AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 Announced As A Small Form Factor $199 USD Workstation Card

[buzzrobot]

I have a couple big boxes sitting around, with expensive high-end toys inside. My interest in games has withered away and I'm not a "creator" so it's all overkill. Next machine I build will be small and quiet. A 6.6-inch $199 card would interest me.

[Kayote]

560 (Baffin) die has 16 CU's, 550 (Lexa) die has 10 IIRC. The board you linked appears to have 8 CU's enabled.

Still, good to know there is a single-slot consumer Polaris out there... hadn't realized that, thanks !

there are some 560 that come with 14 CU enabled some with even less, a bios mod can fix this. Maybe this also can be bios modded??

[schmidtbag]

Yeah, but it kind of sucks in regards to value since it's only slightly better than a 560 in some regards and worse in others.

Might as well buy a $170 8GB RX 570 with some games bundle to get better performance, twice the memory, less money, and some games in the process.

Well, nobody buys a workstation GPU like this for the sake of gaming. What you're paying for is better reliability, better customer support, and in this case, 4x display connectors in pretty much the smallest form factor a GPU can get. It's meant for a multi-monitor office PC. I'm not sure you can get a single-slot low-profile RX 570, regardless of the amount of display outputs it supports.

[wizard69]

Interesting board but I’m still surprised it is Polaris based. Given that I’m looking at a CAD engineering workstation build in the fall. I will have to keep this card in mind even if it might be a bit underpowered for a long term build.

[skeevy420]

Well, nobody buys a workstation GPU like this for the sake of gaming. What you're paying for is better reliability, better customer support, and in this case, 4x display connectors in pretty much the smallest form factor a GPU can get. It's meant for a multi-monitor office PC. I'm not sure you can get a single-slot low-profile RX 570, regardless of the amount of display outputs it supports.

I get the low slot profile stuff and extra display ports, but other than that it isn't a very worthwhile card. 4GB of ram for 8K...you know as well as I do that that's barely adequate; probably with gimmicky "look what we can do" level of performance like regular Nvidia cards running ray tracing stuff have when compared to actual RTX cards.

It's not like this GPU has ECC or lots of other "Pro" features. Going by the "features" tab at AMD.com, the only things it has that the RX 570 doesn't is OpenGL 4.6*, 8K, Radeon Pro Renderer support**, and some more ports. It's seems to me like AMD just tweaked the firmware on some overstock RX 550 and 560 chips and slapped them on older WX boards to get rid of excess inventories.

Basically, if form-factor, OpenGL 4.6*, 8K, or the extra ports aren't deciding factors then an RX 570 is the better choice, gaming GPU or not really isn't a factor since it's just a better all around GPU and costs less -- they have 8GB Asus 570s on sale for $150 right now over at Newegg...

Realistically, only the ports and form factor are deciding factors here. 4GB is rather lame for 8K and there isn't enough OGL 4.6 content for that to even matter.

*Depending on what RX 570 you pick, it might support OpenGL 4.6. OEM ones do and regular ones don't...go figure...

**RX 580s beat WX 7200s, their workstation counterpart, in benchmarks and they don't technically support Radeon Pro Renderer either. Nvidia desktop GPUs kick ass as well. Just to show that "professional workstation cards" aren't necessarily needed for "professional workstation tasks" with modern GPUs...especially this GPU since it's really only Pro in name and could have just as easily been called RX 565 Low Profile because that is what it is...I guess 8K text editing is supposed to make it a Pro card...

Sort of related -- After looking at so many "feature" tabs today, AMD really needs to asterisk the stuff that Linux doesn't support or is Windows' Only, like Virtual Super Resolution. Outside of gaming I like to VSR Windows to 2K from 1080p and I kind of feel cheated when I see that listed as a supported feature when it's really just a Windows feature.

[microcode]

Cool, I was looking for basically exactly this card. Needed four DisplayPorts and a bit of GPU juice; and 200USD is a reasonable price for that.

[schmidtbag]

get the low slot profile stuff and extra display ports, but other than that it isn't a very worthwhile card. 4GB of ram for 8K...you know as well as I do that that's barely adequate; probably with gimmicky "look what we can do" level of performance like regular Nvidia cards running ray tracing stuff have when compared to actual RTX cards.

4GB is more than plenty for a general-purpose 8K desktop GPU. I don't think you understand who the target market is of this GPU. This isn't for people watching movies, playing games, video editing, or CAD. It's ideal for people like administrators, stock market analysts, and surveillance systems. Basically, nothing that really needs much compute power at all but needs a lot of screen real-estate.

It's not like this GPU has ECC or lots of other "Pro" features. Going by the "features" tab at AMD.com, the only things it has that the RX 570 doesn't is OpenGL 4.6*, 8K, Radeon Pro Renderer support**, and some more ports. It's seems to me like AMD just tweaked the firmware on some overstock RX 550 and 560 chips and slapped them on older WX boards to get rid of excess inventories.

