Let’s talk about AMD, we learn that the company is working on its professional range of graphics cards. Now that the RADEON RX 9070 has been launched, it’s time for the RADEON Pro W9000… At least, that’s what they should be called. For the moment, we don’t know the launch date, although an ‘Advanced AI’ event is planned for June, which could be the opportunity to make the range official.
RADEON Pro W9000: the professional versions of the RX 9070 series!
Now that the RX 9070 GPUs are ready, they can be used in professional graphics cards. AMD will be using them in cards designed for the professional sector, albeit with a few adjustments. This may come as a surprise, but you should know that this is common practice among the Reds: the RADEON Pro W7900s were already professional adaptations of the RX 7000s.
Here, then, we have cards using Navi 48 GPUs, renamed Navi 48 XTW. In concrete terms, the largest card would feature 4096 stream processors, 128 AI accelerators and 64 RT Cores… In addition to 256 TMUs and 128 ROPs.
Although the chip is expected to use a configuration similar to that of an RX 9070 XT, the frequencies should be adjusted downwards. The aim is to maximise stability and reduce power consumption/heating. At the same time, the card will benefit from a doubling of memory capacity from 16 GB to 32 GB. Another factor to take into account is the type of memory used, with rumours pointing to GDDR6 ECC.
However, for this generation, we would be dealing with an interesting situation where the previous generation has more VRAM than this one. Remember that a RADEON Pro W7900 is 48 GB compared with 32 GB here. Admittedly, this may seem secondary if you use your PC mainly for gaming, but in the professional sector, it’s a fact to be taken into account. It remains to be seen what the GPU of this new generation will be worth and what its capabilities will be.
It’s important to note that these cards are intended for professional use, more specifically for visualisation tasks, but the Reds could also target AI professionals. In any case, these cards come with specific drivers optimised for the professional applications for which they are intended.