![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , April 26, 2016
- Author:
- Brent Justice
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Share:
AMD Radeon Pro Duo Announcement
AMD is taking the veil off of the "World's Fastest Graphics Card" today known as the AMD Radeon Pro Duo. This $1,499 video card seems to have a rather different focus. We will share with you all the specifications on and pictures of the AMD Radeon R9 Pro Duo. We will talk about what this dual-Fiji GPU video card may have to offer.
Introduction
Today, AMD is announcing the AMD Radeon Pro Duo's full specifications with photographs. If you haven't heard about the AMD Radeon Pro Duo that is because with little fanfare AMD actually released a small press release on this video card on March 14th, 2016 at GDC (Game Developer's Conference.) However, other than the price and target market, not a lot of information was released about the specifics of the video card itself, until now.
The AMD Radeon Pro Duo sporting two Fiji GPUs, that makes this the quote "World's Fastest Graphics Card" according to AMD. Unfortunately, we are not able to test that claim since this is very much a paper announcement only, we do not have review units at this time, and AMD has explained again that it will not be sampling HardOCP a review sample..or any other review sample to the traditional hardware media. All we can do is show you the full official press deck from AMD which goes over the specifications and features and several photographs of the video card provided by AMD.
The reason AMD is not sampling the "World's Fastest Graphics Card" to video card reviewers, is told to us as such. Basically this video card is not for consumers according to AMD but rather only for "VR content developers." So once again AMD PR is trying to shield sites such as HardOCP from getting access to this new video card, much like it did last time with the AMD Nano. At least this time they have a "reason" for not sampling the "World's Fastest Graphics Card" to video card reviewers.
The AMD Radeon Pro Duo is slated for channel availability tomorrow.
At $1,499 this video card is $500 more expensive than NVIDIA's fastest single graphics card the GeForce GTX TITAN X which has an MSRP of $999. At $1,499 this video card is also more expensive than two separate AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video cards in CrossFire. At $649 for two Radeon R9 Fury X in CrossFire equals $1,298 which is less than this video card.
Let's take a look at what AMD is offering and what type of consumer AMD is targeting with this video card.
What is most interesting about the AMD Radeon Pro Duo is the consumer that AMD is targeting this video card for. AMD is targeting this video card to the pro-consumer (or prosumer) audience of content creators with a heavy focus on VR content creation and use. Yet, AMD still wants to maintain that this video card is also capable for the gaming enthusiast who wants the most performance out of a single video card. The press release puts it as such: "AMD's next step in advancing VR is with the new AMD Radeon Pro Duo, an incredibly advanced and powerful dual-GPU board that delivers the horsepower needed by VR designers, content creators, and for VR content consumers."
The important bullet-points here is that this is a dual-GPU video card with 8GB of HBM combined memory. It has 3 DisplayPorts and HDMI (not 2.0) and is targeted as a 350W video card. By comparison the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X is a 275W video card.
Naturally this video card uses an evolution of AMDs closed loop liquid cooling found on the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X to keep both GPUs cool. The body construction will be similar to the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X with a multi-piece aluminum construction with a soft-touch finish. The faceplate is modular for branding purposes. The exoskeleton is nickel plated and there is LED illumination. There is also a dual BIOS switch.
The closed loop liquid cooling is even more evolved and eloquent compared to the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. You can really tell here that AMD has paid close attention to detail on engineering a very capable cooling solution using Cooler Master technology. Not only are the GPUs liquid cooled but also many of the hardware components on the PCB itself are also liquid cooled with custom machined heatplates. The power circuitry at the rear is liquid cooled, the PLX PCIe chip is liquid cooled, and several other components along the top of the video card.
The same sleeved tubing is used as found on the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. The fan is a premium 120mm Nidec fan and a 120mm radiator, same as the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. This video card will require 3x 8-pin PCIe power connectors.
Combined this provides 16 Teraflops of compute performance with 8GB of HBM memory, FireRender Technology and LiquidVR.
As already discussed this video card is targeted for content creators and uses specific AMD technologies such as FireRender technology and LiquidVR. AMD claims up to 1.73x GPU scaling in Autodesk 3DS MAX. GPU scaling is not just important in gaming obviously, but to benefit from it in these Pro apps they must also scale well between two GPUs to have any benefit over a single-GPU. If you want to learn more about AMD FireRender technology you may click the link. If you would like to learn more about AMD LiquidVR you may click the link.
AMD is claiming that this is the: "World's Fastest Graphics Card." We'd love to test that claim, but unfortunately cannot at this time. AMD quoted performance is 1.5x faster than a GeForce GTX TITAN X (single-GPU) video card. Of course, CrossFire scaling efficiency will have a lot to do with that ability.
AMD is also claiming 1.3x faster than the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 launched in April of 2014. That video card was using two Hawaii GPUs (AMD Radeon R9 290X) on board also in a closed loop liquid cooled video card. The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 also had an MSRP of $1,499, same as the new AMD Radeon Pro Duo.
Therefore, for the same price as the Radeon R9 295X2 two years ago the newer card only seems to be 1.3x faster AMD is stating. Just going by that very un-telling quantification of performance it does seem rather small for a video card that is using today's latest and greatest Fiji GPUs found on the Radeon R9 Fury X in a dual-GPU package. You would think it would be a lot faster. If CrossFire doesn't scale well its possible it could perform only as good as the two year old dual-GPU solution. Though the AMD Radeon Pro Duo is doing it at a lot less power, 350W TDP versus 500W TDP on the AMD Radeon R9 295X2.
So here are the official specifications, as you will see these are two full specification Fiji GPU cores. They are 28nm each and contain 4,096 stream processors each with 64 compute units each and 256 texture units each and 64 ROPs each GPU. Each GPU will run at "Up To" 1000MHz same as an AMD Radeon R9 Fury X GPU core. Memory consists of the same 4GB of HBM running at 500MHz on each GPU for 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth per-GPU. These specifications are exactly the same as the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X GPU. This video card is then literally two AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video cards in CrossFire on a single-PCB.
Naturally the video card itself is larger than a Radeon R9 Fury X. This video card measures 270mm in length and 103mm in height. By contrast the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X measured 194mm in length and 102mm in height. That means in length the AMD Radeon Pro Duo gains 3 inches in length from 7.6" to 10.6." The radiator is the same 120mm as the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. The hose length however has increased with the AMD Radeon Pro Duo. The hose length is 540mm versus 400mm on the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. That is an extra 6" of length.
If you are wondering how this compares to the size of the AMD Radeon R9 295X2 the R9 295X2 was 12" long. That means the AMD Radeon R9 Pro Duo is shorter. The fan size and radiator was also 120mm.