That's because it doesn't need ECC. It isn't supposed to run the intensive tasks you think it should. But yes, you're probably right that this is made from spare 550s and 560s.

Basically, if form-factor, OpenGL 4.6*, 8K, or the extra ports aren't deciding factors then an RX 570 is the better choice, gaming GPU or not really isn't a factor since it's just a better all around GPU and costs less -- they have 8GB Asus 570s on sale for $150 right now over at Newegg...

I agree, but that's a lot of differences. Look on Newegg for another low-profile single-slot GPU with 4 display connectors and you'll probably find only 2 or 3 total, from any brand. This card may seem overpriced, but it's very niche and they're taking advantage of that. I actually knew someone who had this GPU's predecessor, and he took full advantage of its "quirkiness" without any issues. It was a 2GB GCN 1.0 card. Mostly all he ran on it was MS Office and some web browsers. That card would not keep up with modern high-res displays, but the WX 3200 can.

Sort of related -- After looking at so many "feature" tabs today, AMD really needs to asterisk the stuff that Linux doesn't support or is Windows' Only, like Virtual Super Resolution. Outside of gaming I like to VSR Windows to 2K from 1080p and I kind of feel cheated when I see that listed as a supported feature when it's really just a Windows feature.

I agree, though I've grown to accept that unless a manufacturer explicitly states what is supported on Linux, assume nothing is supported beyond some primitive functionality.

[aht0]

Yeah, but it kind of sucks in regards to value since it's only slightly better than a 560 in some regards and worse in others.

Might as well buy a $170 8GB RX 570 with some games bundle to get better performance, twice the memory, less money, and some games in the process.

No you might not. It's "professional" card, meaning: not for games but for CAD/CAM. Gaming cards lack ECC vRAM and required floating point precision/computational capability for such purposes.
It's all about using proper tool for a particular job. CAD/CAM requires precision from microns to kilometers, gaming cards generally fail at providing such (games never require anything like this) and if not (rare exceptions), lack of error correction means, errors creeping in won't be corrected.
In real world it might manifest in some bridge collapsing or building falling apart due to error in structural calculations.

Yeah, you may learn CAD/CAM using gaming card, just mess around and familiarize yourself with the programs. For serious work, forget it.

[lostdistance]

Cool, I was looking for basically exactly this card. Needed four DisplayPorts and a bit of GPU juice; and 200USD is a reasonable price for that.

This card looks very similar to the Radeon Pro WX 4100 which has been on sale for a few years now. The main difference seems to be 10 CUs in the WX 3200 vs. 16 CUs in the WX 4100.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/professional-graphics/radeon-pro-wx-3200

https://www.amd.com/en/products/professional-graphics/radeon-pro-wx-4100

[skeevy420]

No you might not. It's "professional" card, meaning: not for games but for CAD/CAM. Gaming cards lack ECC vRAM and required floating point precision/computational capability for such purposes.
It's all about using proper tool for a particular job. CAD/CAM requires precision from microns to kilometers, gaming cards generally fail at providing such (games never require anything like this) and if not (rare exceptions), lack of error correction means, errors creeping in won't be corrected.
In real world it might manifest in some bridge collapsing or building falling apart due to error in structural calculations.

Yeah, you may learn CAD/CAM using gaming card, just mess around and familiarize yourself with the programs. For serious work, forget it.

But the card in discussion here is somewhere around the power of an RX 560 or RX 550 depending on if one is looking at the desktop or mobile version, does not have ECC ram which negates most of your entire argument, does not compute as fast (the RX 570 is ~2x faster in single precision and ~3x faster in double precision) which negates the rest of your argument, and the only things it beats the 570 in, and what you failed to defend, is number of display ports, 10 bit color, 8K, and that it's a small form factor. This card is only "Pro" in name and you need a monitor setup that Linux doesn't support (yet) to fully utilize this GPU. IMHO, the SFF is the only real advantage this card actually has.

It's nothing more than a low profile RX 560 in a workstation configuration in regards to the display ports. There's nothing wrong with that, but calling it a "Pro" card seems a bit of a stretch when the mid-range model of their mid-range line from two years ago, that's also $20-$50 cheaper, runs circles around it. If this GPU was in the $150-$130 range or had ECC memory like one would assume a "Pro" card would have I wouldn't be anywhere near as critical about it as I am now, but at $200 there really isn't enough bang for the buck with this card unless one desperately needs a small form factor from AMD.

bridgman Have y'all considered creating multiple lines of workstation cards? Like Radeon WS for the lower-end cards, Radeon WX for the mid-range ones, and Radeon Pro WX for the best ones. People like aht0 are just assuming that this card has ECC (so did I until I looked up its specs) simply because it's a Pro WX.

These cards would have been named WS 565 SFF and WS 555 SFF (desktop and mobile) under my naming scheme. Workstation Configuration, 565/555 shows it's slightly better than a 560/550, and SFF lets one know that it's a Small Form Factor...I thought about LP for low profile, but that could be mistaken for low power...