AMD has unveiled the Radeon Professional W7900 and Radeon Professional W7800, the primary workstation GPUs based mostly on its new RDNA 3 structure, and the primary playing cards in its Radeon Professional W7000 Sequence.
The $3,999 48GB Radeon Professional W7900 and $2,499 32GB W7800 will kind the brand new excessive finish of AMD’s workstation GPU line-up once they ship later this quarter, and are geared toward skilled DCC and CAD work.
The primary workstation playing cards to make use of AMD’s new RDNA 3 GPU structure
The Radeon Professional W7900 and W7800 are the primary workstation playing cards to make use of AMD’s new RDNA 3 GPU structure, rolled out final yr within the agency’s Radeon RX 7000 Sequence gaming playing cards.
As with AMD’s earlier RDNA 2 structure, it contains devoted {hardware} cores for normal GPU computing, together with raster rendering, and for hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
The design of the ray accelerators has been improved, with AMD claiming that RDNA 3 supplies “roughly 50% extra ray tracing efficiency per compute unit” than RDNA 2.
To that, RDNA 3 introduces new devoted AI accelerators, delivering “over 2x extra efficiency” than RDNA 2, native AV1 encoding and decoding, and AMD’s Radiance Show Engine.
The latter helps DisplayPort 2.1, the newest model of the digital show normal, which is able to make the Radeon Professional W7900 and Radeon Professional W7800 the primary skilled playing cards to assist DisplayPort 2.1.
| AMD workstation GPUs | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon Professional W7900 | Radeon Professional W7800 |
Radeon Professional W6800 |
Radeon Professional W6600 |
|
| Structure | RDNA 3 | RDNA 3 | RDNA 2 | RDNA 2 |
| Stream processors |
6,144 | 4,480 | 3,840 | 1,792 |
| Compute models | 96 | 70 | 60 | 28 |
| Ray accelerators | 96 | 70 | 60 | 28 |
| FP32 compute efficiency (Tflops) |
61.3 | 45.2 | 17.8 | 10.4 |
| GPU reminiscence | 48GB GDDR6 |
32GB GDDR6 |
32GB GDDR6 |
8GB GDDR6 |
| Reminiscence bandwidth (GB/s) |
864 | 576 | 512 | 224 |
| TBP | 295W | 260W | 250W | 130W |
| Slot width | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Show | 3 x DP 2.1 1 x MiniDP 2.1 |
3 x DP 2.1 1 x MiniDP 2.1 |
6 x MiniDP 1.4 |
4 x DP 1.4 |
| Launch date | 2023 | 2023 | 2021 | 2021 |
| Launch MSRP | $3,999 | $2,499 | $2,249 | $649 |
Key specs and costs
The 2 new playing cards kind the excessive finish of AMD’s line-up of workstation playing cards, with the Radeon Professional W7800 focused at ‘heavy’ workloads, and the W7900 at ‘excessive’ workloads.
On paper, the Radeon Professional W7800 is a substantial advance over its previous-generation counterpart, the Radeon Professional W6800, not less than when it comes to uncooked compute energy.
The comparatively small improve in Stream processor rely belies a rise in FP32 compute efficiency of near 3x, with the W7800 notching up 45.2 Tflops, in comparison with the W6800’s 17.8 Tflops.
GPU reminiscence capability is unchanged, at 32GB, though reminiscence bandwidth rises barely, as do energy consumption and the advisable launch worth.
The Radeon Professional W7900 is a step past the W7800, with a FP32 efficiency of 61.3 Tflops and 48GB of higher-bandwidth GPU reminiscence, but additionally elevated energy consumption, and a better advisable worth.
AMD’s perfomance comparability of its Radeon Professional W7800 and W7900 playing cards to Nvidia workstation GPUs, offered as a geometrical imply of SPECviewperf 2020 scores, which embody 3ds Max, Maya and CAD apps.
Benchmark leads to DCC and CAD software program
AMD has launched a variety of benchmark outcomes for the brand new playing cards, together with DCC purposes, compositing and video enhancing software program, and CAD and architectural visualization instruments.
The Radeon Professional W7800 is in comparison with Nvidia’s RTX A5500 which, though the closest equal in Nvidia’s present line-up of workstation playing cards, is a previous-generation card with much less GPU reminiscence.
In that mild, it maybe isn’t stunning that AMD stories a geometrical imply of SPECviewperf 2020 benchmark scores 23% greater than the Nvidia card.
Nonetheless, it’s price noting that the RTX A5500 has solely been out for a yr, so it appears affordable to imagine that that the 2 playing cards will go head-to-head for a while.
The Radeon Professional W7900: extra bang in your buck than equal Nvidia playing cards?
The Radeon Professional W7900 will get a extra attention-grabbing comparability: to Nvidia’s RTX 6000 Ada Technology – just like the W7900, a current-generation 48GB card.
Right here, AMD focuses on price-performance reasonably than absolute efficiency, because the the RTX 6000’s SPECviewperf 2020 geometric imply rating is definitely 8% greater than that of the Radeon Professional W7900.
Nonetheless, the RTX 6000 is a costlier card, with a advisable launch worth of $6,799, in comparison with $3,999 for the Radeon Professional W7900, which means that the W7900 will provide extra bang in your buck.
AMD’s price-performance comparability between its new Radeon Professional W7900 and Nvidia’s 48GB workstation GPUs. Bear in mind that the comparision makes use of road costs for the Nvidia playing cards collected by AMD itself.
AMD additionally claims that the Radeon Professional W7900 outperforms the RTX A6000, Nvidia’s previous-generation 48GB card, which remains to be obtainable with a road worth round its advisable launch worth of $4,649.
Right here, AMD quotes a SPECviewperf 2020 geomean rating 39% greater for the W7900 than the RTX A6000.
AMD has additionally launched particular person software benchmarks – though all are offered when it comes to price-performance, which AMD calculates utilizing a comparatively excessive road worth of $4,860 for the Nvidia card.
With that caveat famous, we’ve included AMD’s Maya benchmark above, examined utilizing SPECapc 2023.
The relative price-performance for the 2 playing cards is comparable throughout AMD’s checks for After Results and DaVinci Resolve, each benchmarked with PugetBench, and Lumion, utilizing Lumion’s instance tasks.
Caveats and limitations of AMD GPUs in manufacturing
Clearly, these are AMD’s personal figures, and use artificial benchmarks reasonably than manufacturing scenes, so will probably be attention-grabbing to see if they’re confirmed by impartial checks.
For DCC work, it’s additionally essential to notice that a number of key GPU render engines, together with Arnold GPU, OctaneRender and V-Ray GPU, use Nvidia APIs, and usually are not accelerated on AMD graphics playing cards.
Nonetheless, some previously Nvidia-only renderers have not too long ago introduced assist for AMD GPUs, with Maxon releasing an AMD-compatible model of Redshift in closed alpha, with a public beta anticipated this yr.
Value and availability
The Radeon Professional W7900 and Radeon Professional W7800 are anticipated to develop into obtainable from e-tailers in “Q2 2023”, The W7900 has a MSRP of $3,999 and the W7800 has a MSRP of $2,499.
Learn extra in regards to the Radeon Professional W7900 on AMD’s web site
Learn extra in regards to the Radeon Professional W7800 on AMD’s web site
Full disclosure: in my life exterior CG Channel as a contract technical author, I’ve labored on promotional materials for the Radeon Professional W7000 Sequence for AMD.
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