The AMD Radeon Pro W7700 GPU, which has just launched, is the latest graphic card aimed at mid-level users who need power but don't want to break the bank. What AMD is pitching is a do-it-all card for most creative tasks at resonable price, and it comes in cheaper than the comparable Nvidia card. That's fighting talk.
Earlier this year AMD revealed its W7000 series of GPUs, with the 7800 and 7900 for the higher end of the market and the 7500 and 7600 for the mid level. This left a gap, not only in the numbering of these cards but more importantly between the mid- and high sections of the market. (Read our roundup of Black Friday graphics card deals for bargains).
Now we can say hello to the AMD Radeon Pro W7700. This mid- to high-level sector of the GPU market has been growing year on year as demand for powerful GPUs at affordable prices becomes ever more necessary in a wide range of different markets, and AMD (along with competitor Nvidia) can fighting for control, which is good for artists and creatives, because prices can be competitive while cards get better. (We have a guide, 'AMD versus Nvidia' that reveals the pros and cons of these two processor-makers.)
The AMD Radeon Pro W7700 has been designed to be an all things to all people type of graphics card. The 16GB of 256-bit GDDR6 with ECC gives a large enough framebuffer for multitasking across different applications at the same time. This is an essential component for a large proportion of creative workflows.
AMD's latest GPU is a card I'm keen to get my hands on. I know I find myself regularly working simultaneously in Blender, DaVinci Resolve, and Photoshop and I need a GPU that can handle the data requirements of each of these applications. The AMD Radeon Pro W7700 has been engineered for this type of use.
One of the other benefits of this AMD Radeon Pro W7700 that catches my eye is its AI accelerated capabilities. The GPU's architecture makes it possible to significantly upscale images and videos from FHD to 4K and even higher to 8K. This is a dream for video editors who don’t necessarily have the luxury of shooting in these higher resolutions but would like to deliver this type of content. The AI improvements also enable for software creators, such as Adobe, to design generative AI tools that have the power to back them up.
Here's the tech bit, for those that love this stuff; the AMD Radeon Pro W7700 has an impressive spec with 16GB of 256-bit GDDR6 with ECC, a DisplayPort 2.1, 48 CUs with ray accelerators, 96 AI accelerators, 28 TFLOPS, AV1 for encoding and decoding, as well as 190W total board power via 8-pin.
AMD’s AMD Radeon Pro W7700 sits comfortably alongside Nvidia's 4000 series of GPUs and boasts better performance across a range of tests. One way to test the performance of a GPU is using the SPECviewperf Geomean and interestingly the W7700 scores 224.9 compared to 221.2 for Nvidia's A5000.
The fact that it scores the same is not particularly noteworthy, but what is worth pointing out is the fact that the AMD card is around a third of the price of the Nvidia alternative.
The AMD Radeon Pro W7700 GPU is set to be an incredible all-round card that delivers on a number of different fronts. Its capabilities and price point will make it very attractive to creatives who do a lot of multitasking across CAD, 3D, video, and photo apps. Whether this new AMD GPU will tempt creatives away from Nvidia is something that only time will tell. Either way, AMD is doing its very best to totally disrupt the market with another high-performing GPU.
For more on GPUs, read our guides to the the best GPUs and my piece on the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000. We also have a piece on what a graphics card does and guides to the best GPUs for video editing, the best GPUs for gaming.
The AMD Radeon Pro W7700 GPU is priced at $999. This puts it firmly in the middle of the W7000 series with the 7900 at $3,999, the 7800 at $2,499, the 7600 at $599 and the 7500 at $429.
