AMD Radeon Pro W5700X vs AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 Comparison

The AMD Radeon Pro WX 9100 and the AMD Radeon Pro W5700X represent two different eras of AMD's professional GPU strategy, and the recorded benchmark data shows a split personality rather than a clean generational victory. The WX 9100, built on the Vega 10 chip with GCN 5.0 architecture, wins two of the three head-to-head tests, while the W5700X, based on the Navi 10 chip with RDNA 1.0, takes the Metal benchmark decisively. Both cards are end-of-life, both carry 16 GB of memory, and both sit in the upper tier of the database, with the WX 9100 at the 89th percentile versus all GPUs and the W5700X at the 87th. Understanding which one to pick comes down to which compute API matters for the workload.

Where Each One Wins

The WX 9100 is the clear choice for OpenCL and Vulkan compute workloads. In Geekbench OpenCL it scores 66,605 against 43,810 for the W5700X, a 52 percent advantage that is less a gap and more a chasm. In Geekbench Vulkan the margin is 20.9 percent, with the WX 9100 at 54,711 versus 45,246. Any professional application that leans on OpenCL, which historically includes a large share of content creation and scientific compute software, will favor the older card in this dataset. Its average benchmark score of 64,212 sits just above rivals like the NVIDIA CMP 30HX (63,842, a 0.6 percent delta), the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT LP (63,830, also 0.6 percent), the AMD Radeon RX 7600M (63,775, 0.7 percent), and the Radeon Pro Vega 56 (63,693, 0.8 percent). That is a tightly clustered neighborhood, and the WX 9100 tops all of them.

The W5700X wins where Metal is the API, which in practice means Apple platforms. Its Geekbench Metal score of 75,427 beats the WX 9100's 71,319 by 5.4 percent, and that result makes sense given its identity: the database lists its generation as Radeon Pro Mac (Navi Series) and its bus interface as Apple MPX, with Thunderbolt display outputs. This is a card designed around the Mac ecosystem. Its average score of 54,828 places it near the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 (54,247, a 1.1 percent delta) and the RTX 4080 SUPER (54,209, also 1.1 percent), while it trails the Radeon RX 6750 GRE 12 GB (55,698, -1.6 percent) and the Radeon 8060S (55,757, -1.7 percent) by small margins.

FAQ

Q: Which card is faster overall in the benchmark database?

A: The WX 9100 has the higher average benchmark score, 64,212 versus 54,828, and the higher percentile ranking, 89 versus 87. It also wins two of the three head-to-head tests. However, the W5700X wins the Metal test by 5.4 percent, so the answer depends on the API used.

Q: Which card has more memory bandwidth?

A: The WX 9100. Its HBM2 memory delivers 483.8 GB/s across a 2048-bit bus, while the W5700X's GDDR6 delivers 448.0 GB/s across a 256-bit bus. Both have 16 GB of memory capacity.

Q: Which card is more power efficient?

A: The W5700X has the lower TDP, 205 W versus 230 W, and it achieves this on a 7 nm TSMC process compared to the 14 nm GlobalFoundries node of the WX 9100. The database suggests a 550 W power supply for both cards.

Q: Can these cards be used in a standard PC?

A: The WX 9100 can, with a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface and one 6-pin plus one 8-pin power connector. The W5700X uses an Apple MPX interface, which ties it to Apple's platform rather than a standard PCIe slot.

Q: Which card has higher theoretical compute throughput?

A: The WX 9100 on paper, with 12.29 TFLOPS FP32 and 24.58 TFLOPS FP16 (2:1 rate), versus 10.44 TFLOPS FP32 and 20.89 TFLOPS FP16 for the W5700X. The benchmark data largely confirms this in OpenCL and Vulkan, though not in Metal.

Q: Are either of these cards still in production?

A: No. Both are listed as end-of-life. The WX 9100 launched on July 9, 2017, and the W5700X on December 10, 2019.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

The OpenCL result is the headline number of this comparison. The WX 9100's 66,605 Geekbench OpenCL score is 52 percent higher than the W5700X's 43,810. That is not a nuanced difference, it is a rout, and it tracks with the hardware: the WX 9100 has 4096 shading units and 256 TMUs feeding a compute-focused Vega design with 483.8 GB/s of HBM2 bandwidth, while the W5700X has 2560 shading units and 160 TMUs. The GCN 5.0 architecture in the WX 9100 was built around throughput, and the OpenCL results show it.

Vulkan goes the same way but less dramatically. The WX 9100 scores 54,711 against 45,246, a 20.9 percent win. Anyone running cross-platform graphics or compute through Vulkan should expect the older card to hold a clear lead in the recorded data.

