Apple M2 Pro 16-Core GPU vs Nvidia RTX 500 Ada Generation Laptop GPU vs NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU

Apple M2 Pro 16-Core GPU

The Apple M2 Pro 16-Core-GPU is an integrated graphics card by Apple offering all 16 of the 19 cores in the M2 Pro 10-Core Chip.

The graphics card has no dedicated graphics memory but can use the fast LPDDR5-6400 unified memory with a 256 bit bus (up to 200 GBit/s).

According to Apple, the performance of the 19-core-GPU should be 30% higher than the old 16-core-GPU in the M1 Pro. Therefore, the cut down 16-core version should still beat the old full-featured 16-core M1 Pro slightly and the old 14-core more clearly.

The GPU is intended to use Apple Metal 2 API and could still be based on the older PowerVR architectures (last used in the Apple A10). A new feature in the MacBook Pro 14 of 2023 is the support for HDMI 2.1 and 8k output.

The Apple M2 Pro is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC.

Nvidia RTX 500 Ada Generation Laptop GPU

The Nvidia RTX 500 Ada Generation, not to be confused with the A500, P500 and the T500, is a lower-end professional graphics card for use in laptops that sports 2,048 CUDA cores and a paltry 4 GB of GDDR6 VRAM. We believe this graphics card to be a heavily cut-down GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop; therefore, both should employ the Ada Lovelace AD107 chip built with TSMC's 5 nm process. The RTX 500 was launched in February 2024. The Nvidia-recommended TGP range for this graphics card is moderately wide at 35 W to 60 W leading to noticeable performance differences between different systems powered by what is supposed to be the same graphics card.

Quadro series graphics cards ship with much different BIOS and drivers than GeForce cards and are targeted at professional users rather than gamers. Commercial product design, large-scale calculations, simulation, data mining, 24 x 7 operation, certified drivers - if any of this sounds familiar, then a Quadro card will make you happy.

Architecture and Features

Ada Lovelace brings a range of improvements over older graphics cards utilizing the outgoing Ampere architecture. It's not just a better manufacturing process and a higher number of CUDA cores that we have here; under-the-hood refinements are plentiful, including an immensely larger L2 cache, an optimized ray tracing routine (a different way to determine what is transparent and what isn't is used), and other changes. Naturally, these graphics cards can both encode and decode some of the most widely used video codecs, AVC, HEVC and AV1 included; they also support a host of proprietary Nvidia technologies, including Optimus and DLSS 3, and they can certainly be used for various AI applications.

The RTX 500 Ada features 16 RT cores of the 3rd generation, 64 Tensor cores of the 4th generation and 2,048 CUDA cores. Increase those numbers by 25%, and you get the RTX 1000 Ada - as long as we pay no attention to clock speed differences, of course. Unlike costlier Ada Generation professional laptop graphics cards, the RTX 500 comes with just 4 GB of non-ECC VRAM; the lack of error correction makes this card less suitable for super-important tasks and round-the-clock operation. The VRAM is just 64-bit wide, delivering an anemic bandwidth of ~128 GB/s.

The RTX 500 Ada Generation makes use of the PCI-Express 4 protocol, just like Ampere-based cards did. 8K SUHD monitors are supported, however, DP 1.4a video outputs may prove to be a bottleneck down the line.

Performance

While we are yet to test a single laptop powered by the RTX 500 Ada as of late February, it's realistic to expect it to be just a little slower than the average RTX 3050 Laptop. Yes, that's right; the RTX 500 has no chance of matching the RTX 4050 Laptop in sheer performance due to the reduced core count and smaller memory bus. Nvidia's marketing materials mention "up to 9.2 TFLOPS" of performance, a significant downgrade compared to 12.1 TFLOPS delivered by the RTX 1000 Ada.

Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is and how high the TGP power target of the RTX 500 Ada is.

Power consumption

Nvidia no longer divides its laptop graphics cards into Max-Q and non-max-Q models. Instead, laptop makers are free to set the TGP according to their needs, and the range can sometimes be shockingly wide. The RTX 500 Ada got luckier than many, as the lowest value recommended for it sits at 35 W while the highest value is 60 W (this most likely includes Dynamic Boost). Real-world performance of the slowest RTX 500 Ada will probably be around 40% lower than that of the fastest one.

