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AMD FirePro M7820

AMD FirePro M7820: An Obsolete Professional in the Era of Modern Technologies

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD FirePro M7820 is a professional mobile graphics card released back in the early 2010s. Despite its venerable age, it remains of interest to enthusiasts and professionals working with legacy software. In this article, we will explore who might find this GPU useful in 2025 and whether it should be considered a viable solution.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The FirePro M7820 is built on the TeraScale 3 microarchitecture (VLIW4), which debuted in 2011. This is one of the last versions of AMD’s architecture before the shift to GCN (Graphics Core Next).

Process Technology: 40 nm (an outdated standard—modern GPUs use 5–7 nm).

Unique Features:

- Support for OpenCL 1.2 and DirectX 11.

- Eyefinity technology for connecting up to 6 displays.

- Hardware optimization for professional applications (AutoCAD, SolidWorks).

Lack of Modern Features:

- No ray tracing (RTX) or equivalents.

- Does not support FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) or DLSS.

2. Memory

- Type: GDDR5 (128-bit bus).

- Capacity: 2 GB (critically low for modern tasks).

- Bandwidth: 64 GB/s (4–5 times lower than modern cards).

Impact on Performance:

The limited capacity and low bandwidth make the FirePro M7820 unsuitable for working with 4K textures or complex 3D scenes. In gameplay, the frame buffer fills up instantly, leading to FPS drops even at low settings.

3. Gaming Performance

The FirePro M7820 was not designed for gaming, but its capabilities look particularly modest in 2025:

- CS:GO (1080p, low settings): ~40–50 FPS.

- GTA V (720p, minimum settings): ~25–30 FPS.

- Modern titles (Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield): Will not launch or run with FPS <15.

Resolutions:

- 1080p: Only suitable for older games.

- 1440p/4K: Not recommended even for video playback.

Ray Tracing: No hardware support. Software emulation is impractical due to low computing power.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing:

- Adobe Premiere Pro support is limited to older versions (CC 2015 and earlier).

- Rendering 1080p video takes 3–4 times longer than on modern iGPUs.

3D Modeling:

- In Autodesk Maya or Blender (with OpenCL support), the card can handle simple scenes, but there won't be enough memory for complex projects.

Scientific Calculations:

- OpenCL 1.2 allows using the GPU for parallel computations, but performance is 10–20 times lower than that of the NVIDIA RTX A2000.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

- TDP: 45 W (low even by 2025 standards).

- Cooling: Passive or compact radiator with fan.

- Case Recommendations: Compatible with small form-factor PCs, but due to outdated interfaces (PCIe 2.0), it only works with motherboards from the 2010s.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Modern Analogues:

- NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12 GB GDDR6): 8–10 times faster in rendering, supports ray tracing.

- AMD Radeon Pro W6600 (8 GB GDDR6): Optimized for modern professional tasks, power consumption of 100 W.

Historical Competitors:

- NVIDIA Quadro 5010M (2011): Similar performance, but better driver support.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: 300 W is sufficient (the card does not require additional power).

- Compatibility: Only systems with PCIe 2.0/3.0 and older versions of Windows/Linux.

- Drivers: Use the latest available versions from AMD’s website (support discontinued in 2018).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Stability in old professional applications.

- Support for multi-monitor configurations.

Cons:

- Obsolete architecture.

- Lack of memory and bandwidth.

- No support for modern APIs and technologies.

9. Conclusion

Who is the FirePro M7820 suitable for in 2025?

- Retro Computing Enthusiasts: For building systems from the 2010–2015 era.

- Specialists with Legacy Software: If the working software requires specific support for OpenCL 1.2 and hasn’t been updated in decades.

Why is it better to choose modern solutions?

Even budget cards like the NVIDIA T400 (4 GB GDDR6) or the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (8 GB GDDR6) offer 5–7 times higher performance, support for current standards, and availability of new drivers.

Conclusion

AMD FirePro M7820 is an example of a "living legend" among professional GPUs, but in 2025, its usage is justified only in niche scenarios. For most tasks, it is wiser to invest in modern solutions that provide not only stability but also compliance with contemporary requirements.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

May 2010

Model Name

FirePro M7820

Generation

FirePro Mobility

Bus Interface

PCIe 2.0 x16

Transistors

1,040 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

1024MB

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

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.

64.00 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.

11.20 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.

28.00 GTexel/s

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.

1.142 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.

800

L1 Cache

8 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.

N/A

OpenCL Version

1.2

OpenGL

4.4

DirectX

11.2 (11_0)

Power Connectors

None

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.142 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 670MX

1.177 +3.1%

Quadro P520 Mobile

1.17 +2.5%

FirePro M7820

1.142

Quadro K3100M

1.106 -3.2%

T400

1.072 -6.1%