AMD Radeon Pro WX 7100, 5100 And 4100 Series Workstation Graphics Review: Polaris Goes Pro [Updated]
Radeon Pro WX Summary and Conclusion
Performance Summary: The Radeon Pro WX series cards we tested performed very well throughout our entire suite of benchmarks. Versus the previous generation AMD FirePro W4300, which is a half-height, small form factor card in a similar class, the Radeon Pro WX 4100 offered significantly better performance across the board. The Radeon Pro WX 5100 was obviously faster than its lower-end counterpart overall as well, due to its more powerful GPU and additional memory. In comparison to the competing NVIDIA Quadro M2000, the Radeon Pro WX 5100 also performed well, trading victories in SPECviewperf, but pulling ahead in the OpenCL and GPU compute tests. The more powerful, but also more expensive, Radeon Pro WX 7100 outpaced the other cards throughout.
We should also note that the Radeon Pro WX 5100 and WX 4100 remained nice and quiet throughout testing, and power consumption was relatively low as well. The Radeon Pro WX 7100 consumed somewhat more power and produced a bit more noise under load, but it was still very quiet overall.
Despite being announced months ago, AMD's Radeon Pro WX series cards just recently began shipping, and they are now available at various resellers and system partners. AMD set the MSRPs for the Radeon Pro WX 7100, WX 5100, and WX 4100 at $699, $499, and $399, respectively. Street prices, however, are already somewhat lower. The Radeon Pro WX 4100 can be had for under $300, the Radeon Pro WX 5100 for under $440, and the Radeon Pro WX 7100 for $629. At those prices, the new Radeon Pro WX 5100 and WX 4100 fall right about in-line with or below the Quadro M2000. The next step up in NVIDIA’s line-up, the Quadro M4000 is roughly double that price, and is more in-line with the WX 7100. Looking back through the numbers, and in light of the of the current landscape, AMD clearly has some strong offerings in the mainstream professional graphics cards segment. The Radeon Pro WX 5100 and WX 4100 offer competitive performance, efficiency, and pricing, in sleek form factors. NVIDIA will surely have some Pascal-based offerings in the more mainstream Quadro line-up eventually, but for now, Pascal is reserved for the ultra high-end cards.
If you’re in the market for a low-power, relatively high performing professional graphics card in the affordable price segments targeted by the Radeon Pro WX series, by all means look into these new workstation professional cards by AMD. They support some of the latest graphics and display technologies, and their value propositions are strong in the current professional graphics market.
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