AMD Graphics Card Comparison Guide: Radeon RX 480, WX 4100,WX 5100 and WX 7100 and Radeon Pro SSG

Its been a exciting year for virtual reality (VR) with PC-based head-mounted displays (HMDs) Oculus Rift and HTC Vive both launching, more developers creating content, and the technology generally broadening its appeal. While Oculus VR and HTC have been battling it out for HMD dominance another fight has been going on. On the PC side the competition has been heating between NVIDIA and AMD on the graphics card front, with both releasing products designed to bring the entry barrier for VR adoption lower. VRFocus has recently published a comparison guide for NVIDIA’s latest offerings and now we’ve got AMD’s.

We covered AMD’s entry level VR card the Radeon RX 480 when it launched on 29th June, 2016 at the low price point of $199 USD for the 4GB edition. It comes in at $50 cheaper than NVIDIA’s closest comparable card the GeForce GTX 1060 which launched last month.

Then at the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference and Exhibition 2016 in Anaheim, California, during July, AMD revealed another set of VR compatible products in the form of the Radeon Pro WX range. These are aimed at the professional market, but none of them exceed the $1000 price barrier so they’re still not too expensive for consumers, especially PC gamers. AMD’s pricing of the cards make them a competitor for NVIDIA’s 10 series range, which have been aggresively marketed for VR.

Each WX device has its own particular role to fill within the product range. The WX 4100 has been designed for small form factor workstations, the WX 5100 is focused towards real-time content engines and immersive real-time design and manufacturing, including CAD and CAM. While the WX 7100 is AMD’s solution for professional virtual reality (VR) content creation alongside tasks such as video editing or image creation.

Below is a comparison table detailing how the latest cards stand up against each other with the details that are currently available.

As you can see, very few details about the Radeon Pro SSG have yet been revealed, due to it’s release date being further out. VRFocus will monitor further reveals from AMD regarding this interesting proposition whilst continuing its coverage of AMD’s latest VR technology.