Home / AMD / AMD FirePro S10000: Performance and Specs

AMD FirePro S10000

AMD FirePro S10000: An Obsolete Giant of Professional Graphics in 2025

Relevant Analysis for Enthusiasts and Professionals

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture and Technology Process

The AMD FirePro S10000, released in 2012, is based on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) 1.0 architecture. It was one of the first cards to use dual GPUs on a single printed circuit board (Tahiti XT chips). The manufacturing process is 28 nm, which is considered archaic by the standards of 2025. The card is designed for professional workstations and servers rather than gaming.

Unique Features

There are no modern technologies like RTX, DLSS, or FidelityFX here. The FirePro S10000 only supports basic computational features: OpenCL 1.2 and DirectCompute. Its strong point is parallel task processing, but it is unsuitable for gaming innovations of the 2020s.

2. Memory: Specifications and Impact on Performance

Type and Volume

The card features two GDDR5 memory blocks, each with 6 GB (totaling 12 GB), but due to the division between the GPUs, the effective volume available for applications is limited to 6 GB per chip.

Bandwidth

The total bandwidth is 240 GB/s (120 GB/s per GPU). For professional tasks in the 2010s, this was impressive, but today even budget cards with GDDR6 (up to 600 GB/s) outperform the S10000.

3. Gaming Performance: Nostalgia or Disappointment?

Average FPS in Modern Titles

The FirePro S10000 is not designed for gaming. In Cyberpunk 2077 (2025) at 1080p and low settings, it barely reaches 15-20 FPS. In less demanding titles, such as CS2, it may achieve 40-50 FPS, but with frequent drops.

Resolutions and Ray Tracing

4K is an unattainable dream for this card. Even 1440p will be problematic. There is no hardware support for ray tracing, and software emulation through drivers is not possible.

4. Professional Tasks: Is it Worth It in 2025?

Video Editing and 3D Modeling

In Adobe Premiere Pro or Blender, the card can handle basic tasks, but rendering complex scenes will take 3-4 times longer than on modern Radeon Pro W7800 cards (based on the RDNA 4 architecture).

Scientific Calculations

The support for OpenCL allows the S10000 to be used for parallel computations, but its performance (3.23 TFLOPs) pales in comparison to modern GPUs (for example, NVIDIA A100 — 19.5 TFLOPs).

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

TDP and Cooling Requirements

The card's TDP is 375 W. For comparison, the modern AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers 10 times higher gaming performance at 355 W.

Recommendations for Cases and Cooling

Due to its dual-slot design and active cooling, the card requires a well-ventilated case with at least three fans. Server chassis or workstations with robust coolers are ideal.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Modern Analogues from AMD and NVIDIA

- NVIDIA RTX A5000 (2024): 24 GB GDDR6, RTX support, 27 TFLOPs. Price: $2500.

- AMD Radeon Pro W7800 (2023): 32 GB GDDR6, RDNA 3 architecture. Price: $2400.

Today, the FirePro S10000 is a museum exhibit. Its only advantage is the secondary market price ($150–300), but it is not an option for serious tasks.

7. Practical Advice: Is it Worth Engaging?

Power Supply

A minimum of 600 W with 80+ Bronze certification is recommended. For stability, 750 W is better.

Compatibility

The card requires a motherboard with PCIe 3.0 x16 support. It is only compatible with older operating systems (Windows 7/8, Linux with outdated kernels).

Drivers

The latest drivers were released in 2018. Support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3) is absent.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros

- Reliability (designed for 24/7 operation).

- Support for multi-display configurations (up to 6 monitors).

Cons

- Outdated architecture.

- High power consumption.

- No support for modern technologies.

9. Final Conclusion: Who Is the FirePro S10000 For?

This card is suitable for:

- Enthusiasts building retro computers.

- Organizations using legacy software that doesn't require upgrades.

- Educational purposes (studying the history of GPUs).

For gaming, professional rendering, or scientific calculations in 2025, the FirePro S10000 is hopelessly outdated. If you need power, consider the Radeon Pro W7800 or NVIDIA RTX A5000.

Prices are current as of April 2025. The FirePro S10000 is not sold as a new device — consider it only in the secondary market.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

November 2012

Model Name

FirePro S10000

Generation

FirePro

Base Clock

825MHz

Boost Clock

950MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

4,313 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

112

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

3GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

384bit

Memory Clock

1250MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

240.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

30.40 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

106.4 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

851.2 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

3.473 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1792

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

768KB

TDP

375W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

1.2

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_1)

Power Connectors

2x 8-pin

Shader Model

5.1

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

750W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

3.473 TFLOPS

Vulkan

Score

34145

OpenCL

Score

30631

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 980MX

3.842 +10.6%

Radeon RX 6400

3.636 +4.7%

FirePro S10000

3.473

Radeon R9 285

3.356 -3.4%

FirePro W8000

3.291 -5.2%

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +188.3%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +104.2%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +19.2%

FirePro S10000

34145

GeForce 940M

5522 -83.8%

OpenCL

Radeon RX 6800S

72374 +136.3%

P104 100

52079 +70%

FirePro S10000

30631

GeForce GTX 880M

15023 -51%

Radeon HD 8870M

9907 -67.7%