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AMD Radeon Pro W6500M

AMD Radeon Pro W6500M: Power for Professionals and Enthusiasts

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon Pro W6500M is a compact yet powerful solution designed for professionals and users who value a balance between performance and energy efficiency. Announced in late 2024, it fills a niche in mobile workstations and compact PCs, offering support for modern technologies and stability in professional tasks. In this article, we will explore what makes the W6500M noteworthy and whom it is suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3+ Architecture

At the core of the W6500M lies an optimized version of the RDNA 3 architecture (codenamed Navi 34), manufactured using TSMC's 5nm process technology. This allows AMD to increase transistor density by 15% compared to the previous generation while maintaining low power consumption.

Unique Features

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0: An upscaling technology that increases FPS in games with minimal losses in quality.

- Hybrid Ray Tracing: Support for ray tracing, but optimized for professional rendering rather than gaming.

- AV1 Encoding/Decoding: Hardware acceleration for AV1 and HEVC codecs for editing 8K video.

The card also supports AMD ProRender, making it appealing for 3D designers.

Memory: Fast yet Compact

Type and Capacity

The W6500M is equipped with 8GB GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit bus. Its bandwidth reaches 224 GB/s, which is 20% higher than its predecessor, the W6400M.

Impact on Performance

For most professional tasks (rendering in Blender, working with CAD models), this amount is sufficient. However, in games with high-resolution textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty), data loading may occur when settings are on Ultra.

Gaming Performance: Not Just for Work

Although the W6500M is positioned as a professional card, its gaming capabilities are impressive:

- 1080p (High settings):

- Call of Duty: Future Warfare — 75-85 FPS;

- Horizon Forbidden West PC Edition — 60-70 FPS.

- 1440p (Medium settings):

- Starfield: Enhanced Edition — 45-55 FPS;

- F1 2025 — 80-90 FPS.

Ray Tracing

Activating Hybrid Ray Tracing drops FPS by 30-40%. In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p/Medium with shadow tracing, the card delivers around 35 FPS. For smoother gameplay, it's better to use FSR 3.0.

Professional Tasks: The Main Advantage

- 3D Modeling: In Autodesk Maya and Blender, rendering is performed 20% faster than the previous generation.

- Video Editing: In DaVinci Resolve, rendering a 4K project takes 15% less time thanks to AV1 acceleration.

- Scientific Calculations: Support for OpenCL 3.0 and ROCm 6.0 allows the card to be utilized in machine learning (though for complex neural networks, models with larger memory are recommended).

Important: Unlike NVIDIA's CUDA, AMD's ecosystem for AI is less developed but is improving actively.

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Cooling

The card has a TDP of 65W, making it ideal for thin laptops and compact PCs. Recommended solutions include:

- Laptops: Systems with dual fans and heat pipes (e.g., Dell Precision 5570M).

- Desktops: Cases with ventilation in the front and back panels (NZXT H210).

Tip: Avoid passive cooling — even with low TDP, active airflow will prolong lifespan.

Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA RTX A2000 (12GB): 10-15% faster in rendering but costs from $600. Better in ray tracing and supports DLSS 4.0.

- Intel Arc Pro A60: Cheaper ($400), but lacks driver stability.

- AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT: A gaming card at $500, but not optimized for professional software.

Conclusion: The W6500M is a sweet spot for those who value versatility.

Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A 450W PSU will be sufficient for a PC with the W6500M (e.g., Corsair CX450).

- Compatibility: The card requires PCIe 4.0 x8. Check your motherboard's support.

- Drivers: Use AMD Pro Edition — they are tested in Autodesk and Adobe but are updated less frequently than gaming drivers.

Lifehack: For hybrid tasks (gaming + work), install two sets of drivers through AMD Software Pro + Adrenalin Edition.

Pros and Cons

✔️ Pros:

- Energy efficiency (65W);

- Support for AV1 and FSR 3.0;

- Optimization for professional applications.

❌ Cons:

- Limited memory for AI tasks;

- Average performance in ray tracing;

- Price of $550 (competitors offer more memory for the same money).

Final Conclusion: Who Is the W6500M For?

This graphics card is designed for:

1. Mobile Professionals: Designers and editors who need portability without compromise.

2. Compact PC Enthusiasts: For building mini-ITX systems that support gaming and creative tasks.

3. Students: Studying 3D modeling or video production on a budget.

If you're looking for a “workhorse” at a moderate price and can cope with limitations in AI, the W6500M will be an excellent choice. However, for heavy rendering or gaming at 4K, it's better to consider higher-end models.

Prices are current as of April 2025. Please check availability with official AMD suppliers.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Model Name

Radeon Pro W6500M

Generation

Radeon Pro Mobile

Base Clock

1512MHz

Boost Clock

2040MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x4

Transistors

5,400 million

RT Cores

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

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

2000MHz

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.

128.0 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.

65.28 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.

130.6 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.

8.356 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.

261.1 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.

4.094 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.

1024

L1 Cache

128 KB per Array

L2 Cache

1024KB

TDP

25W

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

6.7

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

4.094 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB

4.287 +4.7%

GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Max Q

4.183 +2.2%

Radeon Pro W6500M

4.094

Radeon R9 280X

4.014 -2%

Radeon HD 7970 X2

3.865 -5.6%