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AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100

AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100: Power for Professionals in the Era of Innovation

April 2025

1. Architecture and Key Features

Vega Architecture: A Legacy of Efficiency

The AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 is built on the Vega 10 architecture, released in 2017, which remains relevant for the professional market thanks to optimizations. The card is manufactured using a 14nm process, providing a balance between performance and energy efficiency.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX: AMD's toolkit for enhancing graphics (contrast-adaptive sharpening, post-processing shaders).

- Radeon ProRender: Physically accurate rendering with support for OpenCL and Vulkan.

- HBCC (High Bandwidth Cache Controller): Accelerates work with large data sets by loading only the necessary resources into memory.

Note: Ray tracing (RTX) and DLSS technologies are absent in the WX 9100 — that specialization belongs to NVIDIA. However, for professional tasks, AMD offers alternatives through software (Blender Cycles, Radeon ProRender).

2. Memory: Speed and Capacity for Complex Tasks

Type and Amount:

- 16 GB HBM2 (High Bandwidth Memory) with a 2048-bit bus.

- Bandwidth: 512 GB/s — 2-3 times higher than GDDR6.

Impact on Performance:

HBM2 provides instant access to textures and models in 3D rendering, video editing (8K), and simulations. For example, rendering a scene in Blender takes 15-20% less time compared to cards with GDDR6.

3. Gaming Performance: Not the Main Focus, But Possible

Real Examples (FPS on Medium Settings):

- Cyberpunk 2077: 1080p — 60 FPS, 1440p — 45 FPS, 4K — 30 FPS.

- Shadow of the Tomb Raider: 1080p — 75 FPS, 4K — 40 FPS.

Features:

- Ray Tracing: Not supported in hardware. In games with RTX effects (e.g., Metro Exodus), FPS drops to 20-25 at 4K.

- Optimization: Radeon Pro drivers focus on stability rather than gaming performance. For gaming, it is better to use Adrenalin drivers (partially compatible).

Tip: The WX 9100 is suitable for indie projects and less demanding games, but for AAA titles of 2025, it’s better to choose the Radeon RX 8000 or NVIDIA RTX 5000 series.

4. Professional Tasks: Where the WX 9100 Shines

3D Modeling and Rendering:

- Blender: Rendering a moderately complex scene takes 8-10 minutes (compared to 12-15 minutes on NVIDIA Quadro P5000).

- Maya/3ds Max: Supports Viewport 2.0 for smooth previews of complex models.

Video Editing:

- Premiere Pro: Editing 8K footage without lag.

- DaVinci Resolve: Accelerated color grading through OpenCL.

Scientific Calculations:

- OpenCL/CUDA: Better compatibility with OpenCL (used in MATLAB, ANSYS). For CUDA-optimized tasks (e.g., TensorFlow), NVIDIA A100 is more advantageous.

5. Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 250W — requires significant cooling.

- Recommendations:

- Case: Minimum 2 intake fans and 1 exhaust fan.

- Cooling: Turbine (reference design) is noisy but effective for workstations.

- Thermal Paste: Replace every 2-3 years (temperatures under load can reach up to 85°C).

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 (2019):

- Pros: Supports RTX, DLSS 2.0, 16 GB GDDR6.

- Cons: Higher price ($2200 vs. $1800 for the WX 9100), lower memory bandwidth (448 GB/s).

AMD Radeon Pro W6800 (2021):

- Pros: RDNA 2, 32 GB GDDR6, ray tracing support.

- Cons: Higher price ($2500), less stable drivers.

Conclusion: The WX 9100 is a choice for those who value reliability and HBM2 over the latest features.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply:

- Minimum 600W (recommended 750W with 80+ Gold certification).

Compatibility:

- Platforms: Works with AMD Ryzen Threadripper and Intel Xeon.

- Motherboards: Requires PCIe 3.0 x16 (backward compatible with PCIe 4.0).

Drivers:

- Radeon Pro Software: Updates every 2-3 months optimized for professional software.

- Details: For gaming, you can install Adrenalin drivers, but conflicts may arise.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Incredible speed of HBM2 memory for working with 8K+ content.

- Stability of drivers in professional applications.

- Optimization for OpenCL and Vulkan.

Cons:

- High power consumption (250W).

- No hardware ray tracing.

- Price ($1800–$2000 for new units) — more expensive than many gaming alternatives.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the WX 9100 For?

For Professionals:

- 3D Artists and Animators: Rendering speed and working with large scenes.

- Engineers and Scientists: Calculations in CAE programs via OpenCL.

- Video Editors: Editing 8K footage without lag.

Not for:

- Gamers: Better to choose Radeon RX 8000 or NVIDIA RTX 5000.

- AI/ML Enthusiasts: CUDA acceleration from NVIDIA is more effective.

Final takeaway: The AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 is a proven tool for professionals who value stability and memory speed, but are not chasing the latest technologies like RTX.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

July 2017

Model Name

Radeon Pro WX 9100

Generation

Radeon Pro

Base Clock

1200MHz

Boost Clock

1500MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

12,500 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.

256

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 5.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

16GB

Memory Type

HBM2

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.

2048bit

Memory Clock

945MHz

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.

483.8 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.

96.00 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.

384.0 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. 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.

24.58 TFLOPS

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.

768.0 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.

12.536 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.

4096

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

4MB

TDP

230W

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

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin

Shader Model

6.4

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

550W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

12.536 TFLOPS

Blender

Score

640

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GRID RTX T10 2

13.117 +4.6%

Radeon Vega Frontier Edition

12.848 +2.5%

Radeon Pro WX 9100

12.536

Quadro P6000

12.377 -1.3%

Xbox Series X 6nm GPU

11.907 -5%

Blender

Tesla V100 PCIe 32 GB

2297 +258.9%

Radeon RX 7600M

1312 +105%

Radeon Pro WX 9100

640

GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB

344 -46.3%

Quadro M2000M

139 -78.3%