With the rise of virtual reality and the official announcement of several VR headsets, graphics card manufacturers know they must answer this new demand. What AMD has put on the table is simply staggering. Its new Radeon Pro Duo targets both consumers and VR content developers, a detail made evident not just by its price, but also by its impressive specifications.
Built for the Virtual Reality Era
Virtual reality arrived like a rock star: with enormous potential and a long list of demands. The mere fact that OculusVR bundles computers with the Oculus Rift says it all, and anyone who wants to dive headfirst into this “first generation” of VR will have to follow the rules. Another aspect to consider is the pressure it puts on the hardware market. Everyone wants to get on the VR train, and the ticket comes in the usual form: a solid product up to the task. Once again, graphics cards become critical components for processing content, but these days reproduction alone is not enough; they must also help with creation. That said, let’s make room for the brand-new AMD Radeon Pro Duo.
The announcement came through a special event at the 2016 GDC, which wraps up this coming Friday. Unfortunately, AMD didn’t share as many images of the card as we’d have liked, but we have a very good idea of its specifications. The Radeon Pro Duo is essentially two Radeon R9 Fury X cards on the same PCB. The RAM is divided into two 4 GB HBM blocks per GPU, which also translates to two 4096-bit buses. Its Boost clock is 1000 MHz, slightly below the 1050 MHz of a Fury X, but the rest of the numbers (texture units, Stream processors, etc.) are basically doubled. The total transistor count combining both chips reaches 17.8 billion, leading to special considerations regarding cooling (liquid, no doubt) and power draw.
AMD uses the term “Typical Board Power” or TBP to indicate average consumption, and for the Radeon Pro Duo, it’s 350 watts. However, a trained eye will spot three 8-pin PCI Express power connectors on the card. The maximum power allowed by the PCIe specification is 525 watts, a number AMD flirted with on the R9 295X2, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume the Radeon Pro Duo will draw similar power under load. The official price for the Radeon Pro Duo is $1,499, and according to AMD, it will debut early in the second quarter, likely April.
