AMD FirePro W4170M vs AMD FirePro W7170M

AMD FirePro W4170M

The AMD FirePro W4170M is a professional workstation graphics card for laptops. It is based on the same Mars chip as the AMD Radeon HD 8790M and similarly clocked. Therefore, the GPU takes position in the mid-range of mobile laptop graphics cards as of 2013. Thanks to its optimized drivers, the W4170M offers a very good performance in professional 3D applications like CAD, while the gaming performance is similar to a Nvidia GeForce GT 750M.

The AMD FirePro M4100 series is based on the GCN architecture and therefore supports DirectX 11.2. The 384 shader cores can also be used with OpenCL as 6 compute units.

The AMD FirePro W4170M was first announced in the Dell Precision M2800 which is remarkably similar to the Dell Latitude E6540 (see our review) that offers a AMD Radeon HD 8790M.

AMD FirePro W7170M

The AMD FirePro W7170M is a high-end graphics card for mobile workstations. It is based on the same Tonga-chip as the AMD Radeon R9 M390X and seems to be similar clocked. Therefore, the card is based on the third generation of the GCN architecture (GCN 1.2) and supports DirectX 12 (FL 12_0). 

The FirePro series offers certified drivers that are optimized for stability and performance in professional applications like CAD or DCC. OpenGL performance, for example, should be significantly better compared to GeForce graphics cards of similar specifications.

The performance should be theoretically in the same ballpark as the Nvidia Quadro M4000M. In 3D games, the W7170M should perform similar to the R9 M390X consumer card.

The power consumption of the W7170M should be similar to the Quadro M5000M and M4000M cards and therefore in the 100 Watt region. That means it is suited only for large laptops with e.g. 17-inch screens.