Team Red Goes Blue: AMD Announces Radeon Pro WX Series

AMD announced a new line of professional-grade GPUs at Siggraph 2016. The WX series is based on the company’s Polaris architecture and promises to lower the cost of pro-level rendering performance below $1,000.

AMD’s Raja Koduri took to the stage during the Radeon Technologies Capsaicin event at Siggraph 2016 and revealed a whole new lineup of professional-grade workstation GPUs based on the company’s Polaris GPU architecture. Koduri announced the Radeon Pro WX series, which will launch with three affordable products.

The Radeon Pro WX7100 is the top of the WX series. Koduri said that every product that the company releases is designed to fit a specific need. The WX7100 is meant to bring the cost of professional-grade rendering performance down for the entry level. Previously, you’d have to spend over $3,000 to get a Radeon Pro workstation card, but the WX7100 will be available for less than $1,000 and is designed to be ideal for VR content creators.

The Polaris-based workstation card features 32 AMD Compute units delivering upwards of 5TFLOPS of single precision floating point performance. It will include 8GB of GPU memory on a 256bit memory bus.

The WX5100 includes 28 Compute units that deliver more than 4TFLOPS of single precision performance. This card will also feature 8GB of memory on the same 256bit memory bus as the WX7100. AMD said this card is the ideal solution for immersive real-time design and manufacturing with CAD and CAM software.

The third WX series Radeon Pro option is designed for small form factor workstation machines. The WX4100 is a half-height GPU with 16 AMD Compute units and 4GB of memory on 128bit memory bus. The compact card is capable of 2TFLOPS of single precision floating point performance.

All three WX series workstations cards are capable of powering up to four 5K displays through four Display Port 1.3 ports. Each workstation card is cooled by a single-slot blower solution. The WX series will also be covered by an incredible 10-year warranty. AMD is standing by this product in a big way.

You’ll notice that AMD has strayed away from its traditional red color scheme for the new Radeon Pro series. Koduri said that he is very passionate about the color blue (even going so far as to name his daughter "blue" in Sanskrit). After taking control of the Radeon Technologies Group last year, he set on a mission to change the color of the Radeon Pro. The company researched different color pigments and decided on Yinmn Blue for its special properties. Yinmn blue is the only non-toxic blue pigment known to man. The color does not fade, it is highly reflective, and it's highly energy efficient. Koduri said the entire Radeon Pro WX series will be painted in this color.

AMD said that all Radeon Pro GPUs are designed in-house. The company doesn’t allow third party designs so that it can control the quality. AMD also provides 24/7 customer support for Radeon Pro customers.

AMD did not say when the Radeon Pro WX series would be available, but you can sign up to the company’s mailing list to be notified when it's available.