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AMD FirePro W4300

AMD FirePro W4300: A Professional Tool in the World of Workstations

Relevant as of April 2025

Introduction

The AMD FirePro W4300 graphics card, released in 2016, has long been a popular choice for professional workstations. Despite its age, it still maintains its niche in 2025 due to stability, optimization for professional tasks, and an affordable price. However, in an era dominated by ray tracing and AI technologies, its capabilities warrant detailed analysis. In this article, we will explore who can benefit from the W4300 today and what tasks it is suited for.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The FirePro W4300 is built on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) 3.0 microarchitecture, which formed the basis for many AMD solutions at the time. The chip is manufactured on a 28nm process technology, which appears outdated by modern standards (5-7nm for flagship models in 2025).

Unique Features:

- Support for Mantle API (the predecessor to Vulkan) and OpenCL 2.0 for parallel computing.

- Absence of modern technologies such as FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) or hardware ray tracing.

- AMD Eyefinity for connecting up to four 4K monitors.

Key Feature: Emphasis on calculation accuracy (full FP64 support) and driver stability for professional applications.

Memory: Speed and Capacity

- Memory Type: GDDR5 (4 GB).

- Memory Bus: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 96 GB/s.

Impact on Performance: For modern gaming and complex 3D scenes, 4 GB of GDDR5 is clearly insufficient — even at 1080p, high-quality textures can cause stutters. However, in professional tasks (such as CAD modeling or rendering in SolidWorks), the amount of memory is mitigated by driver optimization.

Gaming Performance: Realistic Expectations

The FirePro W4300 was not designed for gaming, but in 2025, it can be used for light projects:

- CS2 (1080p, low settings): 50-60 FPS.

- Fortnite (1080p, low settings): 35-45 FPS.

- Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, minimal settings): 15-20 FPS.

Supported Resolutions:

- 1080p: Acceptable only for less demanding games.

- 1440p and 4K: Not recommended — lack of memory and computational power.

Ray Tracing: There is no hardware support. Software methods (such as via DirectX 12 Ultimate) drop FPS to unacceptable levels.

Professional Tasks: Strengths

- 3D Modeling: Support for OpenGL 4.5 and DirectX 12 ensures stability in Autodesk Maya, Blender, and SolidWorks.

- Video Editing: Rendering acceleration in Adobe Premiere Pro via OpenCL.

- Scientific Calculations: FP64 performance (1/4 of FP32) is useful for simulations in MATLAB or ANSYS.

Comparison with NVIDIA: Unlike CUDA-accelerated Quadro (e.g., P1000), the FirePro W4300 offers better pricing (around $250 compared to $400 for newer models) but lags in rendering speed.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 50W — one of the most energy-efficient professional cards.

- Cooling: Passive heatsink or compact fan.

- Recommendations:

- Suitable for compact PCs and servers.

- Power supply of at least 300W (with some headroom for the processor).

Comparison with Competitors

- AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (2025): 7nm process, 8GB GDDR6, FSR support — 2.5 times faster but more expensive ($450).

- NVIDIA Quadro T1000: 4GB GDDR6, CUDA cores — better for rendering in Octane, but priced at $350.

- Intel Arc Pro A50: Newcomer from 2024 with XeSS support — an alternative for hybrid tasks ($300).

Conclusion: The FirePro W4300 is relevant only when on a tight budget or for specific tasks where stability is more critical than speed.

Practical Tips

1. Power Supply: A 300-400W unit with an 80+ Bronze rating is sufficient.

2. Compatibility:

- Requires PCIe 3.0 x16.

- Support for Windows 10/Linux (drivers until 2027).

3. Drivers: Use AMD Pro Edition — optimized for professional software but not updated for gaming.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($200-250 for new units).

- Energy efficiency.

- Stability in professional applications.

Cons:

- Weak gaming performance.

- Outdated process technology and lack of support for modern APIs.

- Limited memory capacity.

Final Verdict: Who is the FirePro W4300 For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget Workstations: If you work in AutoCAD, SolidWorks, or the Adobe Suite and are not willing to pay extra for new models.

2. Office PCs with Multi-Monitor Setup: Thanks to AMD Eyefinity.

3. Retro Computing Enthusiasts: For experimenting with OpenCL and older software.

Why not for gamers? Even in 2025, games require more memory and modern technology support — the W4300 falls significantly behind in this regard.

Conclusion

The AMD FirePro W4300 is an example of a "workhorse" that, despite its age, remains useful in specific scenarios. It may not wow with performance, but it offers reliability and cost-effectiveness. However, for future projects, it’s advisable to consider more modern solutions with support for FSR and hardware ray tracing.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

December 2015

Model Name

FirePro W4300

Generation

FirePro

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

2,080 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.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

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.

128bit

Memory Clock

1500MHz

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.

96.00 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.

14.88 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.

44.64 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.

89.28 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.

1.399 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.

768

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

50W

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

2.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.3

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

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.399 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro P620 Mobile

1.508 +7.8%

FirePro W5100

1.457 +4.1%

FirePro W4300

1.399

Xbox One S GPU

1.376 -1.6%

GeForce GTX 765M

1.353 -3.3%