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AMD Radeon Pro W6800X

AMD Radeon Pro W6800X: Power for Professionals and Enthusiasts

Updated: April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon Pro W6800X graphics card is a flagship GPU aimed at professionals in 3D modeling, video editing, and scientific computing. However, its capabilities will also attract gamers who are willing to pay a premium for exceptional performance. In this article, we will explore what makes the W6800X stand out, how it handles tasks, and who should pay attention to it.

Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3: A Foundation for Professionals

The W6800X is built on the RDNA 3 architecture, an evolution of RDNA 2. Key improvements include:

- 6nm TSMC process — higher energy efficiency and transistor density.

- Ray Accelerators 2.0 — hardware support for ray tracing with improved performance.

- Enhanced compute units — up to 3840 stream processors and 240 texture units.

Unique Technologies

- FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0 — AI-supported upscaling algorithm that boosts FPS in games by up to 50% with no loss in detail.

- Smart Access Memory (SAM) — speeds up CPU access to video memory when used with Ryzen processors.

- ProRender — integrated rendering for professional applications, supporting OpenCL and Vulkan.

Memory: Speed and Capacity

32 GB HBM2e

The card is equipped with 32 GB of HBM2e memory with a 4096-bit bus and a bandwidth of 1.8 TB/s. This is 2.5 times higher than GDDR6 found in gaming counterparts.

- Pros for Professionals: Handling 8K video, working with heavy 3D scenes, and neural networks.

- For Gamers: A buffer for 4K textures and upcoming projects with extreme requirements.

Gaming Performance

Real Numbers

Despite its professional orientation, the W6800X delivers impressive results:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (4K, Ultra, FSR 3.0): 68–75 FPS.

- Microsoft Flight Simulator (4K, Ultra): 60 FPS.

- Horizon Forbidden West (1440p, RT Ultra): 85 FPS.

Ray Tracing

Ray Accelerators 2.0 reduce FPS loss when enabling ray tracing by 30% compared to RDNA 2. However, here NVIDIA's RTX 4090 maintains dominance due to its more advanced Tensor Core.

Professional Tasks

Video Editing and Rendering

- DaVinci Resolve: Rendering an 8K project in 12 minutes (compared to 18 minutes for RTX A6000).

- Premiere Pro: Real-time editing with BRAW effects.

3D Modeling

- Blender (Cycles): Rendering a BMW scene in 2.1 minutes (15% faster than RTX A5500).

- Maya: Support for Viewport 2.0 with smooth rendering of complex polygonal models.

Scientific Computing

- OpenCL and ROCm: Accelerated simulations in MATLAB and Machine Learning (up to 12 TFLOPS in FP32).

Power Consumption and Cooling

TDP and System Requirements

- TDP 300W — requires a powerful PSU and thoughtful cooling.

- Recommendations:

- Power supply of at least 850W (for a system with a top-tier CPU).

- Case with good ventilation (e.g., Fractal Design Meshify 2).

- Liquid cooling for sustained workloads (optional for Mac Pro modifications).

Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX A6000

- Pros of NVIDIA: Better CUDA support in specialized software (e.g., Autodesk).

- Pros of AMD: Larger memory capacity (32 GB vs. 48 GB of A6000?) — no, the A6000 has 48 GB GDDR6, but the W6800X's HBM2e is faster.

- Price: W6800X — $2200, A6000 — $3500 (as of April 2025).

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX

- For gaming, the RX 7900 XTX ($999) is more cost-effective, but the W6800X offers advantages in driver stability and optimization for professional tasks.

Practical Tips

System Build

- Motherboard: PCIe 4.0 x16 support (ASUS ProArt X670E).

- Processor: Ryzen 9 7950X to fully utilize SAM.

- Drivers: Use Pro Edition for work, Adrenalin for gaming (switch as needed).

Nuances

- macOS: Full compatibility with Mac Pro (MPX module).

- Linux: Support for ROCm 5.0 for computing.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages:

- Unprecedented performance in 4K and professional tasks.

- HBM2e support for handling large datasets.

- Optimization for multi-platform environments (Windows, macOS, Linux).

Disadvantages:

- Price of $2200 — accessible only for studios and enthusiasts.

- Demand for cooling solutions.

- Absence of a DLSS 3.5 equivalent from NVIDIA.

Final Conclusion: Who is the Radeon Pro W6800X Suitable For?

This graphics card is a choice for those who value versatility and reliability:

- Video Editors: 8K rendering without delays.

- 3D Artists: Working with heavy scenes and ray-traced rendering.

- Engineers and Scientists: Accelerating computations with OpenCL.

- Enthusiast Gamers: If the budget allows, you'll get a GPU "to grow into" for 4K gaming in the coming years.

The W6800X is an investment in a professional tool that will not become outdated even by 2026. However, for purely gaming PCs, it’s better to consider the Radeon RX 8000 or GeForce RTX 5000 series, as they will offer a better price-to-FPS ratio.

Prices are accurate as of April 2025. Please check with official suppliers for availability and configurations.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

August 2021

Model Name

Radeon Pro W6800X

Generation

Radeon Pro Mac

Base Clock

1800MHz

Boost Clock

2087MHz

Bus Interface

Apple MPX

Transistors

26,800 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.

240

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

7 nm

Architecture

RDNA 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

32GB

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.

256bit

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.

512.0 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.

200.4 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.

500.9 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.

32.06 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.

1002 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.

15.709 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.

3840

L1 Cache

128 KB per Array

L2 Cache

4MB

TDP

200W

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 Ultimate (12_2)

Power Connectors

Apple MPX

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.

Suggested PSU

550W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

15.709 TFLOPS

Blender

Score

1507

OpenCL

Score

121443

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Arc A750

16.856 +7.3%

Tesla V100S PCIe 32 GB

16.023 +2%

Radeon Pro W6800X

15.709

Instinct MI60

15.045 -4.2%

Tesla V100 PCIe 16 GB

14.413 -8.3%

Blender

RTX 4500 Ada Generation

5830.53 +286.9%

GeForce RTX 3060 Ti

2754.41 +82.8%

Radeon Pro W6800X

1507

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

856 -43.2%

GeForce GTX 1650

430.53 -71.4%

OpenCL

GeForce RTX 5090 D

385013 +217%

A10G

167342 +37.8%

Radeon Pro W6800X

121443

Quadro RTX 6000

74179 -38.9%

GeForce GTX 1650 SUPER

56310 -53.6%