Firepro Series

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Teena Ruiter

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Aug 3, 2024, 3:19:33 PM8/3/24

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AMD FirePro was AMD's brand of graphics cards designed for use in workstations and servers running professional Computer-aided design (CAD), Computer-generated imagery (CGI), Digital content creation (DCC), and High-performance computing/GPGPU applications. The GPU chips on FirePro-branded graphics cards are identical to the ones used on Radeon-branded graphics cards. The end products (i.e. the graphics card) differentiate substantially by the provided graphics device drivers and through the available professional support for the software. The product line is split into two categories: "W" workstation series focusing on workstation and primarily focusing on graphics and display, and "S" server series focused on virtualization and GPGPU/High-performance computing.

The release of the Radeon Pro Duo in April 2016 and the announcement of the Radeon Pro WX Series in July 2016 marked the succession of Radeon Pro as AMD's professional workstation graphics card solution.[1] Radeon Instinct is the current brand for servers.

The FireGL line was originally developed by the German company Spea Software AG until it was acquired by Diamond Multimedia in November 1995.[2] The first FireGL board used the 3Dlabs GLINT 3D processor chip.[3]

AMD Eyefinity can support multi-monitor set-ups. One graphics card can drive up to a maximum of six monitors; the supported number depends on the distinct product and the number of DisplayPort displays. The device driver facilitates the configuration of diverse display group modes.

The FirePro line is designed for compute intensive, multimedia content creation (such as video editors), and mechanical engineering design software (such as CAD programs). Their Radeon counterparts are suited towards video games and other consumer applications. Because they use the same drivers (Catalyst) and are based on the same architectures and chipsets, the major differences are essentially limited to price and double-precision performance. However, some FirePro cards may have major feature differences to the equivalent Radeon card, such as ECC RAM and differing physical display outputs.

Since the 2007 series, high-end and ultra-end FireGL/FirePro products (based on the R600 architecture) have officially implemented stream processing. The Radeon line of video cards, although present in hardware, did not offer any support for stream processing until the HD 4000 series where beta level OpenCL 1.0 support is offered, and the HD 5000 series and later, where full OpenCL 1.1 support is offered.

HSA is intended to facilitate the programming for stream processing and/or GPGPU in combination with CPUs and DSPs. All models implementing the Graphics Core Next microarchitecture support hardware features defined by the HSA Foundation and AMD has provided corresponding software.

Because of the similarities between FireGL and Radeon cards, some users soft-mod their Radeon cards by using third-party software or automated scripts accompanied by a modified FireGL driver patch, to allow FireGL capabilities for their hardware, effectively getting a cheaper, equivalent, FireGL card, often with better OpenGL capabilities, but usually half of the amount of video memory. Some variants can also be soft-modded to a FireStream stream processor.[5]

1 Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units : Compute Units
2 The effective data transfer rate of GDDR5 is quadruple its nominal clock, instead of double as it is with other DDR memory
3 Windows 7, 8.1, 10 Support for Fire Pro Cards with Terascale 2 and later by firepro driver 15.301.2601[41]

1 Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units : Compute Units
2 The effective data transfer rate of GDDR5 is quadruple its nominal clock, instead of double as it is with other DDR memory.
3 Support for Windows 7, 8.1 for OpenGL 4.4 and OpenCL 2.0, when Hardware is prepared with firepro driver 14.502.1045.[46]

1 Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units : Compute Units
2 The effective data transfer rate of GDDR5 is quadruple its nominal clock, instead of double as it is with other DDR memory.
3 OpenGL 4.4: support with AMD FirePro driver release 14.301.000 or later, in footnotes of specs[56]

1 Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units : compute units
2 The effective data transfer rate of GDDR5 is quadruple its nominal clock, instead of double as it is with other DDR memory.
3 OpenGL 4.4: support with AMD FirePro driver release 14.301.000 or later, in footnotes of specs[56]

1 Unified shaders : Texture mapping units : Render output units: Compute units
2 The effective data transfer rate of GDDR5 is quadruple its nominal clock, instead of double as it is with other DDR memory.
3 OpenGL 4.4: support with AMD FirePro driver release 14.301.000 or later, in footnotes of specs[56]

Hello, I have a problem with the drivers for my graphics card. Well, I have an amd firepro w5100 graphics card and I would like to play "forza horizon 5" but the graphics card does not have FidelityFX. Is there a chance that I will have this functionality? Can you add it yourself? Can I turn it off in games? (In forza I can't do that because I am kicked out of the game.) Sorry for the poor English (English by google translator)

AMD Pro GPU cards are not optimized for playing games. They are able to play games but the drivers are not meant to optimize the game playing experience or designed for playing games like the Adrenaline Drivers are.

