14 DAY TRIAL // The other day we brought you information about the new professional graphics adapter from Advanced Micro Devices, which was actually a Supercomputer GPU accelerator called AMD FirePro S9150. Now, the actual FirePro graphics cards have been unleashed.
It was actually kind of strange to write about the FirePro S9150, since it obviously isn't meant for video, lacking any and all HDMI, DVI, VGA, and other ports. AMD should have branded it FireStream, but that moniker probably isn't famous enough for a product said to be better than NVIDIA Tesla K40.
Anyway, those of you who were worried that there wouldn't be new AMD high-end workstation graphics can lay those fears to rest.
AMD has just launched the FirePro W9100, W8100, W7100, W5100, W4100, and W2100 adapters, all based on the AMD Graphics Core Next architecture.
The FirePro W9100 has 5.24 TFLOPS of peak single-precision floating-point performance, 16 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 4K resolution through six mini DisplayPort outputs, OpenCL 2.0 support, and Framelock/Genlock (ensures accurate and consistent video synchronization to external sources or multiple GPUs from different systems).
The memory interface of the GPU (2,816 stream processors, 44 compute units) is 512 bits-wide, the memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s, and the maximum power consumption is of 275W.
You will need a motherboard with a PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot for the AMD FirePro W9100 to work at full power, as well as a PSU with an 8-pin and a 6-pin power port.
The FirePro W8100 is similar in many ways, but the peak single-precision floating-point performance is of “only” 4.2 TFLOPS, and there are only 8 GB of GDDR5 VRAM. The GPU has 2,560 stream processors and a 512-bit interface for the memory, leading to a bandwidth of 320 GB/s memory.
The TDP is of 220W and the PSU in your system can make do with just two 6-pin ports, assuming you're only going to use one graphics card.
From there, specs just go lower, as does the multi-display support. The FirePro W7100 can still handle six displays if we're reading things right, but the W5100 and W4100 will downgrade your workstation to four.
Sapphire has been confirmed as an active OEM vendor for FirePro W-series graphics adapters, at least where the FirePro W9100 and W8100 are concerned. If you're thinking of buying one, you might want to do it before September 30, because the first purchase will come at 50% price cut. So $1,995 / €1,995 for the W9100 instead of $4,000 / €4,000 and $1,250 / €1,250 for the W8100 instead of $2,500 / €2,500.
