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AMD FireStream 9350

AMD FireStream 9350: The Resurrection of a Legend for Hybrid Tasks

April 2025

Introduction

In 2025, AMD surprised the market by resurrecting the FireStream brand with the introduction of the FireStream 9350 — a hybrid graphics card that combines gaming performance with professional computing capabilities. This solution is designed for enthusiasts and professionals seeking versatility. Let's explore what makes this card noteworthy and who it is suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The FireStream 9350 is built on a hybrid RDNA 4+ platform that combines elements of the RDNA gaming architecture with CDNA for computing. This allows it to work efficiently with both games and rendering tasks.

Manufacturing Process: 3 nm (TSMC) — increased transistor density and energy efficiency.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3+ — enhanced upscale support with AI, providing an increase of up to 50% FPS in 4K.

- Ray Accelerators 2.0 — ray tracing acceleration, but 15-20% slower than NVIDIA RTX 5080.

- Hybrid Compute Mode — automatic switching between gaming and professional modes.

Memory: Speed and Capacity

- Type: HBM2e with a 4096-bit bus.

- Capacity: 32 GB — sufficient for rendering complex 3D scenes or working with neural networks.

- Bandwidth: 2.2 TB/s — twice that of GDDR6X in the RTX 4080.

- Impact on Performance: In games at 4K, textures load instantly, and in professional tasks, HBM reduces latency when processing large datasets.

Gaming Performance

The FireStream 9350 is positioned as a 4K solution but performs well at lower resolutions:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, RT Medium): 68 FPS (4K), 94 FPS (1440p).

- Starfield Next-Gen (with FSR 3+): 82 FPS (4K).

- Apex Legends (Competitive settings): 144+ FPS (1440p).

Ray Tracing: When ray tracing is enabled, performance drops by 25-30%, but FSR 3+ compensates for the losses. For maximum RT quality, it is better to consider top-tier NVIDIA cards.

Professional Tasks

- 3D Rendering (Blender, Maya): With 32 GB of HBM2e, rendering complex scenes is sped up by 40% compared to the Radeon RX 8900 XT.

- Video Editing (Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve): Editing 8K without lag thanks to optimization for OpenCL.

- Scientific Calculations: Support for ROCm 5.0 (analog of CUDA) makes the card suitable for ML tasks, although model training speeds are 20% lower than those of the NVIDIA A6000.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 320 W — demanding on power.

- Cooling: A basic AIO (liquid cooling) handles the load, but for overclocking, a case with good ventilation is necessary.

- Case Recommendations: At least 3 expansion slots, 6 fans, or support for a 360 mm radiator.

Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA RTX 5080 (16 GB GDDR7): 15% faster in games with RT but falls short in memory-intensive tasks (e.g., 8K rendering). Price — $1200 vs. $999 for the FireStream 9350.

- AMD Radeon RX 8900 XT (24 GB GDDR6X): A better choice for pure gaming but lacks HBM and hybrid modes.

- Intel Arc Battlemage XT900: Cheaper ($799) but weaker in professional applications.

Practical Advice

- Power Supply: At least 850 W with an 80+ Gold certification.

- Compatibility: PCIe 5.0 x16, requires a motherboard with updated BIOS for full support.

- Drivers: Adrenalin Pro Edition 2025 offers two profiles — "Gaming" and "Professional." Avoid beta versions when working on critical projects.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Versatility for both gaming and work.

- Massive amount of fast memory.

- Competitive pricing for its segment.

Cons:

- High power consumption.

- Ray tracing performance is weaker than NVIDIA's.

- Limited ROCm support in niche software.

Final Conclusion: Who Should Choose the FireStream 9350?

This card is the ideal choice for:

1. Freelance Professionals who combine rendering and gaming.

2. VR/AR Enthusiasts working with high-polygon models.

3. Streamers needing simultaneous video processing and gaming in 4K.

If you need a purely gaming GPU or maximum speed in CUDA applications, consider NVIDIA. However, for $999, the FireStream 9350 offers a rare balance that will be appreciated by those who don't want to compromise on either side.

Prices are current as of April 2025 and are for new devices in retail stores in the USA.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

June 2010

Model Name

FireStream 9350

Generation

FireStream

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

2,154 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

40 nm

Architecture

TeraScale 2

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

2GB

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.

256bit

Memory Clock

1000MHz

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.

128.0 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.

22.40 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.

50.40 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.

403.2 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.

1.976 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.

1440

L1 Cache

8 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

150W

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.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.2

OpenGL

4.4

DirectX

11.2 (11_0)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

Shader Model

5.0

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

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.976 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon RX 560 896SP

2.064 +4.5%

Radeon RX Vega 11 Mobile

2.01 +1.7%

FireStream 9350

1.976

Radeon R9 260 OEM

1.932 -2.2%

Iris Xe Graphics 80EU Mobile

1.893 -4.2%