AMD Releases Dual Fiji Radeon Pro Duo

Back at GDC, AMD first showed off the Radeon Pro Duo at their Capsaicin event. With performance that spanks the R9 295X2 and the Titan X, the dual-Fiji GPU was billed as the fastest single card GPU on the market. To sweeten the deal, AMD threw in extra support, drivers and software compatibility that is usually reserved for the FirePro professional lineup. Today, the Radeon Pro Duo has been officially released as the bridge between consumer and professional sides.

Unlike most Radeon’s, the Pro Duo is meant for game and VR developers to use.The $1499 price tag bears this out as even Nvidia has trouble with that price point. As we know from launch, the card sports 8192 shader processors with 16 TFLOPS of compute and 2x4GB of HBM memory. While the press has been kept away from press samples, some have managed to get their hands on the card and benchmarked it. So far, the card is undoubtedly the fastest one yet.

With the Radeon Pro Duo, AMD is releasing a true GPU that fits between the consumer and professional lineups. This is similar to what Nvidia starting with the Titans but expanded to its logical conclusion. The biggest challenge to the card is how close Polaris and Pascal are. However, with the extra professional support and VR focus, I have no doubt the Radeon Pro Duo will find a market of its own. One can only hope that AMD will continue this trend of releasing Radeon Pro cards, increasingly necessary as the line between consumers and producers blur.