Last but not the least, the improved 5 nm process (TSMC 4N) the RTX 500 Ada is built with makes for decent energy efficiency, as of early 2024.

NVIDIA RTX 5000 Ada Generation Laptop GPU

The Nvidia RTX 5000 Ada Generation, not to be confused with the A5000, P5000 and the RTX 5000 Turing Generation, is a super-powerful professional graphics card for use in laptops that sports 9,728 CUDA cores and 16 GB of ECC GDDR6 VRAM. Brought into existence in 2023, this graphics adapter leverages TSMC's 5 nm process and Nvidia's Ada Lovelace architecture to achieve great performance combined with reasonable power consumption. The Nvidia-recommended TGP range for the card is very wide at 80 W to 175 W leading to bizarre performance differences between different systems powered by what is supposed to be the same product.

Hardware-wise, the RTX 5000 is a GeForce RTX 4090 Laptop in disguise. Consequently, both make use of the AD103 chip and have little difficulty running triple-A games at UHD 2160p.

Quadro series graphics cards ship with much different BIOS and drivers than GeForce cards and are targeted at professional users rather than gamers. Commercial product design, large-scale calculations, simulation, data mining, 24 x 7 operation - if any of this sounds familiar, then a Quadro card will make you happy.

Architecture and Features

Ada Lovelace brings a range of improvements over older graphics cards utilizing the outgoing Ampere architecture. It's not just a better manufacturing process and a higher number of CUDA cores that we have here (up to 16,384 versus 10,752); under-the-hood refinements are plentiful, including an immensely larger L2 cache and an optimized ray tracing routine (a different way to determine what is transparent and what isn't is used) and other changes. Naturally, these graphics cards can both encode and decode some of the most widely used video codecs, AVC, HEVC and AV1 included; they also support a host of proprietary Nvidia technologies, including Optimus and DLSS 3, and they can certainly be used for various AI tasks.

The RTX 5000 features 76 RT cores of the 3rd generation, 304 Tensor cores of the 4th generation and 9,728 CUDA cores, making it a lot faster than the RTX 4000 Ada Generation. Elsewhere, the graphics card comes with 16 GB of 256-bit wide ECC GDDR6 memory for an impressive throughput of ~576 GB/s. Error correction can be turned off if desired. The fact that error correction is present here proves that the RTX 5000 is indeed targeted at professional users.

Just like Ampere-based cards, the RTX 5000 makes use of the PCI-Express 4 protocol. 8K SUHD monitors are supported, however DP 1.4a video outputs can potentially prove to be a bottleneck down the line.

Performance

The average RTX 5000 Ada Generation in our extensive database is noticeably inferior to the GeForce RTX 4080 in some tests but is totally comparable to the GeForce RTX 4090 in other ones, such as the Geekbench 6.2 GPU Vulkan test.

Nvidia's marketing materials mention "up to 42.6 TFLOPS" of performance which is very impressive. The RTX 4000 Ada Generation delivers up to 33.5 TFLOPS, for reference, while the RTX 500 Ada is only good for 9 TFLOPS.

Your mileage may vary depending on how competent the cooling solution of your laptop is and how high the TGP power target of the RTX 5000 is. One other thing worth mentioning is that enabling error correction appears to reduce the amount of video memory that is available to applications and games by up to a gigabyte.

Power consumption

Nvidia no longer divides its laptop graphics cards into Max-Q and non-max-Q models. Instead, laptop makers are free to set the TGP according to their needs, and the range can sometimes be shockingly wide. This is the case with the RTX 5000 Ada, as the lowest value recommended for it sits at just 80 W while the highest is more than two times higher at 175 W (this most likely includes Dynamic Boost). The slowest system built around an RTX 5000 Ada can easily be 60% slower than the fastest one. This is the kind of delta that we've already seen on consumer-grade laptops featuring the latest GeForce RTX cards.

Last but not the least, the improved 5 nm process (TSMC 4N) the RTX 5000 is built with makes for very decent energy efficiency, as of mid 2023.