It's evident that a 150W card doesn't need a dual slot cooling solution thanks to the WX series. It's disappointing to see consumer cards don't follow suit.
Maybe, but I'd like to see an acoustic analysis before reaching any conclusions about the noise the cards make. This isn't server room/rack mount hardware where shrieking fans are the norm. These cards will end up in workstations and they really can't scream incessantly. I suspect that at least the WX 5100 and 4100 won't be significantly louder than the dual slot cards we see in the consumer segment.
This has not been my experience at all. I own a FirePro V7900, and have used a significant number of the FirePro and Quadro cards (because my former employer generally used "workstation" machines that came with these type of cards), and in my experience they aren't categorically noisier than consumer cards.
They do possibly put more heat into the case, as someone noted below. But workstation class machines from companies like Dell and HP generally have really good thermal design, so the net noise of the machine is very low actually.
In short, these are great cards if you design a system around them; either buy them in a well designed machine or buy a case that has good thermal design, and they shouldn't have any noise or thermal issues.
How does that depend on the clock speeds? If the card is rated to dissipate 150W, it will dissipate 150W. If you have a GPU that can run at 2 terahertz, and it only generates 150W, it will be just fine. If you have a GPU that runs at 2 kilohertz and it somehow generates 150W, it will also be just fine. The clockspeed doesn't matter, only the amount of heat that the card generates.
The boost clocks may be higher on consumer cards, particularly aftermarket solutions that make up the majority of sales. Those aftermarket solutions may also blow past the reference TDP.
Anyway the biggest issue is that professional often assume lots of case cooling and thus expel FAR more hot air into the case vs an equivalent twin slot desktop consumer card. Although some consumer cards dump more hot air into your case than others, these cards are on a whole different level. Look at the pics. Even removing some connections wouldn't help you enough to match even the most mediocre dual-slot cooling solutions.
That doesn't even factor in overclocking. I for one would have zero desire for a single slot 150W card. Clearly the market demand is low.
Overclocking in workstation? Hahaha, good joke. Plus low market demand for pro or semipro GPU? Like almost every workstation out there uses one of such? This is not for gaming, it's for work, to speed up CAD/CAM/CAE programmes. Noone cares if you want this card, managers/directors will order to buy several or even hundreds of these per bigger company and Nvidia/AMD will be completely fine.
You took everything I said out of context. If you read the previous comments in this chain, you'd know I was talking about why they don't make 150W consumer cards that are single slot. The OP said:
"It's evident that a 150W card doesn't need a dual slot cooling solution thanks to the WX series. It's disappointing to see consumer cards don't follow suit."
So in this chain we were talking about why consumer cards don't use single slot solutions at 150W like workstation cards. To reiterate: Workstations have better chassis cooling than a typical consumer rig and don't overclock. That is why it is acceptable to go with a single slot solution in a workstation but less appealing in a regular desktop card in this thermal range. When I was talking about low demand, I was talking again about consumer cards. If demand was there, you would see single slot cards in the consumer space at this output level. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the context of the conversation.
That 150W 2THz silicon would be size of pinhead and 150W 2kHz silicon would be size of whole card. So Hz matters as its related to silicon area where heat is dissipated, which is related to cooling requirements. Then there is price, you can make better fans and cooling systems with more money.
Maybe so, but once the cost of developing a single slot cooler is absorbed (which is most certainly the case already as there are single slot cooled cards that are shipping out the door today..and were previously as well) then there's no longer an engineering cost barrier. That leaves us with material and manufacturing costs. Material costs are probably lower since there's less metal on a single slot cooler by weight. Milling, maching, and that sort of thing might play a role too, but probably not as much as you might think if these coolers were in mass production.
I think the bottom line is consumer perceptions wouldn't be met for the majority of the target market. That market consists largely of causal tinkerers and less educated buyers that use Walmart logic when they look at PC parts, assuming automatically that a larger, heavier thing must be better at the same job regardless of the actual product performance. (Walmart logic is a term derived from a study supposedly conducted by the aforementioned retail chain that pitted identical desktop computers against one another, one in a smaller and lighter case and the other in a larger and heavier one. Despite performance being identical due to the identical parts, Walmart shoppers reportedly cited the larger and heavier computer as being the faster of the two.) Consequently, GPU manufacturers use dual slot coolers to appease consumers. I think that factor alone rises up above any cost concerns.