Metal flips the script. The W5700X scores 75,427, the single highest number any card posts in this comparison, beating the WX 9100's 71,319 by 5.4 percent. The margin is modest, but the absolute score matters: on the API native to its intended Mac platform, the W5700X outperforms a card with more shading units and more bandwidth. Higher clocks are the likely driver, with a 2040 MHz boost against 1500 MHz, showing how the 7 nm RDNA design extracts more from less silicon in graphics workloads.

The aggregate picture: two wins for the WX 9100, one for the W5700X, and a higher average score for the WX 9100 by a wide margin on paper that narrows considerably in percentile terms, 89 versus 87, because the averages are pulled in different directions by each card's weakest result.

Specification Differences

The cards share 64 ROPs, 16 GB of memory, support for DirectX 12 (12_1) and OpenGL 4.6, a 550 W suggested power supply, dual GDDR6 versus HBM2 distinctions aside, and end-of-life status. Nearly everything else differs.

The memory subsystems are the deepest divide. The WX 9100 uses HBM2 on a 2048-bit bus running at an effective 1890 Mbps, producing 483.8 GB/s of bandwidth. The W5700X uses GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus at an effective 14 Gbps, producing 448.0 GB/s. The gap, roughly 8 percent in favor of the WX 9100, is far smaller than the bus width difference would suggest, because GDDR6's much higher signaling rate compensates for the narrower interface.

Clocks favor the W5700X across the board: 1243 MHz base and 2040 MHz boost, against 1200 MHz base and 1500 MHz boost for the WX 9100. The resulting pixel and texture rates split in interesting ways. The W5700X has the higher pixel rate at 130.6 GPixel/s versus 96.00 GPixel/s, thanks to its clock advantage over identical ROP counts. The WX 9100 has the higher texture rate, 384.0 GTexel/s versus 326.4 GTexel/s, on the strength of its 256 TMUs.

Physical and platform specs diverge sharply. The WX 9100 is a dual-slot card, 267 mm long, with one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector, six mini-DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and PCIe 3.0 x16. The W5700X is a quad-slot card, 305 mm long, with an Apple MPX interface, an HDMI 2.0b output plus four Thunderbolt ports, and no standard power connectors listed. Vulkan support also differs in version: 1.3 on the WX 9100 versus 1.4 on the W5700X. Launch MSRP was 1,599 USD for the WX 9100 and 999 USD for the W5700X.

Architecture Differences

The WX 9100 is the Vega 10 chip, GCN 5.0 architecture, the last major iteration of AMD's Graphics Core Next design. It was manufactured by GlobalFoundries on a 14 nm process, packing 12,500 million transistors into a 495 mm² die, for a density of 25.3 million transistors per square millimeter. Big silicon on an older node: that is the Vega formula, and it explains both the high shading unit count and the high TDP relative to output.

The W5700X is the Navi 10 chip, RDNA 1.0, manufactured by TSMC on 7 nm. It holds 10,300 million transistors in a 251 mm² die, roughly half the area, at a density of 41.0 million transistors per square millimeter. The generational node jump is the whole story here: fewer transistors, half the die size, higher clocks, and lower power draw. Neither card has RT cores or tensor cores, so hardware ray tracing and dedicated matrix acceleration are absent from both feature sets.

The database also positions them differently in lineage. The WX 9100 belongs to the Radeon Pro Polaris (WX x100) generation, with the Radeon Pro GCN as predecessor and Radeon Pro Vega as successor. The W5700X belongs to the Radeon Pro Mac (Navi Series) generation with no listed predecessor or successor.

The Verdict

The data supports a straightforward split. For OpenCL and Vulkan compute, the WX 9100 is the stronger card, by 52 percent and 20.9 percent respectively, and its average benchmark score of 64,212 against 54,828 backs that up. It also offers the higher memory bandwidth and the standard PCIe form factor, so it fits conventional workstations.

The W5700X is the pick for Apple MPX-based systems and Metal workloads, where it wins by 5.4 percent, delivers the highest single benchmark score in this comparison at 75,427, and does so with a lower TDP on a far more efficient process. It cannot match the WX 9100 in cross-platform compute APIs, and its rival set, clustered around the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 SUPER, sits a tier below the WX 9100's rivals on average score.

Both cards are end-of-life, so the practical decision for a buyer today is less about preference and more about platform: PCIe workstation with OpenCL or Vulkan workloads points to the WX 9100, while a Mac Pro with an MPX module slot points to the W5700X.