AMD Radeon Pro W6400

AMD Radeon Pro W6400

AMD Radeon Pro W6400: A Professional Tool for Budget-Conscious Users

April 2025


Introduction

In the world of professional graphics cards, the AMD Radeon Pro W6400 occupies a special place. This compact and energy-efficient solution is designed for designers, engineers, and editors who value the balance between price and performance. But how relevant is it in 2025? Let's dive into the details.


Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 2: The Foundation for Professionals

The graphics card is built on the RDNA 2 architecture, which debuted in 2020 but remains relevant due to optimizations. The manufacturing process is 6 nm (TSMC), ensuring low heat generation.

Unique Technologies

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR): Version 2.2 (2025) supports improved image upscaling in games and applications for 3D rendering.

- Ray Accelerators: Hardware ray tracing is utilized more frequently in professional tasks (e.g., rendering in Blender) than in gaming.

- Infinity Cache: 16 MB cache to reduce memory latency.

Differences from Gaming GPUs: Focus on stability and support for professional APIs (OpenCL, Vulkan, DirectX 12 Ultimate).


Memory: Speed and Limitations

GDDR6 and Narrow Bus

- Capacity: 4 GB GDDR6.

- Bus: 64-bit, limiting throughput to 128 GB/s.

For 4K video editing or working with heavy 3D scenes, this may be insufficient. For example, rendering a complex model in Autodesk Maya will require frequent data loading, slowing down the process.

Recommendation: For projects with high-resolution textures, consider models with 8+ GB of memory, such as the Radeon Pro W6600 (8 GB, 128-bit bus).


Gaming Performance: Not the Primary Task

1080p: Modest Results

The W6400 is built for work tasks, but in games (settings "Medium"):

- Cyberpunk 2077: ~35 FPS (no ray tracing).

- Apex Legends: ~60 FPS.

- Fortnite: ~70 FPS (with FSR 2.2).

Ray Tracing: Activation reduces FPS by 40-50%, making gameplay less comfortable.

1440p and 4K

For resolutions above 1080p, the graphics card is unsuitable due to a lack of memory and computational power.


Professional Tasks: Where the W6400 Shines

Video Editing

- DaVinci Resolve: Smooth playback of 4K 60 FPS (H.264/H.265) using hardware decoding.

- Premiere Pro: 30% faster rendering compared to integrated graphics.

3D Modeling and Rendering

- Blender Cycles: Support for HIP (AMD's alternative to CUDA). Rendering a medium-level scene takes ~12 minutes (compared to ~8 minutes for the NVIDIA T1000 8 GB).

- SolidWorks: Stable operation with models up to 500 thousand polygons.

Scientific Computing

- OpenCL: Effective for machine learning tasks based on small datasets. For instance, image processing in MATLAB is performed 20% faster than on the NVIDIA T400.

Limitation: Lack of specialized AI cores (like NVIDIA's Tensor Cores).


Power Consumption and Heat Output

- TDP: 50 W — powered through the PCIe slot, no additional cable required.

- Cooling: Available in passive and active versions. For prolonged workloads, models with a fan are recommended.

- Case: Suitable for compact PCs (SFF) with minimal airflow.

Advice: In a case with 1-2 fans, the temperature under load will not exceed 75°C.


Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA T400 (4 GB GDDR6)

- Pros of NVIDIA: Better optimization for CUDA applications (e.g., Adobe Suite).

- Cons: 15% slower in OpenCL tasks. Price: $180 (compared to $200 for the W6400).

Intel Arc Pro A40

- Pros: 6 GB of memory, AV1 encoding support.

- Cons: Weak driver stability. Price: $190.

Conclusion: The W6400 excels over competitors in price/performance ratio for the OpenCL environment.


Practical Advice

Power Supply

A 300 W power supply is sufficient (e.g., Be Quiet! SFX Power 3 300W). For systems with Core i5/i7 level processors, a 400 W unit is suggested.

Compatibility

- Platform: Supports PCIe 4.0 x8. Compatible with Windows 11, Linux (AMD GPU Pro driver).

- Monitors: Supports up to 4 4K displays via DisplayPort 1.4.

Drivers

- Pro Edition: Prioritizes stability over frequent updates.

- Adrenalin Edition: For hybrid use (work + gaming), but not recommended for critical tasks.


Pros and Cons

Strengths

- Energy efficiency.

- Compact size.

- Support for FSR 2.2 and AV1 hardware encoding.

- Affordable price ($200-220).

Weaknesses

- Only 4 GB of memory.

- Limited gaming performance.

- No AI acceleration.


Final Verdict: Who is the Radeon Pro W6400 For?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

1. Budget-Conscious Professionals: Freelancers, students, startups.

2. Compact PC Owners: Mini cases, office workstations.

3. Users of OpenCL Software: Blender, MATLAB, SPECviewperf.

Gamers and studios with heavy projects should consider more powerful solutions (such as the Radeon Pro W7600 or NVIDIA RTX A2000).

Price in April 2025: $200-220 for new models.


If you need a reliable "workhorse" GPU without frills — the Radeon Pro W6400 will meet expectations. But remember: it's a tool for specific tasks, not a universal champion.

Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Desktop
Launch Date
January 2022
Model Name
Radeon Pro W6400
Generation
Radeon Pro
Base Clock
2331MHz
Boost Clock
2331MHz
Bus Interface
PCIe 4.0 x4
Transistors
5,400 million
RT Cores
12
Compute Units
12
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.
48
Foundry
TSMC
Process Size
6 nm
Architecture
RDNA 2.0

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.
64bit
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.
112.0 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.
74.59 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.
111.9 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.
7.161 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.
223.8 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.
3.508 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.
768
L1 Cache
128 KB per Array
L2 Cache
1024KB
TDP
50W
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
2.2
OpenGL
4.6
DirectX
12 Ultimate (12_2)
Power Connectors
None
Shader Model
6.6
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
Suggested PSU
250W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p
Score
8 fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p
Score
20 fps
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p
Score
36 fps
FP32 (float)
Score
3.508 TFLOPS
Blender
Score
116
OpenCL
Score
35443

Compared to Other GPU

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps
39 +387.5%
26 +225%
15 +87.5%
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps
54 +170%
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps
141 +291.7%
107 +197.2%
79 +119.4%
46 +27.8%
FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
3.856 +9.9%
3.698 +5.4%
3.363 -4.1%
3.311 -5.6%
Blender
1497 +1190.5%
194 +67.2%
OpenCL
77320 +118.2%
60223 +69.9%
18130 -48.8%
10348 -70.8%