AMD Radeon Pro Duo Preview: Dual Fiji Unleashed

AMD was able to pack everything onto a PCB in the Radeon Pro Duo that’s not much bigger than many current, high-end GPUs. The Radeon Pro Duo does, however, have a TDP that falls squarely into enthusiast-class territory at 350W. As such, the card requires triple 8-pin supplemental PCI Express power feeds.


To keep the entire assembly cool, AMD strapped a close-loop liquid cooler onto the Radeon Pro Duo, co-developed with CoolerMaster. Considering the fact that the R9 Nano with similar clocks can operate reliably with a single fan and modest sized heatsink, the liquid-cooler on the Radeon Pro Duo may seem like overkill. But AMD put it there for a reason. Not only will the liquid-cooler keep the GPUs operating at lower temperatures, but the fan can be quieter too. The more capable liquid-cooler should allow the Radeon Pro Duo to maintain higher turbo frequencies, for longer periods of time than the Nano as well. But we won’t know that for sure until we test one.


Aesthetically, the Radeon Pro Duo has a similar design language to the Radeon R9 Fury X, though the PCB is somewhat longer. The Radeon Pro Duo features a roughly 270mm long PCB, with a cooling shroud and bracing assembly made of die-cast aluminum with high-quality, black-nickel plating, similar in design to the Fury X. The front, rear and top panels on the card also have the same soft-touch texture, and there’s a lighted ‘Radeon’ logo along the top edge of the card as well. The overall height of the Radeon Pro Duo is right in line with other high-end graphics cards, and disregarding its radiator assembly for a moment, it's designed to fit in a standard dual-slot form factor.


Outputs on the Radeon Pro Duo consist of a trio of full-sized DisplayPorts (v1.2) and a single HDMI output, all four of which can be used simultaneously. With a DP hub connected, however, the Radeon Pro Duo can power up to 6 independent displays in an AMD Eyefinity configuration. We should point out though, that the HDMI port is not HDMI 2.0 compliant – this card uses the same Fiji GPU as the current Fury series and has the same display output limitations. If you want HDMI 2.0 support, it'll have to come by way of a DP-to-HDMI 2.0 adapter.