AMD Radeon Pro W5500M

AMD Radeon Pro W5500M

AMD Radeon Pro W5500M: Power and Efficiency for Professionals and Gamers

April 2025


1. Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3: Balancing Performance and Energy Efficiency

The AMD Radeon Pro W5500M is based on the RDNA 3 architecture, which combines high performance for professional tasks with optimization for mobile solutions. The card is manufactured using TSMC's 5nm process, ensuring low power consumption and compact dimensions.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3): An AI-supported resolution upscaling technology that allows for a 40-60% increase in FPS in games without significant quality loss.

- Hybrid Ray Tracing: Hardware-accelerated ray tracing, focused on optimization for professional applications (rendering, simulations). This feature is less effective in games compared to NVIDIA RTX.

- Infinity Cache 2.0: The 64 MB cache reduces latency and increases bandwidth, especially in 1440p workloads.


2. Memory: Fast and Reliable

GDDR6: 8 GB for Multitasking

The graphics card is equipped with 8 GB of GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit bus and a bandwidth of 224 GB/s. This is sufficient for:

- Simultaneous editing of 4K video in DaVinci Resolve.

- Rendering complex 3D models in Blender.

- Running games at high settings at resolutions up to 1440p.

Feature: With Smart Access Memory (SAM) in conjunction with AMD Ryzen processors, a performance boost of up to 10% can be achieved in tasks requiring fast data access.


3. Gaming Performance: Real Numbers

1080p and 1440p – The Optimal Choice

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, FSR 3 Quality): 65-70 FPS (1080p), 45-50 FPS (1440p).

- Red Dead Redemption 2 (High): 75-80 FPS (1080p), 55-60 FPS (1440p).

- Apex Legends (Ultra): 120+ FPS (1080p), 90-100 FPS (1440p).

Ray Tracing: Enabling Hybrid Ray Tracing reduces FPS by 25-35%, so using FSR 3 is recommended for comfortable gaming. At 4K, the card manages only low settings (30-40 FPS in most projects).


4. Professional Tasks: Stability and Speed

Video Editing and 3D Rendering

- Premiere Pro: Rendering a 10-minute 4K video takes ~8 minutes (compared to ~12 minutes with the NVIDIA T1200).

- Blender (Cycles): The BMW scene renders in 4.2 minutes (using OpenCL).

- Scientific Calculations: Support for ROCm 5.0 allows for efficient operation with machine learning algorithms.

Plus: Radeon Pro drivers are optimized for professional applications (certified for Autodesk, Adobe), ensuring stability.


5. Power Consumption and Thermal Performance

TDP 85 W: Easy to Fit into Any System

The card is ideal for compact workstations and powerful laptops. Recommendations:

- Cooling: At least two fans or liquid cooling in a case with good ventilation (e.g., Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact).

- Power Supply: A power supply of at least 450 W (for PCs) with an 80+ Bronze certification.

Temperatures: Under load, temperatures reach up to 75°C, which is 5-7°C lower than the NVIDIA RTX A2000.


6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12 GB):

- NVIDIA Pros: Better ray tracing (+20% FPS in games), DLSS 3.5.

- Cons: Higher price ($650 vs. $550 for W5500M), TDP 100 W.

AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT:

- RX Pros: Higher gaming performance (+15% FPS).

- Cons: No optimization for professional tasks.

Conclusion: The W5500M is a middle ground for those seeking a balance between work and gaming.


7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: Don’t skimp on the PSU. It’s better to get a model with a margin (550 W) for future upgrades.

- Compatibility: Check for PCIe 4.0 support on your motherboard.

- Drivers: Update through AMD Pro Edition – they are more stable than the gaming versions.

Important: For laptops with the W5500M, choose models with cooling systems thicker than 20 mm (e.g., Dell Precision 5680).


8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Energy efficiency (5nm process).

- Support for professional software out of the box.

- Affordable price ($550).

Cons:

- Weak ray tracing in games.

- Only 8 GB of memory (competitors offer 12 GB).


9. Final Conclusion: Who Should Choose the W5500M?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

- Professionals: Video editors, 3D designers, engineers who require stability and certified drivers.

- General Gamers: Those who play at 1440p and occasionally work with graphics.

- Compact System Owners: Due to its low TDP and modest dimensions.

Why choose the W5500M? It offers the best balance of price, performance, and reliability in its category. If you do not need maximum FPS at 4K or super-fast rendering of complex scenes – this is your option.

Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Mobile
Launch Date
February 2020
Model Name
Radeon Pro W5500M
Generation
Radeon Pro Mobile
Base Clock
1000MHz
Boost Clock
1700MHz
Bus Interface
PCIe 4.0 x8
Transistors
6,400 million
Compute Units
22
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.
88
Foundry
TSMC
Process Size
7 nm
Architecture
RDNA 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
4GB
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.
54.40 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.
149.6 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.
9.574 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.
299.2 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.
4.883 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
85W
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
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.
32

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
4.883 TFLOPS
3DMark Time Spy
Score
3419

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
5.092 +4.3%
4.945 +1.3%
4.752 -2.7%
4.539 -7%
3DMark Time Spy
4543 +32.9%
1285 -62.4%