Also unlike DLSS, AMD is taking an open approach to FSR. The entire FidelityFX suite works across many generations of GPUs from AMD and Nvidia, including FSR. At launch, the feature is supported on RX 6000, RX 5000, RX 500, and 400 GPUs, as well as Nvidia GTX 10-series and 16-series and RTX 2000 and 3000 cards. Ryzen processors with Radeon graphics are supported, too.

That brings us to today. Just 3 weeks after the launch of the FirePro W series AMD is making their second major FirePro product announcement, finally revealing how they are going to integrate the FireStream and FirePro markets. Joining the workstation-focused FirePro W series will be the server-focused FirePro S series. The FirePro S series will be the direct successor to the passively cooled FirePro Vx800P cards of the last generation, and will serve as the spiritual successor to FireStream.

I have been asked by the Autodesk rep troubleshooting my case to verify if there are any users with AMD V4900 graphics cards using AutoCAD 2016 on Windows 7 that have the option to turn on High Quality Geometry in the GRAPHICSCONFIG settings. It is not available to me, even using the latest recommended driver.

Failing that specific scenario, it'd probably also be good to hear from other users with the V4900 using 2016/2017 on any Windows version.
Or, if anyone else is using any AMD V-series card and doesn't have the High Quality Geometry option, that'd be good to know too.

Thanks!

If you guys can think of anything pertinent that you haven't yet posted that might have contributed to this issue, please let me know so I can pass it along to the developers! Anyone who has not yet posted any data would also be helpful.

Yes, I had to uninstall my FirePro drivers when I first installed 2015 or 2016 (can't remember which) because the certified drivers were causing problems. I then upgraded to the most recent (at the time) FirePro drivers and those worked, with the exception of High Quality Geometry. Most recently, I've installed the newest certified driver, which also works (except High Quality Geometry, obviously).

I also want you to know that every single person that works at Autodesk really DOES care about the users (at least every one that I have met or worked with), so maybe Company Policy might occasionally make it look like that is not the case, that is not at all the way it really is.

RBE has fields that can be used to change the subsystem ID -- but this doesn't really matter as I am fairly sure that this information is only really used when deciding whether or not the drivers you are about to install have been created with your system in mind. Mostly it is an exclusion tool (again, as far as I know).

Anyway, because Autodesk is such an anal corporation, I'm going to need to figure out how to edit the subsystem ID from 04BA (6970M) to 04A4 (M8900). Simply changing the "ATI ASIC Include" value in drivers is not enough.

Hmm, I don't know, at least not for sure... quite some things can affect driver compatibility, e.g. the VBIOS, the hardware IDs etc. The VBIOS should be compatible with the normal and FirePro drivers. The question is whether the Mac OS drivers work with the FirePro VBIOS. Can you quickly check the hardware string of your card, e.g. with HWiNFO or check the device manager.

I'd say check your hardware ID and post it here. And then give it a try... that's the easiest way for such things (imo), trial and error... I simply don't have all the information about how exactly driver installation, compatibility checks etc. work, most things I've accomplished with my cards were kind of "learning by doing".

Windows should boot fine on your system with the FirePro VBIOS, then you can install the drivers. The question is whether the Mac OS GPU driver will still be doing its job... chances are that it works, if not we might find a way by modifying a hardware ID in the VBIOS.

but this doesn't really matter as I am fairly sure that this information is only really used when deciding whether or not the drivers you are about to install have been created with your system in mind. Mostly it is an exclusion tool (again, as far as I know).