AMD has introduced a new addition to its Radeon PRO W6000 GPU series that specifically addresses the needs of the typical knowledge worker.
The new Radeon PRO W6400 falls short of the W6600 and W6800 in terms of raw power, but is tuned to deliver optimal performance for the most common professional use cases. AMD describes it as the company's new "king of consumer graphics workloads."
Featuring 6400GB of GDDR4 RAM, dual DisplayPort connectors, and PCIe 6 support, the W4.0 delivers performance of up to 3,54 TFLOPS (based on FP32 benchmark) with a maximum power consumption of 50W.
The new graphics card will go on sale for €249, which is slightly more expensive than the previous generation WX 3200, but cheaper than comparable models from Nvidia. LaComparacion Pro awaits confirmation of international prices.
Typical graphics workload
The design of the Radeon PRO W6400 was based on research conducted by AMD, which sought to establish a picture of the most common professional workloads, and therefore the precise graphics needs of the average worker.
During a briefing attended by TechRadar Pro, the company revealed some of its findings. For example, AMD found that a third of professionals use dual monitors, most of which still have 1080p resolution. To save space and reduce costs, AMD opted for two instead of four display connectors.
The company also found that the average worker spends most of their time using video conferencing software, productivity tools and web browsers. While professionals working with more demanding CAD and 3D rendering software are better served by higher performance models, the W6400 offers plenty of performance for regular office workloads.
"It's not about how hard the GPU is pushed," said Jamie Gwilliam, a senior manager at AMD. "The bottom line is that a balanced system is better for typical knowledge workers. Sometimes the GPU does the heavy lifting, sometimes it's the CPU.
“Although it's a low-workload GPU, it doesn't sacrifice hardware or software features. That's why we think this will be our new king of consumer workloads. »
performance advantage
Inevitably, the Radeon PRO W6400 doesn't offer the same level of performance as its larger, more expensive W6000-series counterparts. However, AMD says its new GPU outperforms comparable Nvidia models by a comfortable margin.
Based on a 6nm process, the W6400 offers higher maximum TF performance than the more expensive Nvidia T1000 (2.5 TF) and T600 (1.7 TF).
It also matches or beats the T600 for spreadsheet, web browsing, and video conferencing workloads, with the performance advantage becoming more important for CAD and image editing. However, it should be noted that AMD did not provide equivalent comparisons between the W6400 and the T1000.
Like the other cards in the W6000 series, the W6400 also benefits from AMD's Infinity Cache technology, which allows the effective bandwidth to be doubled in certain scenarios (up to 289 GB/s), depending on the software used.