AMD Radeon Pro Duo Preview: Dual Fiji Unleashed

Name: Radeon Pro Duo
Brand: Radeon

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 09:01 AM EDT

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.

The Full Cooling Setup On The AMD Radeon Pro Duo

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.

The AMD Radeon Pro Duo PCB - Dual Fijis With A PLX PCIe Switch

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.

Tags: AMD, Radeon, VR, (nyse:amd), fiji, radeon pro duo, radeon nano

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com