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AMD Radeon Pro W5500

AMD Radeon Pro W5500: Power for Professionals and Gamers

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon Pro W5500 graphics card is a hybrid solution that combines professional capabilities with respectable gaming performance. Designed for designers, engineers, and enthusiasts, it offers a balance between price and functionality. In this article, we will discuss what makes the W5500 stand out in 2025 and who it is suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 2: The Foundation of Efficiency

The W5500 is built on the RDNA 2 architecture, which debuted in 2020 but remains relevant due to optimizations. The card is manufactured using TSMC's 6nm process, ensuring low power consumption alongside high performance.

Unique AMD Technologies

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 3.0): A scaling technology that enhances FPS in games with minimal quality loss. Supported in 90% of modern titles.

- Ray Accelerators: Hardware ray tracing, though less advanced than NVIDIA's RTX 40 series.

- Pro-optimizations: Support for Vulkan, DirectX 12 Ultimate, and OpenCL 3.0 APIs for professional tasks.

Memory: Speed and Reliability

GDDR6 and Efficient Bus

The W5500 is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth is 224 GB/s, providing enough power to handle 3D models and textures at resolutions up to 4K.

Impact on Performance

- In gaming: The 8 GB buffer allows for high texture settings at 1440p without stutters.

- In professional work: Support for ECC memory (optional) reduces the risk of errors during rendering.

Gaming Performance

Average FPS in Popular Titles

- Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p, Ultra, FSR 3.0): 55–60 FPS.

- Horizon Forbidden West (1080p, Ultra): 75 FPS.

- Apex Legends (1440p, High): 120 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Limited Capabilities

Enabling ray tracing reduces FPS by 30–40%, but FSR 3.0 compensates for the losses. For example, in Control (1440p, RT Medium + FSR), it maintains a stable 45 FPS. For AAA games with RTX, it is better to look at NVIDIA, but the W5500 suits casual gaming well.

Professional Tasks

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

- DaVinci Resolve: Editing 8K projects with Noise Reduction — 25–30 FPS in real-time.

- Blender (OpenCL): Rendering a BMW scene in 8.5 minutes — comparable to NVIDIA RTX 3060.

- SolidWorks: Smooth operation with assemblies of over 1000 components.

Scientific Calculations

Support for OpenCL and ROCm allows using the card in machine learning (limited) and simulations. However, for serious tasks, cards with more memory, like the Radeon Pro W6800, are better suited.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Cooling Recommendations

The W5500 has a TDP of 125 W. The card is equipped with a dual-fan cooling system, with temperatures under load reaching up to 75°C.

- Power Supply: Minimum of 450 W (recommended 500 W with an 80+ Bronze certification).

- Case: Good ventilation (2–3 fans) and at least 2 expansion slots.

Comparison with Competitors

AMD vs NVIDIA

- NVIDIA RTX 4060: Better in ray tracing (+25% FPS with DLSS 3.5) and CUDA support but more expensive ($350 vs $299 for W5500).

- AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT: A gaming card for $320. Higher FPS in games, but lacks Pro drivers for work tasks.

Within the Radeon Pro Lineup

- Radeon Pro W6600: +15% performance, 10 GB of memory, but priced at $450. For W5500, it offers a good price/performance ratio.

Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- PSU: 500 W with an 8-pin cable. Avoid cheap models as they may cause voltage drops.

- Platform: Compatible with PCIe 4.0, also works on PCIe 3.0 but with a 3–5% performance loss.

Drivers and Optimization

- Use Pro drivers for professional applications and Adrenalin Edition for games.

- Update software through AMD Software: Pro Edition — this has fewer bugs than gaming builds.

Pros and Cons

Strengths

- Balance of gaming and professional performance.

- Low power consumption and quiet operation.

- Support for FSR 3.0 and hardware ray tracing.

Weaknesses

- Limited ray tracing performance.

- 8 GB of memory may be insufficient for rendering complex scenes at 4K.

Final Conclusion: Who is the Radeon Pro W5500 For?

This card is an ideal choice for:

1. Professionals on a budget: video editing, 3D modeling, CAD.

2. Gamers who also do some work: smooth gaming at 1440p and support for modern technologies.

3. Students and freelancers: reliability, optimized for Adobe and Autodesk software.

At a price of $299, the W5500 is an attractive alternative to gaming cards, offering “professional” reliability and long-term driver support. If you don't need ultra settings at 4K or complex rendering, this is an excellent option.

Note: Prices are current as of April 2025 for new devices in the USA.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

February 2020

Model Name

Radeon Pro W5500

Generation

Radeon Pro

Base Clock

1744MHz

Boost Clock

1855MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

6,400 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

7 nm

Architecture

RDNA 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

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

1750MHz

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.

224.0 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.

59.36 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.

163.2 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.

10.45 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.

326.5 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.

5.328 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.

1408

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

125W

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.

1.3

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin

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.

Suggested PSU

300W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

5.328 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

4802

Blender

Score

512

Vulkan

Score

40401

OpenCL

Score

45244

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Pro Duo Polaris

5.613 +5.3%

Radeon Pro 5500 XT

5.506 +3.3%

Radeon Pro W5500

5.328

Quadro RTX 3000 Mobile Refresh

5.193 -2.5%

Radeon RX 5500 OEM

5.092 -4.4%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce RTX 3060 GA104

8719 +81.6%

GeForce RTX 2070 Max Q Refresh

6879 +43.3%

Radeon Pro W5500

4802

Radeon R9 290

3619 -24.6%

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

2290 -52.3%

Blender

RTX A2000

1821.91 +255.8%

994.53 +94.2%

Radeon Pro W5500

512

Radeon RX 7700S

266.8 -47.9%

Radeon Pro 5600M

101 -80.3%

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +143.7%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +72.5%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +0.8%

Radeon Pro W5500

40401

GeForce 940M

5522 -86.3%

OpenCL

GeForce RTX 2070

91174 +101.5%

Radeon RX 7600S

66179 +46.3%

Radeon Pro W5500

45244

GeForce GTX 780 Ti

26013 -42.5%

FirePro M6100

13395 -70.4%