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AMD launches Radeon Pro WX workstation graphics cards

by Mark Tyson on 8 November 2016, 10:00

Tags: AMD (NYSE:AMD)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadau3

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AMD has launched its Radeon Pro WX workstation graphics cards. The new trio of cards forming the WX range are all based upon 14nm Polaris GPUs and consist of; the Radeon Pro WX 4100 low profile graphics card, the Radeon Pro WX 5100 which offers 3.9TFLOPS while using just 75W, and the Radeon Pro WX 7100 which is claimed to be "the world's fastest single-slot workstation (VR Ready) GPU".

AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100

This card is based upon the Polaris 11 chip with all of its 1024 stream processors enabled. Claimed to be the "fastest low-profile workstation graphics GPU," it is capable of breaking the 2TFOPS barrier for cards in this category.

The WX 4100 ships with 4GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a 128-bit memory bus. It is capable of driving 4x 4K monitors, or a single 5K monitor at 60Hz. Other low-profile CAD workstation cards can't touch this ability, says AMD. The WX 4100 becomes available on 10th November, at US$399 MSRP.

AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100

AMD proudly boasts that the WX 5100 will become the fastest 75W workstation GPU available. It can deliver 5.7 TFLOPS of single precision floating point performance in a single slot (full height) and was designed with an eye on those working in professional 3D apps. For example it is "41 per cent faster performance in Siemens PLM Software NX than competing cards in its class," enabling high-fidelity high-res real-time visualisation in industries such as automotive and architecture.

The WX 5100 is equipped with 8GB GDDR5 memory connected via a 256-bit memory bus. Its Polaris 10 GPU has 1792 Stream Processors (28CUs) enabled (just like the recently seen AMD Radeon RX 470D). As a full height card it upgrades the 4x miniDP ports on the WX 4100 to 4x full sized DP ports. The WX 5100 becomes available on 18th November, at US$499 MSRP.

AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100

AMD's WX 7100 tops the Radeon Pro workstation range to deliver 5.7TFLOPS in a single slot. It is designed to be employed by professional VR content creators.

The WX 7100 is equipped with 8GB GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit bus, and 2304 Stream Processors (36 CUs). Its performance is up to 45 per cent faster competing cards in its class in Solidworks, says AMD. This 4x DP port equipped card has a 130W TDP. The WX 7100 becomes available on 10th November, at US$799 MSRP.

AMD hasn't published the clock speeds and memory speeds of the above new cards. To make the most of these Pro graphics cards AMD has specially written Radeon Pro Software Enterprise Drivers which are updated monthly and offer "exceptional stability".



HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Based on compute performance, all those cards are clocked well over 1GHz. Guess we now know where the top bin Polaris dies are going, and why the consumer cards are making do with higher voltage or harvested dies.

Wonder if future respins will see consumer cards with 1792 shaders running at 1088MHz in a 75W TDP envelope…? Well, I can dream, can't I? ;)
scaryjim
Based on compute performance, all those cards are clocked well over 1GHz. Guess we now know where the top bin Polaris dies are going, and why the consumer cards are making do with higher voltage or harvested dies.

Wonder if future respins will see consumer cards with 1792 shaders running at 1088MHz in a 75W TDP envelope…? Well, I can dream, can't I? ;)

The Polaris 11 based WX4100 is a low profile and single slot card. It makes me wonder if GF has had more issues than Samsung with its implementation of the same process,or whether there is some design issue on the AMD side here. The GP107 is similarly sized and Nvidia is selling full chips with no issue! :(

Edit!!

Having said that AMD Radeon ProRender has been picked by Maxon for Cinema4D too(basis of Cinebench):

http://forums.hexus.net/pc-hardware-components/365584-maxon-picks-amd-s-radeon-prorender-cinema-4d.html#post3727318
The thing that gets me here is that AMD haven't even attempted to target above ‘mid range’ professional cards…. 8GB is not what I'd class as a sufficient amount of memory for a card being used for gpu rendering.

While imo the top tier quadros are a waste of money in most cases, due to a majority of 3D apps now going direct x over opengl (iirc maya and solidworks are the only two that come to mind) meaning unless you specifically need ram or support you might as well buy a geforce instead, you can at least get a high end quadro with more than enough vram to support larger scene gpu rendering.

As to AMD ProRender (really should just be called corona's opencl gpu renderer as thats basically what it is)… it's not exactly very good based on the imagery I've seen, unlike the normal corona which is pretty good but uses the cpu. IMO they'd have been better off investing in getting better support in vrayrt etc as the relative performance when using opencl seems to be lower than using cuda.

And to be honest unless something drastically happens to chaos group, most people in the design visualisation field will stick with what they know and continue to use vray/vray rt. 3DS Max for example doesn't even auto install iray anymore and have instead made their own cross program renderer the default program for ‘casual’ users, this is partly due to pros usually just installing vray or in some cases octane (cuda), arion (cuda) or keyshot (cpu) instead.
LSG501
The thing that gets me here is that AMD haven't even attempted to target above ‘mid range’ professional cards…. 8GB is not what I'd class as a sufficient amount of memory for a card being used for gpu rendering.

I think that's because Polaris isn't really above mid-range. Vega is the biggy and I expect we'll see some targeting of render farms with those products.
They finally have been reviewed:

http://hothardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-pro-wx-4100-and-wx-5100-workstation-gpu-reviews

Its a shame AMD don't make a normal Radeon card based on the WX4100 - it would be awesome for low power and HTPC systems.