory bandwidth in practice.

How It Compares

The RTX A500 Mobile’s average benchmark score of 39568 places it in a tight cluster of competitors, all within a single percentage point. This is a crowded performance tier, where architectural differences matter less than driver optimization and thermal behavior.

Against the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, the RTX A500 Mobile trails by a marginal 0.2%. The RX 9070 XT scores 39647, essentially identical in raw compute benchmarks. This is notable because the RX 9070 XT is a much larger, higher-power desktop part, yet the A500 Mobile’s efficiency-focused design closes the gap in synthetic OpenCL and Vulkan tests. The delta is within noise, meaning real-world application performance will vary by workload.

The AMD Radeon Pro 575 is the next closest rival, with an average score of 39703, putting the A500 Mobile 0.3% behind. Both are professional-oriented GPUs, but the Pro 575 is an older architecture; the A500 Mobile’s newer Ampere design with RT and tensor cores offers features the Pro 575 lacks, despite the near-identical compute score.

The AMD Radeon Pro 575X scores 39836, a 0.7% advantage over the A500 Mobile. Again, the performance delta is negligible, but the A500 Mobile brings a more modern feature set, including DirectX 12 Ultimate support, which the older Pro 575X does not match.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 leads this group with a score of 39879, putting the A500 Mobile 0.8% behind. The RX Vega 64 is a high-end desktop GPU from a previous generation, so the A500 Mobile’s ability to land within 1% of it in synthetic benchmarks confirms the efficiency of the Ampere architecture and the maturity of its drivers, even at a 30 W TDP.

FAQ

Q: What is the GPU’s memory bandwidth?

A: The memory bandwidth is 96.00 GB/s, derived from a 64-bit bus and 12 Gbps effective GDDR6 memory speed.

Q: Does the RTX A500 Mobile support hardware ray tracing?

A: Yes, it includes 16 dedicated RT cores, part of the Ampere architecture, enabling hardware-accelerated ray tracing.

Q: What is the average benchmark score for this GPU?

A: The average benchmark score is 39568, based on combined Geekbench OpenCL and Vulkan results.

Q: How does it compare to the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64?

A: The RTX A500 Mobile is 0.8% behind the RX Vega 64, which scores 39879, a negligible difference in synthetic tests.

Q: What is the thermal design power?

A: The TDP is 30 W, and the slot width is listed as IGP, indicating an integrated-style form factor for mobile workstations.

Q: What API versions are supported?

A: The GPU supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4.

Benchmark Performance

The Geekbench results for the RTX A500 Mobile reveal a GPU that punches well above its power class. The OpenCL score is 41263, while the Vulkan score is 37873, averaging to 39568. This places the GPU in the 82nd percentile of all GPUs, a remarkable position for a 30 W mobile part that draws no external power connectors. The delta between OpenCL and Vulkan is roughly 9%, indicating that the Vulkan driver path is slightly less optimized or that the workload characteristics differ, but both scores are consistent with a compute-focused design.

Relative to its nearest rivals, the performance is tightly clustered. The A500 Mobile trails the RX 9070 XT by 0.2%, the Pro 575 by 0.3%, the Pro 575X by 0.7%, and the RX Vega 64 by 0.8%. These deltas are all sub-1%, meaning that in a blind test, users would be hard-pressed to distinguish between these GPUs on raw compute throughput alone. The Radeon RX 9070 XT, a modern high-end part, is only fractionally faster, which underscores how efficient the A500 Mobile’s Ampere architecture is at low power. The Pro 575 and Pro 575X, both older professional parts, offer no meaningful advantage despite their different architectures.

The benchmark data suggests that the RTX A500 Mobile’s value lies in its feature set and power envelope rather than raw speed. Its compute scores are competitive with GPUs that consume several times more power, but those rivals lack RT cores, tensor cores, and modern API support. For synthetic benchmarks, the GPU holds its own; for real-world tasks that leverage DirectX 12 Ultimate features or AI acceleration, the A500 Mobile would likely extend its lead over the older Radeon Pro parts, though the 4 GB memory and 96 GB/s bandwidth remain the limiting factors for any large dataset. The 82nd percentile ranking confirms that, despite its modest specs, the A500 Mobile is not a bottom-tier performer; it sits comfortably in the upper quintile of all GPUs, proof of the efficiency of Samsung’s 8 nm process and NVIDIA’s Ampere design.