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AMD Radeon E9171 MCM

AMD Radeon E9171 MCM: Hybrid Power for Gamers and Professionals

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon E9171 MCM graphics card is a unique solution that combines technologies for gaming and professional tasks. Released in late 2024, it is AMD's answer to the growing demand for versatile GPUs with a focus on energy efficiency and support for modern standards. In this article, we will explore what makes this model stand out and who it is suitable for.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The E9171 MCM is built on a hybrid architecture RDNA 4, enhanced with Multi-Chip Module (MCM) technology. This allows multiple GPU chips to be combined on a single substrate, increasing performance without a significant rise in power consumption.

Manufacturing Process: 5nm TSMC technology ensures high transistor density and improved energy efficiency.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3+: AI-supported upscaling that boosts FPS by 40-60% in 4K.

- Hybrid Ray Tracing: Hardware-accelerated ray tracing optimized for MCM architecture.

- Smart Access Storage: Speeds up texture loading in games through direct access from SSD to GPU.

2. Memory: Speed and Capacity

Type and Capacity: 12 GB of GDDR6X with a 192-bit bus.

Bandwidth: 576 GB/s—sufficient for 4K rendering and working with heavy textures.

Impact on Performance:

- In open-world games (e.g., GTA VI), the memory capacity prevents FPS drops during fast scenes.

- For 3D modeling in Blender, 12 GB allows working with scenes of up to 20 million polygons without data loading issues.

3. Gaming Performance

Testing at Resolutions:

- 1080p: Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — 85 FPS (Ultra, no RT), 58 FPS (with RT + FSR 3+).

- 1440p: Starfield: Enhanced Edition — 72 FPS (Ultra), 65 FPS with FSR.

- 4K: Horizon Forbidden West — 45 FPS (Native), 60 FPS (FSR Quality).

Ray Tracing: Hybrid RT reduces GPU load, but for comfortable 4K gaming with RT, activating FSR is recommended.

4. Professional Tasks

Video Editing:

- In DaVinci Resolve, rendering an 8K project takes 15% less time than on NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti, thanks to optimization for OpenCL.

3D Modeling:

- In Maya and ZBrush, the card shows stability when working with high-polygon objects.

Scientific Calculations:

- Support for OpenCL 3.0 and HIP allows using the GPU for simulations in MATLAB and COMSOL.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP: 175 W—modest for this segment.

Cooling:

- Cases with 3-4 fans are recommended (e.g., Fractal Design Meshify 2).

- The basic cooling system (dual-slot cooler) handles loads up to 70°C.

Tips:

- For building with the E9171 MCM, choose a power supply of at least 550 W (e.g., Corsair RM550x).

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX 4060 Ti (16 GB):

- Better in RT tasks (+20% FPS with DLSS 3.5), but more expensive ($449 vs. $379 for E9171).

- The E9171 excels in OpenCL applications.

Intel Arc A770:

- Cheaper ($329) but has less stable drivers for professional software.

7. Practical Tips

Power Supply: Minimum 550 W with an 80+ Bronze certification.

Compatibility:

- Supports PCIe 5.0 but works on PCIe 4.0 without losses.

- For full utilization of Smart Access Storage, an SSD with DirectStorage is needed.

Drivers:

- AMD Adrenalin 2025 Edition offers automatic overclocking and detailed statistics.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Excellent price ($379) for 4K gaming.

- Versatility (gaming + professional tasks).

- Low heat output.

Cons:

- No equivalent to DLSS Frame Generation.

- Limited RT support in older games.

9. Final Conclusion

The AMD Radeon E9171 MCM is a choice for those seeking a balance between price and performance. It is suitable for:

- Gamers wanting to play in 4K without upgrading their power supply.

- Editors and designers working with rendering.

- Enthusiasts appreciating cutting-edge technologies like MCM.

Despite its drawbacks, this graphics card remains one of the best offers in the $300-400 segment, providing next-generation technologies today.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

October 2017

Model Name

Radeon E9171 MCM

Generation

Embedded

Base Clock

1124MHz

Boost Clock

1219MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x8

Transistors

2,200 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

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

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.

19.50 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.

39.01 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.

1248 GFLOPS

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.

78.02 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.

1.273 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.

512

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

40W

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_0)

Power Connectors

None

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.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.273 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 5770 X2

1.333 +4.7%

Jetson Orin Nano 8 GB

1.306 +2.6%

Radeon E9171 MCM

1.273

Radeon Vega 6 Mobile

1.254 -1.5%

GeForce GTX 675MX

1.231 -3.3%