You're right in that these smaller coolers are very likely cheaper than bigger dual slot coolers with heat pipes.
> Consequently, GPU manufacturers use dual slot coolers to appease consumers.
Yes, but acoustically and not optically. check out reviews of existing single slot coolers for cards at ~75 W. They should be available. The cards will be a bit older, but the design is still pretty much the same. You'll find their acoustics "acceptable" if you want single slot cooler so badly, whereas others would consider a card "clearly audible" unacceptable. Now imagine twice the heat output.. you'd need more than 2 times the fan speed to cool that with the same cooler to the same temperature. Fan noise and power consumption rise worse than quadratically with fan speed (due to turbulent flow). They probably also increase the maximum temperature to ~90°C, which helps with cooling but again increases power consumption.
My quick search found a review of a FirePro W8100: http://www.tomshardware.de/firepro-w8100-workstati... It's got a somewhat higher power consumption of 188 W tamed by a double slow blower style cooler. It's almost hitting 90°C and its noise characterized as "under load still somewhat bearable". Now take half of that fan and heat sink away...
The price has nothing to do with the card's TDP and the cooler required to keep it from overheating or throttling. If a 150W TDP card like the W7100 can be cooled with a single slot cooler then a 150W cherry-picked GPU or a 150W bottom-of-the-barrel GPU can still be cooled with a single slot cooler.
The price may certainly be impacted by the fact that AMD is selecting the best of their GPUs for the Radeon Pro cards, but it doesn't rule out the possibility that a 75W RX 460 could be a single slot card. The state of the consumer GPU industry is abysmal and filled with stupid products like dual slot 75W cards when it's obvious that a single slot cooler can handle tons more heat. I blame marketing departments and clueless consumer electronics customers.
But that's a 50 watt single slot card we're looking at here for the Radeon Pro's. While 25 watts sounds like a small difference that's still a 50% increase from WX4100 to RX460 in terms of TDP.
Not to say it's impossible to do, but it would make quite a racket, hence dual slot solutions. I'm more curious as to when we'll see low profile dual slot RX460's for upgrading SFF workstations.
Ah yes, I see what you mean now. That is a good point.
I am not sure if they just think their gaming market is averse to the blower sound a single slot pushing that much heat or if they just think the market share that needs single slot is too small.
Tell me about it.... I've been waiting for the consumer version of this. They must be waiting to do a larger GPU dump around CES 2017 with Vega and Polaris refreshes all lumped together.
Now I did a typo, anyway. Those cards will run a lot less at 100% as your gaming counterparts, thus the typical power draw in a day to day usage is a more useful information here.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
32 Comments
Back to Article
BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
It's evident that a 150W card doesn't need a dual slot cooling solution thanks to the WX series. It's disappointing to see consumer cards don't follow suit.fanofanand - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
That depends on clock speeds but on the surface I would agree.Valantar - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Noise is a big differentiator too. Enterprise/professional cards are usually far noisier than would be considered acceptable for home use.BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Maybe, but I'd like to see an acoustic analysis before reaching any conclusions about the noise the cards make. This isn't server room/rack mount hardware where shrieking fans are the norm. These cards will end up in workstations and they really can't scream incessantly. I suspect that at least the WX 5100 and 4100 won't be significantly louder than the dual slot cards we see in the consumer segment.barleyguy - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
This has not been my experience at all. I own a FirePro V7900, and have used a significant number of the FirePro and Quadro cards (because my former employer generally used "workstation" machines that came with these type of cards), and in my experience they aren't categorically noisier than consumer cards.They do possibly put more heat into the case, as someone noted below. But workstation class machines from companies like Dell and HP generally have really good thermal design, so the net noise of the machine is very low actually.
In short, these are great cards if you design a system around them; either buy them in a well designed machine or buy a case that has good thermal design, and they shouldn't have any noise or thermal issues.
