AMD Announces Radeon Pro W5700 RDNA Workstation Graphics Card

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Announces Radeon Pro W5700 RDNA Workstation Graphics Card

In addition to AMD's SC19 announcements yesterday, their embargo just lifted on the Radeon Pro W5700 as their first 7nm workstation graphics card build on their new RDNA architecture...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Radeon-Pro-W5700

[smartalgorithm]

it's interesting... wasn't rDNA specifically designed from scratch for gaming and desktop use?

[ddriver]

it's interesting... wasn't rDNA specifically designed from scratch for gaming and desktop use?

There ain't anything different about this GPU other than some driver flags which engineering apps read to enable the "pro" functionality, which is perfectly possible to run on pretty much every gpu. It is one of the biggest scams in the industry.

It used to be that professional gpus had advanced hardware capabilities, but that was back in the days of the fixed function pipeline, ever since gpus went programmable, "professional graphics" is all just smoke and mirrors. GPU vendors have to pay software vendors for "validation" as in "allow it to run the pro code path", in turn they get to ask a significant, in many cases ridiculous price premium over functionality that otherwise just sits dormant.

The most effort in this field was really put into preventing the modding of consumer graphics to work with pro drivers with a mere graphite pencil like in the good old days.

This doesn't even have ecc memory. It is a professional product in name only.

[cb88]

it's interesting... wasn't rDNA specifically designed from scratch for gaming and desktop use?

Yes but but the differentiation between Gaming and Workstation cards has always been artificial. They simply have drivers that are certified to have been tested with the software.

The split AMD has done actually with Navi and Arcturus isn't between gaming and workstation, but Graphics and Compute.... workstations generally don't need compute cards unless they are doing some sort of AI or Simulation etc.. that happens to use OpenCL. The Gaming/Graphics cards can do this also but not as well as a compute focused card will be able to once it is launched. Arcturus won't even have graphics output at all... probably not even ROPs since it doesn't do raster, only compute.

Also the Pro cards typically come with a single slot cooler so they fit more easily into workstations.

The truth is neither gaming or workstation markets are large enough to deserve dedicated hardware.. so they sell them the same hardware since both groups have basically identical needs anyway, that said if you need ECC you end up having to get a high end workstation card instead of one of the mid range ones typically.

[L_A_G]

it's interesting... wasn't rDNA specifically designed from scratch for gaming and desktop use?

These kinds of GPUs are so general purpose there is no such thing as something designed from scratch for a specific use. Only thing you can do to specialize is very the amount of dedicated raster and geometry hardware in relation to the general purpose GPU cores, but that's it. You're not completely on the wrong track as Navi supposedly has more dedicated raster hardware in relation to the general purpose GPU cores than Vega. However rDNA is the name of the overall architecture, including the general purpose GPU cores, which are the exact same ones across the entire range.

[cb88]

These kinds of GPUs are so general purpose there is no such thing as something designed from scratch for a specific use. Only thing you can do to specialize is very the amount of dedicated raster and geometry hardware in relation to the general purpose GPU cores, but that's it. You're not completely on the wrong track as Navi supposedly has more dedicated raster hardware in relation to the general purpose GPU cores than Vega. However rDNA is the name of the overall architecture, including the general purpose GPU cores, which are the exact same ones across the entire range.

RDNA has lower peak compute efficiency... but higher efficiency for graphics. Ofthen the hybrid graphics/compute pipeline of Vega would go underutilized Navi mitigates the overhead of these bubbles in the pipeline.

[L_A_G]

RDNA has lower peak compute efficiency... but higher efficiency for graphics. Ofthen the hybrid graphics/compute pipeline of Vega would go underutilized Navi mitigates the overhead of these bubbles in the pipeline.

I will admit that AMD has muddled things quite a bit with versions of their actual architecture being called different "architectures" and not really explaining what RDNA really is.

AMD has been using their GCN architecture for quite a while as the basis for their graphics "architectures" (Vega, Polaris, etc.) and RNDA is actually a new architecture, but Navi isn't even a full implementation of it. It's actually a halfwaypoint between GCN and RDNA as it uses a bunch of carried over IP blocks from Vega. A full RDNA "architecture" until AMD's yet-to-be-named one coming at some point next year.

The reason why Navi is more efficient in graphics tasks is in part down to being manufactured on a newer manufacturing node and in part with the raster-geometry-GPGPU-setup being more optimal for graphics tasks. With fewer pipeline stalls caused by the raster hardware simply not being able to keep up you can either perform your job faster or run at a lower, more efficient, frequency. The thing about efficiency and frequency is that as you get closer and closer to the maximum allowed by your manufacturing node, the worse your efficiency will get.

[tildearrow]

A workstation card...
....without ECC?

[wizard69]

A workstation card...
....without ECC?

It doesn’t say one way or the way other on their web site. It just says GDDR6 which could implement EEC.

[cb88]

It doesn’t say one way or the way other on their web site. It just says GDDR6 which could implement EEC.

Yes it does. It says no ECC. Also it says this for many other of AMD's WX series cards, if you want a card with ECC you need to pony up for it and get one of the cards that lists support.

Frankly for 90% of workstation use cases ECC does not matter. And for the 10% where it might they are already getting a high end card.

The situation is the same on NVidia worksation cards you don't get ECC up untill around the P5000 card, and even some "workstation ish" cards like the Titan cards usually lack ECC, which bit a bunch of HPC clusters that bought them as they couldn't even complete any work without errors...