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AMD Radeon Pro WX 8100

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8100: Power for Professionals in the Era of Hybrid Workloads

April 2025

Introduction

The AMD Radeon Pro WX 8100 graphics card, released in 2017, remains a sought-after tool for professionals despite its age. In 2025, its position is bolstered by stable drivers, optimization for workloads, and availability in the secondary market. Let’s explore why this model is still relevant and who should consider it.

Architecture and Key Features

Vega 10 Architecture

The WX 8100 is built on the Vega 10 microarchitecture, created using GlobalFoundries' 14-nm process technology. This solution is aimed at parallel computing and professional tasks rather than gaming technologies such as ray tracing.

Unique Features

- FidelityFX: AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) version 1.0 is supported, but due to the lack of a hardware AI accelerator, the scaling quality lags behind FSR 3.0 or NVIDIA DLSS 3.5.

- Radeon ProRender: Built-in support for GPU rendering with physically accurate lighting.

- HBCC (High-Bandwidth Cache Controller): Dynamic memory management for working with large datasets.

Lack of RT Cores

The card does not support hardware ray tracing, which limits its use in modern gaming and 3D rendering scenarios.

Memory: Speed and Efficiency

HBM2: 16 GB with 484 GB/s Bandwidth

- Memory Type: High-speed HBM2 (2nd generation) with a 2048-bit bus.

- Capacity: 16 GB is sufficient for rendering complex scenes, working with 8K video, and machine learning on small models.

- Impact on Performance: In tasks where bandwidth is crucial (e.g., simulations in ANSYS), the WX 8100 outperforms many modern cards with GDDR6.

Gaming Performance: Not the Main Focus

Driver Features

The Radeon Pro Software drivers are optimized for stability rather than maximizing FPS. In games, the card shows modest results:

- Cyberpunk 2077 (1080p, Ultra): ~35 FPS (without ray tracing).

- Horizon Forbidden West (1440p, High): ~42 FPS.

- Counter-Strike 2 (4K, Medium): ~90 FPS.

Resolution Support

- 1080p/1440p: Acceptable for less demanding projects.

- 4K: Only in older games or with lowered settings.

Ray Tracing

The absence of RT cores makes hardware ray tracing impossible. Software emulation through FSR reduces FPS by 40-60%, making it impractical.

Professional Tasks: Where the WX 8100 Shines

3D Rendering and Modeling

- Blender (Cycles): Rendering the BMW27 scene takes ~4.2 minutes (compared to ~3.5 minutes for the NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000).

- Autodesk Maya: Smooth operation with polygon meshes up to 10 million polygons.

Video Editing

- DaVinci Resolve: Real-time editing of 8K footage with LUT and noise reduction applied.

- Adobe Premiere Pro: Rendering acceleration of 30% compared to gaming GPUs of similar class.

Scientific Computations

- OpenCL: Excellent for CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) tasks and molecular modeling.

- Machine Learning: Supports TensorFlow and PyTorch via ROCm, but model training speed is 2-3 times slower than with NVIDIA A100.

Energy Consumption and Heat Output

TDP 230 W: System Requirements

- Power Supply: Minimum 650 W with headroom (750 W recommended for multi-processor systems).

- Cooling: A blower-style cooling system is effective in cases with limited ventilation (e.g., Dell Precision workstations).

- Temperatures: Under load, up to 85°C. Regular dust cleaning is essential.

Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 (2019)

- Pros of NVIDIA: Supports RTX, DLSS, higher speed in CUDA tasks.

- Cons: Price (new models start at $2200 compared to $1200 for WX 8100).

AMD Radeon Pro W6800 (2021)

- Pros of W6800: RDNA2 architecture, ray tracing support, 32 GB GDDR6.

- Cons: Pricing starts at $2500.

Conclusion: The WX 8100 wins in price/performance for OpenCL tasks and video editing.

Practical Assembly Tips

1. Power Supply: Corsair RM750x (80+ Gold) or equivalents.

2. Compatibility:

- Platforms: Works with AMD Ryzen Threadripper and Intel Xeon.

- Motherboards: Requires a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot.

3. Drivers: Use only Enterprise versions (stability is more important than novelty).

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Reliability and long lifespan.

- 16 GB HBM2 for working with large data.

- Optimization for professional software.

Cons:

- No ray tracing support.

- High power consumption.

- Limited gaming performance.

Final Conclusion: Who is the WX 8100 Suitable For?

This card is a choice for:

- 3D Modeling Professionals who need stability in Maya or Blender.

- Engineers working with OpenCL computations.

- Video Editors processing 8K footage without a budget for the latest GPUs.

Gamers and those working with RT rendering should consider more modern solutions. However, if your tasks require time-tested reliability and access to HBM2, the WX 8100 remains a viable option even in 2025.

Prices are current as of April 2025: the new AMD Radeon Pro WX 8100 is available from $1200 (official AMD partners).

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

December 2017

Model Name

Radeon Pro WX 8100

Generation

Radeon Pro

Base Clock

1200MHz

Boost Clock

1500MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

12,500 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.

224

Foundry

GlobalFoundries

Process Size

14 nm

Architecture

GCN 5.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

8GB

Memory Type

HBM2

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.

2048bit

Memory Clock

1000MHz

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.

96.00 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.

336.0 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.

21.50 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.

672.0 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.

10.535 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.

3584

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

4MB

TDP

230W

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.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_1)

Power Connectors

1x 6-pin + 1x 8-pin

Shader Model

6.4

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

10.535 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce RTX 4070 Max-Q

11.113 +5.5%

Radeon Pro Vega 64

10.839 +2.9%

Radeon Pro WX 8100

10.535

GeForce RTX 3060 Max Q

10.043 -4.7%

GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

9.243 -12.3%