AMD launches Radeon Pro W7700

AMD has launched the Radeon Pro W7700, a new $999 16GB professional GPU targeted at content creation, CAD and AI applications.

The firm pitches the W7700, which fills out the mid-range of its Radeon Pro W7000 Series of GPUs, as “the most powerful professional workstation graphics card under $1,000”.

The latest workstation card to use AMD’s RDNA 3 GPU architecture
The Radeon Pro W7700 is the latest workstation card to use AMD’s RDNA 3 GPU architecture.

It includes dedicated hardware cores for general GPU computing, for ray tracing, and for accelerating AI operations, and unlike current professional NVIDIA and Intel cards, supports DisplayPort 2.1, the latest version of the digital display standard.

Key specifications and price
The Radeon Pro W7700 sits right in the middle of the Radeon Pro W7000 product range.

Although its core counts and general compute performance are closer to the card below, the Radeon Pro W7600, its 16GB of GPU memory make it significantly better suited to demanding DCC tasks, and it has the same high-bit-rate DisplayPort ports as the higher-end cards.

And, at $999, its price tag enables AMD to make its pitch about being the most powerful sub-$1,000 professional card, although that isn’t necessarily a surprise, since all of NVIDIA’s current-generation workstation cards had launch prices above $1,000.

AMD’s performance comparison between the Radeon Pro W7700 and current- and previous-gen NVIDIA GPUs, based on SPECviewperf and the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark.

DCC software performance benchmarks
In the performance comparisons in its press materials, AMD actually compares the Radeon Pro W7700 more to NVIDIA’s previous generation of professional GPUs, benchmarking it against the Ampere-generation RTX A4000 and RTX A4500.

Both are still available to buy: the prices shown in the graphic above are AMD-collected figures for their e-tail pricing in mid-October.

The only current-gen NVIDIA card included is the RTX 4000 SFF, a small form factor card.

However, in DCC tasks, the W7700 does pretty well in comparison, at least using synthetic benchmarks: the 3ds Max and Maya benchmarks in the image above are from SPECviewperf 2020 V3.1, while the DX12 ray tracing scores come from 3DMark’s games-focused Port Royal.

AMD’s performance comparison between the Radeon Pro W7700 and current- and previous-gen NVIDIA GPUs, based on PugetBench for Premiere Pro, After Effects and DaVinci Resolve.

The margins are smaller with compositing and video editing tools, tested using the corresponding PugetBench benchmarks, although the W7700 usually comes out on top.

Obviously, these are AMD’s own tests, but they do support its pitch for the W7700 offering good performance for its price in the applications they cover.

Limitations of AMD GPUs in production
For DCC work, it’s important to note that several key render engines, including Arnold GPU, OctaneRender and V-Ray GPU, use Nvidia APIs, and are not accelerated by AMD cards.

However, Blender’s Cycles renderer and Maxon’s Redshift both now support GPU-accelerated rendering on AMD GPUs using AMD’s HIP API, and real-time render engines that support DXR (DirectX Raytracing), like Unreal Engine, support GPU ray tracing on both manufacturers’ cards.

Price and availability
The Radeon Pro W7700 is available now. It has a recommended price of $999.

Read more about the Radeon Pro W7700 on AMD’s website

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