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AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100

AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100: A Professional Tool for Moderate Tasks

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 is a professional graphics card released in 2017, still relevant in 2025 for niche tasks. It is aimed at professionals who prioritize stability, certified drivers, and compactness over maximum performance. In this article, we will explore its features, strengths and weaknesses, and determine who it is suitable for in an era of more modern GPUs.

Architecture and Key Features

Polaris Architecture (GCN 4.0)

The Radeon Pro WX 3100 is based on the Polaris architecture, utilizing a 14nm manufacturing process. While not the most modern platform in 2025, its reliability has been proven over the years. The card supports DirectX 12, OpenGL 4.5, and Vulkan 1.0, ensuring basic compatibility with professional software.

Professional Features

- AMD FidelityFX: A suite of technologies for improving image quality, including Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS).

- Rendering Acceleration: Support for OpenCL 2.0 and partial Vulkan API for compute tasks.

- No Hardware Ray Tracing: Technologies like NVIDIA's RTX are not available here.

The card is certified for applications such as Autodesk Maya, SolidWorks, and Adobe Premiere Pro, which is crucial for studios.

Memory: Modest Yet Adequate Resources

- Memory Type: GDDR5.

- Capacity: 4 GB.

- Bus Width: 128 bits.

- Bandwidth: 96 GB/s (at 6000 MHz).

For gaming, 4 GB is clearly insufficient in 2025, especially at 4K or with high textures. However, in professional packages dealing with moderate modeling or Full HD video editing, this amount is sufficient. A wider bus could enhance performance, but 128 bits is a limitation of the budget segment.

Gaming Performance: Not the Main Specialty

The WX 3100 is not a gaming card, but it can be used for less demanding projects. Examples of FPS in 1080p (at low settings):

- CS:GO: ~90–110 FPS.

- Dota 2: ~60–75 FPS.

- Overwatch 2: ~45–55 FPS.

- Cyberpunk 2077: ~20–25 FPS (without ray tracing).

At 1440p and 4K, performance drops to uncomfortable levels. Ray tracing is not supported, and using software techniques (like FidelityFX Super Resolution) only provides a boost of about 10–15%.

Professional Tasks: Primary Area of Application

3D Modeling and Rendering

In Autodesk Maya and Blender, the card demonstrates stability, but its rendering speed lags behind modern solutions. For example, rendering a moderately complex scene takes 30–40% longer than on the NVIDIA Quadro T1000.

Video Editing

In Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, the WX 3100 handles Full HD editing and simple 4K projects thanks to hardware decoding support for H.264. However, working with effects or RAW footage causes delays.

Scientific Calculations

OpenCL acceleration allows the card to be used in MATLAB or for simulations in Ansys, but its 512 processing streams struggle to compete even with budget NVIDIA RTX A2000 (which has 3328 CUDA cores).

Power Consumption and Heat Generation

- TDP: 50W.

- Cooling Recommendations: A passive or compact cooler is sufficient even under load.

- Case Compatibility: Suitable for SFF systems (Mini-ITX) due to its low-profile form factor and 15cm length.

The card does not require a powerful power supply and operates almost silently.

Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA Quadro P1000 (2017):

- 4 GB GDDR5, 640 CUDA cores.

- Better optimized for Adobe and CAD applications.

- Price: $250–300 (new units in 2025).

AMD Radeon Pro W5500 (2020):

- 8 GB GDDR6, RDNA architecture.

- 2-3 times higher performance.

- Price: $400–450.

Conclusion: The WX 3100 lags in speed but excels in price ($200–250) and energy efficiency.

Practical Tips

- Power Supply: A 300W supply with an 80+ Bronze certification is sufficient.

- Compatibility: PCIe 3.0 x8, requires at least Windows 10 or Linux with AMDGPU support.

- Drivers: Use the "Pro Edition" for stability in work tasks. Gaming drivers (Adrenalin) are not recommended.

- Monitors: Supports up to 4 displays via DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0b.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low power consumption.

- Compact size and silent operation.

- Certification for professional software.

Cons:

- Weak gaming performance.

- Only 4 GB of memory.

- Outdated architecture.

Final Conclusion: Who is the WX 3100 Suitable For?

This card is a choice for:

1. Professionals on a Budget: For example, freelancers working in CAD programs or Full HD editing.

2. Compact Workstations: Where small size and silence are important.

3. Secondary Systems: For testing software or backup PCs.

In 2025, the WX 3100 is no longer suitable for complex tasks, but its reliability and affordability make it a niche solution. For gaming or heavy rendering, it is better to choose more modern models, such as the AMD Radeon Pro W6600 or NVIDIA RTX A4000.

Prices are listed for new devices as of April 2025.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

June 2017

Model Name

Radeon Pro WX 3100

Generation

Radeon Pro Polaris

Base Clock

925MHz

Boost Clock

1219MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x8

Transistors

2,200 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

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 4.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

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

1500MHz

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.

96.00 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.

19.50 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.

39.01 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.

1248 GFLOPS

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.

78.02 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.

1.223 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.

512

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

65W

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_0)

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.

Suggested PSU

250W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.223 TFLOPS

Vulkan

Score

11767

OpenCL

Score

9984

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon HD 6970M Rebrand

1.254 +2.5%

Radeon 550

1.235 +1%

Radeon Pro WX 3100

1.223

GeForce GTX 850M

1.178 -3.7%

Quadro P600 Mobile

1.172 -4.2%

Vulkan

Radeon Pro Vega II Duo

98446 +736.6%

Radeon RX 6700S

69708 +492.4%

Radeon RX 580 2048SP

40716 +246%

P106 090

18660 +58.6%

Radeon Pro WX 3100

11767

OpenCL

Radeon RX 6700S

62821 +529.2%

Radeon Pro 5300

38843 +289.1%

Radeon R9 M290X

21442 +114.8%

Radeon Pro 455

11291 +13.1%

Radeon Pro WX 3100

9984