$.02
coder543 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
How does that depend on the clock speeds? If the card is rated to dissipate 150W, it will dissipate 150W. If you have a GPU that can run at 2 terahertz, and it only generates 150W, it will be just fine. If you have a GPU that runs at 2 kilohertz and it somehow generates 150W, it will also be just fine. The clockspeed doesn't matter, only the amount of heat that the card generates.Alexvrb - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
The boost clocks may be higher on consumer cards, particularly aftermarket solutions that make up the majority of sales. Those aftermarket solutions may also blow past the reference TDP.Anyway the biggest issue is that professional often assume lots of case cooling and thus expel FAR more hot air into the case vs an equivalent twin slot desktop consumer card. Although some consumer cards dump more hot air into your case than others, these cards are on a whole different level. Look at the pics. Even removing some connections wouldn't help you enough to match even the most mediocre dual-slot cooling solutions.
That doesn't even factor in overclocking. I for one would have zero desire for a single slot 150W card. Clearly the market demand is low.
Tabalan - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
Overclocking in workstation? Hahaha, good joke. Plus low market demand for pro or semipro GPU? Like almost every workstation out there uses one of such? This is not for gaming, it's for work, to speed up CAD/CAM/CAE programmes. Noone cares if you want this card, managers/directors will order to buy several or even hundreds of these per bigger company and Nvidia/AMD will be completely fine.Alexvrb - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
You took everything I said out of context. If you read the previous comments in this chain, you'd know I was talking about why they don't make 150W consumer cards that are single slot. The OP said:"It's evident that a 150W card doesn't need a dual slot cooling solution thanks to the WX series. It's disappointing to see consumer cards don't follow suit."
So in this chain we were talking about why consumer cards don't use single slot solutions at 150W like workstation cards. To reiterate: Workstations have better chassis cooling than a typical consumer rig and don't overclock. That is why it is acceptable to go with a single slot solution in a workstation but less appealing in a regular desktop card in this thermal range. When I was talking about low demand, I was talking again about consumer cards. If demand was there, you would see single slot cards in the consumer space at this output level. Sorry if that wasn't clear from the context of the conversation.
Anato - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
That 150W 2THz silicon would be size of pinhead and 150W 2kHz silicon would be size of whole card. So Hz matters as its related to silicon area where heat is dissipated, which is related to cooling requirements. Then there is price, you can make better fans and cooling systems with more money.psychobriggsy - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
I'm sure that the $799 price helps with utilising more expensive but more compact cooling solutions.BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Maybe so, but once the cost of developing a single slot cooler is absorbed (which is most certainly the case already as there are single slot cooled cards that are shipping out the door today..and were previously as well) then there's no longer an engineering cost barrier. That leaves us with material and manufacturing costs. Material costs are probably lower since there's less metal on a single slot cooler by weight. Milling, maching, and that sort of thing might play a role too, but probably not as much as you might think if these coolers were in mass production.I think the bottom line is consumer perceptions wouldn't be met for the majority of the target market. That market consists largely of causal tinkerers and less educated buyers that use Walmart logic when they look at PC parts, assuming automatically that a larger, heavier thing must be better at the same job regardless of the actual product performance. (Walmart logic is a term derived from a study supposedly conducted by the aforementioned retail chain that pitted identical desktop computers against one another, one in a smaller and lighter case and the other in a larger and heavier one. Despite performance being identical due to the identical parts, Walmart shoppers reportedly cited the larger and heavier computer as being the faster of the two.) Consequently, GPU manufacturers use dual slot coolers to appease consumers. I think that factor alone rises up above any cost concerns.
MrSpadge - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
You're right in that these smaller coolers are very likely cheaper than bigger dual slot coolers with heat pipes.> Consequently, GPU manufacturers use dual slot coolers to appease consumers.
Yes, but acoustically and not optically. check out reviews of existing single slot coolers for cards at ~75 W. They should be available. The cards will be a bit older, but the design is still pretty much the same. You'll find their acoustics "acceptable" if you want single slot cooler so badly, whereas others would consider a card "clearly audible" unacceptable. Now imagine twice the heat output.. you'd need more than 2 times the fan speed to cool that with the same cooler to the same temperature. Fan noise and power consumption rise worse than quadratically with fan speed (due to turbulent flow). They probably also increase the maximum temperature to ~90°C, which helps with cooling but again increases power consumption.
