Home Gaming AMD unveils the Radeon Pro Duo, the world’s fastest graphics card

AMD unveils the Radeon Pro Duo, the world’s fastest graphics card

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Nvidia’s Maxwell series of cards are popular for a reason; they strike up a near-perfect balance of price to performance, with the 970 in particular hitting that sweet spot. The problem is that line of cards was released in 2014. AMD has since released its own competitive hardware, with the much faster R9 390 offering a better price to performance.

That may change with the perhaps impending release of Nvidia’s Pascal (even though reports suggest The Green Team’s new cards are to sports GDDR5X instead of HBM). Until then though, AMD has unveiled what they say is the world’s most powerful single card GPU. And they’re very probably right.

Called the AMD Radeon Pro Duo (not to be confused with an outdated, proprietary Sony memory card format), the card duct-tapes two of the company’s Fiji GPU’s together, outfits them with 8GB of vertically-stacked High Bandwidth Memory and stuffs it all in to a single card.

According to AMD, the beast offers 16 TFLOPS of raw performance, offering twice the performance of the NVidia Titan X, and thrice the performance of the R9 390. The card has been made with Virtual Reality in mind.

“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 consumption1, enabling a world class graphics and VR experience.”

It’s not just for ludicrously wealthy gamers, the $1500 card is also for creators – and the chaps at Crytek are rather impressed.

“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 of 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.”

If you’re swimming in cash, Scrooge McDuck style and are looking for the very best in PC graphics hardware, this is it. For now, at least. the card should be available by the end of April.

Last Updated: March 15, 2016

21 Comments

  1. Pariah

    March 15, 2016 at 08:02

    Just fyi, the R9 390 is cheaper than the 970 – while matching performance, or slightly beating it. Perhaps are you referring to the R9 390x?

    Reply

    • Geoffrey Tim

      March 15, 2016 at 08:11

      Nah, referring to international pricing; The RRP of the R9 390 is higher than the GTX 970. AMD stuff is cheaper locally…for reasons.

      Reply

      • Pariah

        March 15, 2016 at 08:14

        Fair enough.

        Reply

      • Frik van der Hewerskink

        March 15, 2016 at 08:17

        I think they just overload the Nvidia prices here in SA because they know there are a lot of Nvidia fans here, Business is Business.

        Reply

        • Pariah

          March 15, 2016 at 08:27

          This sounds rather likely. :/

          Reply

      • chimera_85

        March 15, 2016 at 10:26

        When I bought my PC, AMD wasn’t much cheaper

        Reply

    • HairyEwok

      March 15, 2016 at 08:25

      Nothing is cheap anymore in our currency.

      Reply

      • Pariah

        March 15, 2016 at 08:27

        SHURRUP.

        *Cries*

        Reply

  2. Tiaan Pat

    March 15, 2016 at 08:19

    If I win the lotto one day…. The pc in the pics looks amazing!

    Reply

    • Darren Peach

      March 15, 2016 at 08:46

      Aim higher, Winning the lotto is a loooong shot.

      Reply

    • Greylingad[CNFRMD]

      March 15, 2016 at 09:01

      You mean to tell me that you could get that build for $30s?

      Reply

  3. HairyEwok

    March 15, 2016 at 08:35

    Using CoolerMaster as a reference water cooler and their new fan design….. This AMD card will run cool and silent.

    Reply

  4. Greylingad[CNFRMD]

    March 15, 2016 at 08:35

    Not one, not two, but three, yes, THREE eight pin 150W power connectors for that card…

    http://share.gifyoutube.com/KrzD6p.gif

    Reply

    • HairyEwok

      March 15, 2016 at 08:42

      O.o 450W total… That cant be right holy chimichangas

      Reply

      • Greylingad[CNFRMD]

        March 15, 2016 at 09:00

        This card would be the sole reason for a nuclear reactors’ meltdown, if you plug it into the south African Grid, you’ll rob Nigeria of power…

        Reply

  5. Darren Peach

    March 15, 2016 at 08:42

    Crytek are impressed ? That’s impressive. I am very impressed that Crytek are still around. That’s very impressive.

    Reply

    • GalacticLordCaptainAwesomeness

      March 15, 2016 at 09:13

      Cry..who?

      Reply

      • Darren Peach

        March 15, 2016 at 09:15

        Those really smart German blokes.

        Reply

  6. Darren Peach

    March 15, 2016 at 09:06

    Have you ever fried a GPU cause you did not have sufficient cooling ? Been there, Oblivious to it at the time, Now it all seems so friggen obvious. LOL.

    Reply

  7. chimera_85

    March 15, 2016 at 10:26

    It’s so ugly though

    Reply

    • Deceased

      March 15, 2016 at 10:37

      You shut your trap ./.

      Reply

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