AMD Radeon Pro W6800 review

The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 meets the pace of development in GPUs, which is rapid to say the least, with a new generation coming hot on the heels of the previous one. This latest workstation graphics card has upped the ante in some significant ways, in a bid to dominate the arena.

The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 is a very well-specced graphics card with some rather noteworthy attributes. To start with there is a whopping 32GB of memory, more than enough for the large datasets visual effects artists and visualisers need for their work. This is EEC memory as well, adding a layer of protection for these critical environments. Such a quantity of memory allays any fears users might have of culling texture sizes or worries about geometry density of scenes and you can compare to other GPUs in our best graphics cards buyer's guide. Photorealism can often succeed on the details, so knowing the resources are there for dense foliage, sculpted surfaces and impeccable textures really delivers confidence.

There’s also now hardware raytracing which, while not directly supported by all applications, certainly delivers where needed. Look at the rise and rise of Epic’s Unreal Engine. This software is supported meaning that game designers, real-time artists and the ever-increasing number of archviz artists who now use it can deliver their projects without the traditional bottlenecks. Epic’s benchmarking score for this card is 45.9, close to cards at almost twice the price and totally surpassing anything in its own range. 

AMD Radeon Pro W6800: new architecture

AMD has equipped the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 with RDNA 2, the latest graphics architecture, which provides results almost twice as fast as the previous generation. On top of this is the fact that, being a workstation rather than consumer card, there is an abundance of certification, lending confidence in the card’s ability to play nicely with your software, especially for users of Nuke and SolidWorks, among many others.

The physical card itself adds further layers of thoughtful design. It’s a double height PCIe 4 card, although it does support PCIe 3 too and has been designed with multi GPU systems in mind. A clear example of this is heat management, which is excellent. Hooking up the W6800 is a doddle too. The Radeon Pro has 6 Mini DisplayPort sockets, easily catering to those with multiple monitors or large display walls. These ports can support UHD and ultra wide monitors too, meaning no matter what your setup you will be fully powered.

The final piece of this puzzle is software. AMD boosts the viewport on these cards, with variable localised resolutions, helping aid the required frame rates. However it is really the enterprise-level software that is the winner. Having drivers and associated graphics software that is built for the business, not the gamer is a big deal and is an area AMD has long excelled in.

All these elements, along with many others, make the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 a powerful and capable graphics card that will be at home in many workstations. It has the grunt as well as the thoughtful design to power it through many challenging situations.

AMD Radeon Pro W6800: heat management

Cooling is a key requirement of a modern graphics card and the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 has that covered. Yes, there are plenty of fins inside but the air is sucked in through a large opening with a single fan, then the hot air is expelled directly out of the rear of the card, above the jacks.

Read more: The best graphics cards