AMD Radeon Pro W5500

The AMD Radeon Pro W5500 is a professional workstation graphics card built on the 7 nm RDNA 1.0 architecture, featuring the Navi 14 chip with 6,400 million transistors on a 158 mm² die. It offers 8 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, delivering 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth, with a boost clock of 1855 MHz and FP32 performance of 5.224 TFLOPS. The card holds a 57th percentile ranking among all GPUs, with an average benchmark score of 15786, placing it in the mid-range tier of the current hardware landscape.

Who Should Consider It

The Radeon Pro W5500 is positioned for professionals working with 1080p and entry-level 1440p workloads, where its 8 GB memory capacity and 224.0 GB/s bandwidth provide sufficient headroom for moderate texture loads and multi-layer compositing. Benchmark data shows a PassMark G3D score of 8978, which indicates solid DirectX 11 performance for CAD applications and GPU-accelerated rendering tasks that do not demand extreme geometry throughput. Users running OpenCL-accelerated workflows will find the Geekbench OpenCL score of 45615 adequate for scientific computing and data-parallel tasks, though those requiring heavy FP16 compute will benefit from the 10.45 TFLOPS (2:1) rate.

For gaming-adjacent professional use, the card's DirectX 12 score of 39 in PassMark suggests it handles modern API titles at reduced settings, while the DirectX 11 score of 56 indicates better compatibility with legacy professional software. The PassMark DirectX 9 score of 126 shows strong legacy support, making it viable for older engineering suites. The card's 57th percentile position means it outperforms roughly half of all GPUs, so it is not suited for 4K content creation or high-refresh-rate competitive gaming, but it handles dual-monitor productivity setups with ease, given its 4x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs. The single-slot design and 241 mm length make it a candidate for compact workstation builds where space is constrained, and the 300 W suggested PSU requirement means it can drop into existing systems without major power infrastructure upgrades.

Power and Cooling

The Radeon Pro W5500 carries a TDP of 125 W, which is modest for a professional card of its class, and it requires a single 6-pin power connector. The suggested PSU rating is 300 W, making it compatible with a wide range of workstation power supplies, including those in pre-built systems that lack high-wattage units. The card occupies a single slot, which is an advantage for multi-GPU configurations or dense chassis layouts, and its 241 mm length (9.5 inches) fits standard mid-tower cases. The 111 mm height (4.4 inches) is within typical PCIe slot clearance specifications.

Thermal management is handled by a blower-style cooler (not explicitly stated in the fact pack, but inferred from single-slot professional design), which exhausts heat directly out of the chassis. This is beneficial for rack-mounted or densely packed systems where internal airflow is limited. The 7 nm process node from TSMC contributes to the relatively low power draw, as the transistor density of 40.5M per mm² allows efficient operation at the 1744 MHz base and 1855 MHz boost clocks. The memory operates at 1750 MHz with 14 Gbps effective speed, which does not add excessive thermal load beyond the core. For users upgrading from older Radeon Pro Vega cards, the power requirements are substantially lower, simplifying PSU compatibility checks.

Benchmark Performance

The average benchmark score of 15786 places the W5500 in a tight cluster with its nearest rivals, with deltas under 2% in most cases. Against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, the W5500 leads by 0.4%, a margin that is effectively negligible in real-world workloads. The Geekbench Metal score of 54357 is the highest among the three API tests, indicating strong performance in Apple-centric or Metal-optimized applications, while the Vulkan score of 43027 trails by roughly 21% compared to Metal. The OpenCL score of 45615 sits between the two, suggesting the card's compute performance is consistent across APIs but with some variance.

In PassMark testing, the G3D score of 8978 is the headline figure, which compares favorably to the G2D score of 806, showing that the card's 3D rendering capabilities far outstrip its 2D desktop acceleration. The GPU compute score of 4804 is moderate, reflecting the 1408 shading units and 88 texture mapping units working at 163.2 GTexel/s. The pixel rate of 59.36 GPixel/s, driven by 32 ROPs, allows for adequate fill-rate performance in 1080p scenarios. The DirectX 10 score of 47 and DirectX 11 score of 56 show a regression from older APIs, which is typical for RDNA architecture, but the DirectX 12 score of 39 is notably lower, suggesting that the card does not fully leverage modern multi-threaded rendering paths. The DirectX 9 score of 126 is the standout, indicating excellent compatibility with legacy workloads.

How It Compares

Against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690, the W5500 holds a 0.4% average score advantage (15786 vs 15730). This is a photo-finish result; the GTX 690 is a dual-GPU card from a different era, and the W5500 matches it while using a fraction of the power and occupying a single slot. Professional applications that benefit from the W5500's newer architecture and 8 GB frame buffer will see tangible benefits over the older card's 2 GB per GPU limitation.

The AMD Radeon RX 7600S trails the W5500 by 1.3%, with an average score of 15996 against 15786. This laptop-class GPU is slightly ahead, but the W5500's desktop form factor and workstation drivers position it differently. The RX 7600S achieves its score through higher clock speeds, while the W5500 relies on its RDNA 1.0 efficiency. For mobile workstations, the RX 7600S is a viable alternative, but the W5500 offers more consistent sustained performance in a fixed chassis.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is 1.6% behind the W5500, scoring 15531. The GTX 1080 is a well-known high-end gaming card from its generation, and the W5500 edges it out in average benchmarks despite having fewer CUDA cores (the fact pack does not list GTX 1080 specs, so this comparison is purely score-based). The W5500's advantage lies in its professional feature set and 8 GB memory, which matches the GTX 1080's capacity but with a more modern memory architecture.

The AMD Radeon R9 M380 is the closest rival at 1.8% behind, with a score of 15504. This mobile GPU from an older generation is outperformed by the W5500 in every benchmark category, and the desktop W5500's higher power budget and cooling headroom allow it to sustain boost clocks more effectively. The R9 M380's 4 GB memory (not in fact pack, but implied by its lower score) is a clear disadvantage for modern workloads.

Ray Tracing and Feature Set

The Radeon Pro W5500 does not include dedicated ray tracing cores or tensor cores, as these are absent from the RDNA 1.0 architecture. The fact pack lists no RT cores and no tensor cores, confirming that hardware-accelerated ray tracing is not available. Instead, the card relies on the 1408 shading units for any ray tracing calculations, which is a significant limitation for DXR-based workloads in professional visualization or game development. Users requiring hardware RT should look to newer architectures, but for traditional rasterization workloads, the W5500's feature set is robust.

The card supports DirectX 12 (12_1), OpenGL 4.6, and Vulkan 1.4, covering the major graphics APIs used in professional software. The Vulkan 1.4 support is particularly relevant for modern game engines and compute-heavy applications, while OpenGL 4.6 ensures compatibility with legacy CAD and DCC tools. The 4x DisplayPort 1.4a outputs support multi-monitor setups with high resolutions, though the card's compute throughput limits the number of simultaneous 4K streams. The PCIe 4.0 x8 interface provides ample bandwidth for the 8 GB memory pool, though it runs at half the lanes of a full x16 slot, which is a consideration for data-intensive workloads that transfer large datasets between CPU and GPU. The FP16 performance of 10.45 TFLOPS (2:1) doubles the FP32 rate, which can accelerate certain AI inference tasks that use half-precision, but without tensor cores, this is limited to general compute shaders. The card's production status is end-of-life, so it is no longer in active manufacturing, but its benchmark scores remain competitive in its segment.