AMD launched its Navi-based
Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs for gamers a few months back and customized, higher-clocked boards from its partners quickly followed soon thereafter. Navi, and its newly-designed RDNA-infused microarchitecture and instruction set, will be the foundation of an entire family of GPUs from AMD moving forward, that will span multiple market segments. The first products based on
Navi targeted enthusiast gamers, but now AMD is ready to inject its leading-edge GPU architecture into the pro-graphics space with the brand-new Radeon Pro W5700, which we’ll be showing you here.
In addition to using its latest GPU design with the Radeon Pro W5700, AMD is using the opportunity to somewhat simplify its naming convention. Workstation-class, pro-vis GPUs still carry the Radeon Pro moniker, but the WX designation is being nixed and model numbers unified. The Radeon Pro W5700 and Radeon RX 5700 are based on the same GPU design, hence the similar model numbers. Got it? Cool.
Navi is a major departure from AMD’s previous-generation
Vega and Polaris GPUs, as you’ll surmise if you carefully inspect the spec table below. If you’d like more of a deep-dive on Navi, however, we’ve got you covered too.
This piece covers the GPU architecture in-depth. For now though, let’s dig into the new Radeon Pro W5700 and see what makes the card tick...
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AMD Radeon Pro W5700 |
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Specifications & Features
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The Radeon RX 5700, the new Radeon Pro W5700 is built around AMD's Navi 10 GPU. The GPU at the heart of the card is manufactured using TSMC’s 7nm process node and is comprised of approximately 10.3 billion transistors. And its die size is roughly 251 square millimeters, which makes it a fraction of the size of the Vega-based GPU powering the
previous-gen Radeon Pro WX 8200.
AMD’s current flagship, Navi-based GPU, the
Radeon RX 5700 XT, features a fully-enabled
Navi 10 GPU with 40 Compute Units, each with 64 Steam Processors, for a total of 2,560. The AMD Radeon Pro W700’s GPU is scaled back though and is more in-line with the non-XT Radeon RX 5700. The Radeon Pro W5700 has the same memory and ROP configuration as the top-end Navi 10, but four CUs have been disabled. The Radeon Pro W5700 has 36 CUs, a total of 2,304 stream processors, with typical GPU clocks hovering between 1630-1880MHz. Max board power is 205 watts, but note, that takes into account 15W+ for the USB port. If that port is unused, typical power is around 188 watts.
AMD's Radeon Pro W5700’s GPU is connected to 8GB of
GDDR6 memory over a 256-bit interface with an effective data rate of 14Gbps, which equates to peak memory bandwidth of 448GB/s. At it default clocks, the Radeon Pro W5700 doesn’t quite match the previous-gen Radeon Pro WX 8200 in terms of compute performance or memory bandwidth, but Navi, which is based on a more efficient architecture, does improve IPC and its peak pixel fillrate is much higher.
In terms of its industrial design, the Radeon Pro W5700 looks much like the
Radeon Pro WX 8200, with similar coloring and boxy, blower-style cooler. There is a hefty array of heatsink fins under the gorgeous blue shroud, that sits directly atop the GPU and RAM, with the barrel-type fan offset towards the back of the card, pumping air out of the system, through vents in the card’s mounting bracket.
The Radeon Pro W5700 features 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power feeds, which provide plenty of headroom to the card – it might even be a bit of overkill. Between the PCIe slot and the supplemental feeds, 300W will be available to the Radeon Pro W5700 series cards (150 + 75 + 75), which is nearly 100W higher than its max board power rating.
The display outputs on the Radeon Pro W5700 consist of 5, mini-DisplayPort 1.4, all of which can be used at any given time for multi-monitor configurations. AMD even throws in a trio of adapters to accommodate a couple of full-sized DP and DVI ports. There is also a single USB-C port on the card for
VR HMD applications. The remainder of the case bracket is essentially one large vent, for exhausting warm air.
Now, let's get her plugged into the test rig and see how she performs...
