Nvidia RTX A5000 Vs Nvidia RTX A5500 | Is One Better Over The Other?

When comparing an existing product with its successor, the possibility is that the newer version wins. By how much exactly? And do you really need higher performance? Which would suit better with your current setup or in a future setup? In this rather outdated post we will compare these two powerhouses and try to figure out which would be better for your setup. The A5000 was released on April 12th, 2021 while the A5500 was released on March 22nd, 2022. The first of the Nvidia RTX Ax000 series workstation GPU was released in October 2020. Next was the A4000 followed by the A5000. If your graphic intensive workload mostly consists of gaming, basic to moderate video production and streaming, you really don’t need a workstation GPU so stop reading this and check our posts on consumer grade GPUs. However, for those of you involved in high end computational work, complex 3D modeling and animation, a workstation GPU would do you good. So here we are with two alphas in the arena. This is our guide for Nvidia RTX A5000 Vs Nvidia RTX A5500.

Nvidia RTX A5000 Vs Nvidia RTX A5500 Specs

At a first glance, the specs are almost identical to each other. But the A550 has more cores of all types than the A5000 which means it just generates more power. 320 Tensor cores versus the 256, which enhances AI and machine learning performance. 80 RT cores versus 64, meaning better real-time ray tracing capabilities. We will also brush over a few nerdy facts to make sure we are all caught up.

A Little on The Terminology

CUDA cores are the foundation of Nvidia’s GPUs, designed to perform parallel computations. More cores equals handling more parallel tasks simultaneously. Higher the number of cores, better the performance on tasks such as rendering, scientific simulations, and machine learning. Also for GPU-accelerated apps such as the machine learning and AI ones like PyTorch and TensorFlow, scientific computing like MATLAB, professional graphics apps like Autodesk Maya perform better. Tensor cores are specifically optimized for the types of calculations used in deep learning. They also enable mixed-precision training which means you get the optimal performance without sacrificing accuracy. In simplest terms, for advanced AI stuff like autonomous driving, real-time video analysis and speech recognition, having more tensor cores means the latency is reduced and it performs at an enhanced level. I don’t think anyone who is reading this needs a special introduction to ray tracing which is what RT cores does.

Basically what it does is make the gaming graphic as realistic as it can. As if it were an actual movie with real life humans. Additional RT cores contribute to more realistic lighting, shadows, and reflections in rendered scenes. Great for game developers, film production and VR. All this tech to make the consumer’s experience in the virtual world more realistic than ever. Now that we have laid out all the definitions for you, let’s see if these specs on paper reflect in their applications too.

Nvidia RTX A5000 Vs Nvidia RTX A5500: Benchmark Comparison

As expected, the A5500 performs better in complex computational tasks outranking the A5000. Take a look at the figures below. Take for example the FP32 test which is widely used in scientific computations, graphics, and machine learning tasks. Essential to understand a GPU’s computational power. For these two cards, it is 27.8 TFLOPS vs 34.1 TFLOPS. The Nvidia A5500’s higher FP32 performance provides a substantial boost in computational capability. This means it is a better card for intensive numerical calculations, high-precision graphics rendering, and complex machine learning tasks. Same goes for 3D Mark Time Spy.

The A5500 scores around 15,627, which is about 7% higher than the A5000’s score of 14,471​ (TopCPU)​​​. OctaneBench, which is a benchmarking tool developed by OTOY for measuring the rendering performance of GPUs using the OctaneRender engine shows similar results. The tool runs predefined scenes that stress different aspects of GPU performance, including ray tracing, light interaction, and texture handling. Accordingly the A5500 surpasses the A5000 by almost 89 points. When it comes to gaming too, the A5500 outperforms the A5000 by about 30-36% in Far Cry 5, providing significantly higher frame rates across different presets and resolutions. Same with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. In 4K resolution, the A5500 achieves 90 FPS, which is a 20% improvement over the A5000’s 75 FPS.

Ideal Setup

So what would an ideal setup for both these cards look like? With no budget limitations, how does the following setup sound?

• -CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X or Intel Core i9-13900K
• -Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero for AMD and ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero for Intel, both supports PCIe 5.0
• -Memory: 64GB DDR5 (2x32GB) at 6000MHz
• -Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD and Secondary HDD
• -Cooling System: AIO Liquid Cooler: Corsair iCUE H150i Elite Capellix for example
• -Power Supply: 850W – 1000W 80+ Platinum PSU
• -Full-Tower Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 or NZXT H7 Flow
• -Monitor: 4K UHD with high refresh rate (144Hz)

User Feedback on Both Cards

No negative feedback whatsoever for both the cards. A user who upgraded from his RTX 2070 to work with large Deep Neural Network models mentioned that the A5000 can not only work with newer, larger models, but operates much faster and more stably. Another user who upgraded from the quite recent RTX 3070 claims that it is so much faster than the RTX 3070 and the blender workloads render so much faster now because of the VRAM. Same goes for the A5500. A customer who used the card on a HP Z840 with a BenQ 27 inch 4K gaming monitor reviewed that the color balance is pretty crisp. In summary, both the Nvidia RTX A5500 and the A5000 are highly regarded for their powerful performance, reliability, and efficiency, making it an ideal choice for demanding professional applications and complex computing. The A5500 just happens to be a step further.