Home / AMD / AMD FirePro W6170M: Performance and Specs

AMD FirePro W6170M

AMD FirePro W6170M: An Obsolete Professional in the Era of Modern GPUs

Analysis of the mobile workstation graphics card capabilities in 2025

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The AMD FirePro W6170M is based on the 3rd generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) microarchitecture, released in 2014–2015. This solution is focused on stability and precision in calculations, which is typical for professional GPUs.

Manufacturing Technology: The card is produced using a 28 nm process, which is considered outdated by 2025. Modern GPUs utilize 5–7 nm processes, offering better power efficiency and performance.

Unique Features:

- Support for OpenCL 2.0 and DirectX 12 (Feature Level 11_1) for parallel computing and rendering.

- Lack of modern technologies such as FidelityFX, DLSS, or ray tracing, which emerged later and require hardware support.

- Optimization for professional applications: certified for Autodesk Maya, SolidWorks, and Adobe Premiere Pro.

Memory: Modest Specs for Modern Tasks

- Type and Size: 2 GB GDDR5 — sufficient for basic tasks from the 2010s, but inadequate for handling 4K textures or complex 3D models in 2025.

- Bus and Bandwidth: A 256-bit bus provides 160 GB/s — a decent figure for its time, but half of what modern mobile GPUs with GDDR6 offer.

- Impact on Performance: The limited memory capacity restricts work with large data sets. For example, rendering scenes in Blender may require data loading from disk.

Gaming Performance: Nostalgia for the Past

The FirePro W6170M was designed for workstations, not games, but in 2025 its capabilities appear particularly modest:

- GTA V (1080p, medium settings): 40–45 FPS.

- CS:GO (1080p, high settings): 60–70 FPS.

- Modern titles (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077): 10–15 FPS on low settings at 1080p, making gameplay nearly impossible.

Resolutions:

- 1080p: Minimally comfortable only in older games.

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

Ray Tracing: Not supported — this requires RT cores, which are absent in GCN architecture.

Professional Tasks: Specialization vs. Time

- Video Editing: In Adobe Premiere Pro (2018-2020 versions), the card can handle HD video rendering, but 4K exports will take 3–4 times longer than on modern GPUs.

- 3D Modeling: In Autodesk Maya and Blender (with OpenCL support), performance is sufficient for simple scenes, but complex projects with high-polygon objects will lag.

- Scientific Calculations: Limited OpenCL support and no CUDA make it a weak competitor even against budget NVIDIA RTX A500 cards.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

- TDP: 75 W — a moderate figure for mobile workstations of its era.

- Cooling: Original laptops (e.g., Dell Precision M4800) used compact coolers with heat pipes. By 2025, there may be issues with the wear of the cooling system in used devices.

- Recommendations: Use the laptop on a flat surface to improve ventilation. Cleaning the cooler and replacing thermal paste is essential when purchasing a used device.

Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA Quadro M2000M (2015): 4 GB GDDR5, 640 CUDA cores. Better for tasks optimized for CUDA (e.g., rendering in V-Ray), but comparable in OpenCL.

- AMD Radeon Pro WX 4130 (2017): 4 GB GDDR5, Polaris architecture. 20-30% faster in professional applications due to updated drivers.

- Modern Alternatives (2025): NVIDIA RTX A2000 Mobile (8 GB GDDR6, RTX support) or AMD Radeon Pro W6600M (8 GB GDDR6, RDNA 2) — outperform the W6170M by 4–5 times in performance.

Practical Advice

- Power Supply: Original adapters (typically 150–180 W) are required for laptops with W6170M. Ensure compatibility of connectors when replacing.

- Compatibility: The card works only in older systems (Intel 4th generation or AMD FX platforms). Modern PCIe 4.0/5.0 motherboards may not support it.

- Drivers: Official support from AMD was discontinued in 2020. The last driver versions (Adrenalin 20.Q4) are available on AMD's website, but are not compatible with Windows 11 24H2.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Reliability in professional applications of the 2010s.

- Low power consumption for a mobile workstation.

- Affordable price in the used market ($50–80).

Cons:

- Obsolete architecture and 28 nm manufacturing process.

- Lack of support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3).

- Unsuitable for games and complex tasks in 2025.

Final Conclusion: Who is this Card For?

In 2025, the AMD FirePro W6170M is a choice for:

1. Owners of old workstations seeking to extend the life of their equipment for running specialized software (e.g., CAD programs from the 2010s).

2. Enthusiasts building retro computers or studying the history of GPUs.

3. Educational institutions requiring a low-cost solution for basic training in 3D modeling.

Why should new users avoid it? Even budget modern GPUs (e.g., NVIDIA T400 or AMD Radeon Pro W6300) offer 3–4 times the performance at a similar price ($100–150).

Conclusion

The FirePro W6170M is an example of a "professional" from its time that has now become a relic. It should only be considered in narrow scenarios where compatibility with old software is crucial. For all other tasks in 2025, it is wiser to choose modern solutions.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

August 2014

Model Name

FirePro W6170M

Generation

FirePro Mobile

Bus Interface

MXM-B (3.0)

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

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.

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.

17.60 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.

61.60 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.

123.2 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.

2.01 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.

896

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

Unknown

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.

1.2.170

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.5

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

2.01 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Quadro K5000 Mac Edition

2.126 +5.8%

Radeon HD 5950

2.046 +1.8%

FirePro W6170M

2.01

Radeon R7 370

1.957 -2.6%

Radeon Pro WX 4150 Mobile

1.925 -4.2%