Today’s a big day for AMD’s workstation offerings. The company has unleashed a smorgasbord of FirePro workstation graphics cards, and it’s also introduced a pair of APUs that feature integrated FirePro graphics instead of Radeon IGPs—the first of their kind.
Let’s have a look at the new, discrete FirePro offerings first. They span price points from $599 to $3,999, and like the FirePro W600 that debuted in June, they’re all based on AMD’s latest 28-nm graphics silicon and Graphics Core Next architecture. Here they are:
FirePro W9000 |
FirePro W8000 |
FirePro W7000 |
FirePro W5000 |
|
GPU | Taihiti | Taihiti | Pitcairn | Pitcairn |
TFLOPS (SP) | 3.99 | 3.23 | 2.43 | 1.27 |
TFLOPS (DP) | 1.00 | 0.81 | 0.15 | 0.08 |
Memory bus | 384-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit | 256-bit |
Memory | 6GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 4GB GDDR5 | 2GB GDDR5 |
TDP | 274W | 189W | <150W | <75W |
Display outputs | 6 Mini DP | 4 DP | 4 DP | 2 DP, 1 DL-DVI |
Price | $3,999 | $1,599 | $899 | $599 |
The two Tahiti-based models feature dual-slot coolers, while the Pitcairn-powered cards both take up only a single slot. (Tahiti and Pitcairn are the chips that power the Radeon HD 7900 and Radeon HD 7800 series, respectively.) AMD claims all four offerings are capable of driving as many as six displays, though only the FirePro W9000 actually has six display outputs on the card. The others require DisplayPort hubs to drive that many monitors.
There are two entries in the FirePro APU lineup—both with integrated graphics and quad Piledriver cores, just like AMD’s Trinity consumer chips, on which they’re likely based. The AMD FirePro A320 is a 100W part with a 3.8GHz base clock speed and a 4.2GHz peak. The FirePro A300 has a tighter 65W power envelope, a 3.4GHz base speed, and a 4GHz peak. Both variants feature 384 integrated graphics ALUs. The A320 clocks those ALUs slightly faster, at 800MHz, while the A300 runs them at 760MHz.
Both of the new APUs are certified for use with professional computer-aided-design and media-and-entertainment software, and AMD claims the FirePro A300 has more graphics horsepower than the Quadro 600, Nvidia’s entry-level discrete professional GPU. AMD expects FirePro APUs to start showing up in pre-built workstations later this month.