AMD Shows Off Dual Fiji GPU Powered Graphics Card
This morning, at an event adjacent to E3, AMD officially unveiled its line-up of Radeon R9 300-series graphics cards and disclosed a number of new details regarding its HBM-equipped Fiji GPU at the heart of Radeon R9 Fury branded products. AMD also showed off its funky concept PC, dubbed Quantum, which features a pair of Fiji GPUs running in CrossFire. We’ve got a bunch of pictures and additional details posted right here from this morning’s event if you’d like to check everything out.
During the presentation, AMD’s CEO Lisa Hsu mentioned that a dual-Fiji powered graphics card was in the works as well, but few details were given other than to say the card would be coming later in the year. Considering Fiji’s expected efficiency improvements and power characteristics, and the reduced PCB real-estate necessary due to HBM’s inherent benefits though, a dual-Fiji based card was a safe bet.
A few moments ago, however, at the PC Gaming Show taking place at the Belasco Theater, Lisa Hsu went ahead and made things official and actually showed off a dual-Fiji based graphics card.
The actual name of the product is still being discussed; Radeon R9 Fury X2 or R9 Fury MAXX are possibilities if history is an indicator. And as you can see, the card has the same output configuration as the single-GPU based Fury X—three DP 1.2 ports, along with a single HDMI port. Somewhat surprisingly though, the card also has only two 8-pin supplemental PCI Express power connectors. We’re told AMD is building-in a lot of headroom for overclockers with the Fury X, hence the big water cooler and dual-8-pin connectors, but it can get by with less power and cooling, as evidenced by the Fury Nano.
The dual-Fiji board also appears to pack in a PLX PCI Express bridge, and the PCB is relatively short in comparison to previous dual-GPU powered cards. In fact, it’s no longer than a typical high-end single-GPU powered graphics card.
We’re not sure of its exact frequencies, but it’s safe to assume that a dual-Fiji based graphics card will operate at lower clocks than the water-cooled, single-GPU Fury X, but it should still be a monster in terms of performance anyway. We’re a few days out from having independent Fury X benchmarks completed, but we expect performance to be strong based on what we know of the card and GPU architecture at this point. Packing two Fijis onto a single GPU should result in some serious horsepower and we look forward to learning more in the coming weeks as we inch closer to the card's release.