My quick search found a review of a FirePro W8100:
http://www.tomshardware.de/firepro-w8100-workstati...
It's got a somewhat higher power consumption of 188 W tamed by a double slow blower style cooler. It's almost hitting 90°C and its noise characterized as "under load still somewhat bearable". Now take half of that fan and heat sink away...
xenol - Thursday, November 10, 2016 - link
Because the AIBs need to feel good about themselves for designing an overkill cooling solution.Seriously, did MSI have to make a Gaming X version of the GTX 1060 that's basically the exact same mechanically as the GTX 1080?
bug77 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
"AMD has over the last couple of generations aimed to offer better Windows_performance-per-dollar than NVIDIA in this space..."FTFY, because AMD is still a tough sell on Linux.
WinterCharm - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Yeah. Linux support on AMD cards is abysmal :(coder543 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
I've seen a lot of people getting excited about AMD on Linux recently because of how much better AMDGPU and AMDGPU-PRO are than their predecessors.bug77 - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
They're not when it comes to OpenGL. The OpenGL part has just been ported over, it's just as crappy.TheinsanegamerN - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
So they can sell a full P11 die at 50 watt in single slot, but no OEMs can sell me a 460 in single slot at 75 watt?I smell shenanigans.
tarqsharq - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Cherry picked dies. That's part of the reason that one costs $400 and the gaming variants cost less than a third of that.BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
The price has nothing to do with the card's TDP and the cooler required to keep it from overheating or throttling. If a 150W TDP card like the W7100 can be cooled with a single slot cooler then a 150W cherry-picked GPU or a 150W bottom-of-the-barrel GPU can still be cooled with a single slot cooler.The price may certainly be impacted by the fact that AMD is selecting the best of their GPUs for the Radeon Pro cards, but it doesn't rule out the possibility that a 75W RX 460 could be a single slot card. The state of the consumer GPU industry is abysmal and filled with stupid products like dual slot 75W cards when it's obvious that a single slot cooler can handle tons more heat. I blame marketing departments and clueless consumer electronics customers.
tarqsharq - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
But that's a 50 watt single slot card we're looking at here for the Radeon Pro's. While 25 watts sounds like a small difference that's still a 50% increase from WX4100 to RX460 in terms of TDP.Not to say it's impossible to do, but it would make quite a racket, hence dual slot solutions. I'm more curious as to when we'll see low profile dual slot RX460's for upgrading SFF workstations.
BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Check the article. The table in it lists two cards, the WX 7100 and the W7100, at 130W and 150W and both are in a single slot cooler.tarqsharq - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
Ah yes, I see what you mean now. That is a good point.I am not sure if they just think their gaming market is averse to the blower sound a single slot pushing that much heat or if they just think the market share that needs single slot is too small.
Ej24 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Tell me about it.... I've been waiting for the consumer version of this. They must be waiting to do a larger GPU dump around CES 2017 with Vega and Polaris refreshes all lumped together.sorten - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
"The final specifications put the WX 4100 ahead of that, at 5.7 and 2.4 TFLOPS."The 7100 and 4100?
Adi_Nemesis - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
"final TBPs. The top-tier WX 7100 is rated for 130W, while the WX 7100 becomes"Typos: TBPs - TDPs, 'while the WX 7100' - 'while the WX 5100'.
Please proofread your posts, I have high expectations of Anandtech.
FMinus - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
It's Typical Board Power hence TBP, not Thermal Design Power/TBPFMinus - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Now I did a typo, anyway. Those cards will run a lot less at 100% as your gaming counterparts, thus the typical power draw in a day to day usage is a more useful information here.DanaGoyette - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
I certainly didn't know what "TBP" meant. Please consider defining what the acronym means, the first time you use it in the article.stephenbrooks - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Thermal Besign PowerThreska - Wednesday, November 16, 2016 - link
Wonder how well these new cards would do in VGPU applications?