NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12 GB) vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12 GB) is a workstation graphics card that launched in Q4 2021 with a MSRP of $449. It is built on the Ampere GPU microarchitecture (codename GA106) and is manufactured on a 8 nm process.

Memory

The RTX A2000 has 12 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 1,500 MHz memory clock and a 192 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 288 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RTX A2000 includes 3,328 CUDA cores, the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 562 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 1,200 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 104 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 48 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing. Additionally, the GPU features 104 tensor cores optimized for AI-accelerated workloads and 26 RT cores dedicated to real-time ray tracing calculations.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RTX A2000 occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports mini-DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. NVIDIA recommends a power supply of at least 250 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 70 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RTX A2000 has the 112th best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 19.10% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 19,978 score and $449 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 44.49. This is the 68th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.