AMD publicizes its dual-GPU monster, the Radeon pro Duo

For the past few weeks, rumors have swirled that AMD might soon unveil a dual-GPU product based totally on its Fiji structure and geared toward the excessive-quit fanatic marketplace. AMD firstly deliberate to announce the card last fall, but then not on time that statement; with 14nm playing cards coming this summer time it wasn’t clean if AMD could launch a twin GPU at all. That worry has been laid to relaxation at AMD’s Capsaicin occasion nowadays — the twin-GPU Radeon pro Duo is coming to marketplace at the eye-watering fee of $1,499.

The Radeon pro Duo is a twin-GPU water-cooled card with up to 16TFLOPS of unmarried-precision performance. AMD isn’t giving different hardware specifications in the mean time, but we are able to make some predictions primarily based on what we realize approximately the Fury X. RAM is probable 8GB (divided into 2x 4GB) since that’s a restrict of first-era excessive Bandwidth memory (HBM) and not anything we’ve heard from AMD or its partners suggests it found a way round that problem. The 16TFLOPS overall performance that AMD claims for the mixed card, in the meantime, is lower than the 8.6TFLOPS of a unmarried Fury X.

The most in all likelihood strategy to this conundrum is that AMD downclocked the Fiji GPU slightly to enhance its energy intake and warmth. As we explored in our Nano evaluate, AMD’s Fiji GPU consumes appreciably extra strength to hit its 1050MHz clock — reducing the clock had a giant impact on the GPU’s energy intake with most effective a modest performance hit. high-stop twin GPUs are always elaborate to chill, and we’ve visible Nvidia should lower clock speeds on its highest-stop playing cards as well — the twin-GPU Titan Z turned into clocked lower than Titan Black to hit its thermal and power intake objectives.

we will replace this tale if AMD gives more statistics on the GPU’s clock speeds, RAM loadout, or different functions.

focused on builders

because the call “Radeon seasoned” implies, this in reality isn’t a GPU advertised to fanatics. at the same time as it have to offer the very best-quit twin photos answer currently to be had, $1,499 is a excessive price, even for the enthusiast marketplace. the one argument to make in choose of the Radeon seasoned in place of a couple of Fury X’s is that maximum cases aren’t designed to mount  GPU radiator blocks.

AMD may nevertheless release a twin GPU card that’s explicitly aimed toward the enthusiast marketplace, however this GPU is targeting VR builders. twin-GPU assist for VR is some thing AMD has been eager to push with its LiquidVR technology, and it’s hoping that more developers conform to help the software.

one of the blessings of LiquidVR is that it may use one pix card according to eye, significantly cutting rendering put off as compared to rendering every eye sequentially. The overall performance gain of the use of multi-GPUs for VR is doubtlessly big, though the demos I’ve visible of AMD’s generation have been custom-built and optimized in place of launch-equipped titles.

while it’s apparent that this GPU is intended for a relatively small marketplace, it’s pleasant to see AMD taking a larger effort to have interaction the developer network and provide the hardware required to take benefit of its software initiatives.