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AMD FirePro S9010

AMD FirePro S9010 in 2025: A Professional Tool in the Era of New Technologies

Introduction

The AMD FirePro S9010 is a graphics card released in 2013 for the professional market. Despite its age, in 2025 it remains a niche solution for certain tasks. In this article, we will explore its features, relevance, and place among modern GPUs.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The FirePro S9010 is built on the Graphics Core Next (GCN) 1.0 microarchitecture, which laid the groundwork for many AMD solutions.

Manufacturing Process: 28 nm, which is outdated by modern standards (newer cards use 5–7 nm technology).

Unique Features:

- Support for OpenCL 1.2 and DirectX 11.2 for professional computing.

- Lack of modern technologies such as RTX (ray tracing), DLSS, or FidelityFX — this is a specialized tool for workstations.

- EYEFINITY+: Up to 6 monitors can be connected simultaneously, beneficial for financial analysts or engineers.

Memory: Stability Over Speed

Type and Size: 6 GB GDDR5. For comparison, modern cards use GDDR6X or HBM3 with sizes up to 24 GB.

Bandwidth: 240 GB/s — sufficient for handling CAD models or rendering, but limited for neural network tasks.

Impact on Performance: In professional applications (AutoCAD, SolidWorks), the memory size reduces the risk of a “bottleneck” when working with heavy scenes. However, for machine learning or 4K video editing, 6 GB is already inadequate.

Gaming Performance: Not the Main Strength

The FirePro S9010 is not optimized for gaming. In 2025, its capabilities are modest:

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

- Fortnite (1440p, medium settings): 25–30 FPS.

- Ray Tracing: Not supported.

The card is suitable only for older titles (e.g., CS:GO or Dota 2 on medium settings). Modern games require GPUs that support DirectX 12 Ultimate and hardware-accelerated RT cores.

Professional Tasks: Power in Specialization

3D Modeling: In Autodesk Maya or Blender, the S9010 shows stability but falls behind the newer Radeon Pro W7800 (rendering speeds up to 2–3 times faster).

Video Editing: OpenCL support speeds up processing in Adobe Premiere Pro, but power is insufficient for 8K materials.

Scientific Calculations: Compatibility with OpenCL allows the card to be used for physical modeling; however, for neural networks, the NVIDIA A100 with CUDA is more effective.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 225 W — a high figure even for 2025.

Recommendations:

- A case with 3–4 fans for active cooling.

- An open system or server racks with powerful coolers.

- Ideal environment: workstations in cool rooms.

Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA Quadro K6000 (2013): Similar performance but better optimization for CUDA. In 2025, both cards are considered outdated.

- AMD Radeon Pro W6600 (2021): Advantage in energy efficiency (100 W TDP), support for PCIe 4.0, and 8 GB GDDR6.

- NVIDIA RTX A2000 (2021): Ray tracing, 12 GB GDDR6, and 2–3 times higher rendering performance.

Practical Tips

Power Supply: Minimum 500 W with a margin (recommended 600 W).

Compatibility:

- Motherboards with PCIe 3.0 x16 (modern PCIe 5.0 is backward compatible).

- Drivers: Use AMD FirePro Professional Edition — stable but not updated since 2020.

Notes:

- Incompatibility with Windows 12 (if released) — possible errors.

- For Linux, open-source AMDGPU drivers are suitable.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Reliability in long-term operation.

- Support for multi-monitor setups.

- Low cost on the secondary market ($150–300).

Cons:

- Outdated architecture.

- High power consumption.

- Lack of support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 2.0).

Final Conclusion: Who is the FirePro S9010 Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Budget Workstations: If you need to process CAD models or work with 2D graphics without speed requirements.

2. Laboratories and Educational Institutions: For tasks where stability is more important than performance.

3. Retro Hardware Enthusiasts: Those who appreciate equipment from the 2010s.

In 2025, the FirePro S9010 is a highly specialized tool. For gaming, AI, or 4K video, choose modern GPUs. But if you need a “workhorse” at minimal cost — this card still has utility.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

August 2012

Model Name

FirePro S9010

Generation

FirePro

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.

25.60 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.

89.60 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.

716.8 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.

2.81 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

200W

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 6-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

550W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

2.81 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro P3000 Mobile

3.048 +8.5%

P106M

2.915 +3.7%

FirePro S9010

2.81

Arc A310

2.742 -2.4%

Radeon HD 5870

2.666 -5.1%