AMD Radeon Pro Duo dual-GPU space heater to cost $1,499

AMD officially announced its dual-Fiji based video card at yesterday's GDC event. Unlike what most people expected, this card is not named Fury X2, instead it uses the less distinguishing Radeon Pro Duo name. This is because AMD wanted to create a new line that aims not exclusively at enthiusasts but also at developers and (VR) content creators.

The card was long-delayed but AMD claims they did this to coincide the launch of this card with the arrival of the virtual reality ecosystem. The Radeon Pro Duo 8GB card features two full Fiji GUs with 4096 stream processors, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs and 4GB of HBM memory each. Cooling is provided by a watercooling solution from Cooler Master, with a 120mm radiator similar to what's found on the R9 Fury X. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.2a connectors and one HDMI 1.4a port.

Power is provided by a whopping three 8-pin PCIe connectors, resulting in a maximum theoretical power draw of up to 525W. There was no word about the clockspeeds. According to AMD's own benchmark results from 3DMark Fire Strike, the Radeon Pro Duo will be up to 51.5 percent faster than NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan Z in the most optimistic scenarios.

If you're interested in buying the card you'll have to wait until sometime in early Q2 2016, the exact launch date is still unknown. Consumer interest in this card will likely be very low as its $1,499 price tag makes it a very niche product.

?AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) today introduced the world's most powerful platform for virtual reality (VR), capable of both creating and consuming VR content. AMD's Radeon™ Pro Duo with its LiquidVR™ SDK is a platform aimed at most all aspects of VR content creation: from entertainment to education, journalism, medicine and cinema. With an astonishing 16 teraflops of compute performance, AMD offers a complete solution aimed at all aspects of the VR developer lifestyle: developing content more rapidly for tomorrow's killer VR experiences while at work, and playing the latest DirectX® 12 experiences at maximum fidelity while off work.

AMD continues to solve major problems developers face by reducing latency and accelerating the VR pipeline through close collaboration with the content development community and with AMD LiquidVR™ technology. AMD's next step in advancing VR is with the new AMD Radeon™ Pro Duo, an incredibly advanced and powerful dual-GPU board that delivers the horsepower needed by VR designers, content creators, and for VR content consumers.

"More powerful computing platforms are rapidly leading to greater immersive experiences, said Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD. "This is most evident with VR which demands ever higher compute performance with rock solid consistency. Our new AMD Radeon™ Pro Duo with our LiquidVR™ SDK is the world's fastest platform for both content creation and consumption, enabling a world class graphics and VR experience."

AMD Radeon™ Pro Duo is the initial product of the AMD VR Ready Creator line. The AMD Radeon™ Pro Duo with the LiquidVR™ SDK is also the platform of choice for Crytek's VR First™ initiative for nurturing new talent in the field of virtual reality development by powering virtual reality labs in colleges and universities worldwide.

"As a state of the art platform, the AMD Radeon™ Pro Duo with the LiquidVR™ SDK is the perfect choice as the graphics standard for Crytek's VR First™ initiative," said Cevat Yerli, CEO, Crytek. "As a graphics card that bridges the needs of both VR content creators and content consumers, it's extremely fitting hardware to supply to the brightest up-and-coming developers, who will surely shape the future of virtual reality and immersive computing."

The AMD Radeon Pro Duo is planned for availability in early Q2 2016 at an anticipated SEP of $1499 USD.