AMD is set to release three new professional GPUs as it looks to begin sunsetting its FirePro lineup.
The company said Monday night at graphics trade show SIGGRAPH that its new Radeon Pro WX 4100, Radeon Pro WX 5100, and Radeon Pro WX 7100 will be based on its latest Polaris architecture and are aimed at professional users.
With the new GPUs, AMD is also scuttling the FirePro brand, which hasn’t helped the company succeed in the workstation space. FirePro will continue to be sold and will get support, but AMD will transition to the Radeon Pro and Radeon Pro WX cards for professional users.
AMD officials didn’t talk performance, but they did say the Radeon Pro WX 7100 will hit Steam’s VR performance requirements. Perhaps more importantly, said AMD’s head of Industry Alliances David Watters, is the way AMD has organized its graphics unit going forward. Watters said competitor Nvidia must contend with its consumer GeForce products competing with its professional Quadro and Tesla lines.
AMD has been organized so that it now operates as a single unit. The Radeon Pro WX is focused on the traditional workstation market. AMD will also maintain its Radeon Pro lineup which bridges the consumer and professional customers.
The new Radeon Pro WX GPUs are based on the Polaris architecture and targeted at creative professionals, including movie editors, virtual reality content creators, and game programmers.
The workstation market is growing, with 4K video going mainstream and the emergence of VR headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive. Workstations typically have faster processors as well as more memory capacity and storage slots than standard desktops.
Prices of the new AMD GPUs are attractive. At under $1,000, the top-line Radeon Pro WX 7100 is “the most affordable VR-ready graphics solution,” said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect of AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group.
That’s much cheaper than the FirePro GPUs, priced more than $3,000. The WX 7100 delivers 5.9 teraflops of double-precision performance, has 8GB of GPU memory, and can handle four 5K displays simultaneously.
The other AMD GPUs include the mid-range Radeon Pro WX 5100 and the WX 4100, which is aimed at small desktops. These models don’t deliver the performance of the WX 7100 but are targeted at video editing, gaming development, product design, and engineering applications.
The WX 5100 can deliver 5.2 teraflops of single-precision performance and has 8GB of graphics memory. The WX 4100 peaks out at 2.5 teraflops of single-precision performance and has 4GB of graphics memory.
The GPUs will ship in the fourth quarter, when final prices will be released.
