New W6800 packs 32GB of VRAM and is AMD’s most powerful graphics card to date.
Processor producer AMD has unveiled the Radeon PRO W6000 series of three new professional-grade graphics cards. The new cards target workstations and comprise the AMD Radeon PRO W6600 and W6600M (desktop and mobile, respectively) as well as the top of the line AMD Radeon PRO W6800, which AMD proclaims as “the most powerful AMD RDNA workstation graphics ever.”
The AMD Radeon PRO W6000 series is built on top of AMD’s RDNA 2 microarchitecture, the second iteration of the architecture behind last year’s PRO W5000 series. Spec-wise, each of the W6000 cards is a big step up from the previous generation, and in practical terms, AMD claims that the top-end Radeon PRO W6800 will perform up to 79 percent faster than its predecessor (based on tests in applications including Lumion, SOLIDWORKS Visualize, and Topaz Video Enhance AI).
Here are the specs of the AMD Radeon PRO W6000 series:
The Radeon PRO W6800 takes the biggest step from last year, with its Compute Unit count almost doubling (there were 36 CUs in the W5700), its memory quadrupling (from 8GB in the W5700), and its FP32 performance more than doubling (from 8.89 TFLOPs in the W5700). The biggest jump, however, is the price—last year’s W5700 was listed at $799, while the brawny new W6800 has a price tag of $2,249. The W6600 also jumped in price, from $399 for the previous W5500 to $649 for the new card.
In a nutshell, there’s more of everything in the W6000 series, and despite the steeper cost, AMD is confident that there will be more user satisfaction as well.
“AMD RDNA 2 was designed from the ground up to deliver world-class performance for a wide range of applications and workloads,” said Scott Herkelman of AMD’s Graphics Business Unit. “Bringing this breakthrough architecture to our workstation graphics lineup allows users to tackle much larger datasets, dramatically reduce render times, and speed processing of highly complex models and simulations. The AMD Radeon PRO W6000 series gives professionals a powerful new tool in their arsenal to accelerate projects and bring creative visions to life.”
The AMD Radeon PRO W6800 graphics card is currently available, and the W6600 is expected to be available in Q3 of this year. Next month, the AMD Radeon PRO W6600M is expected to make its debut in the HP Fury ZBook G8 mobile workstation.