Sunday, February 28th 2016
AMD Radeon Fury X2 Reference Air Cooled?
AMD, which has been timing its upcoming dual-GPU "Fiji" graphics card to launch sometime this year, may have demoed a production version of the card in one of its launch partners, Falcon Northwest's, Tiki high-end gaming desktop, as a "VR developer box." AMD's Roy Taylor, in a recent tweet, captions a picture of this dev box as being "the world's best DirectX 12 VR developer box," leading the press to speculate that it's running the company's dual-GPU "Fiji" card.
A close look at AMD's VR dev box, through its windowed graphics card compartment, reveals an air-cooled AMD reference graphics card, which VideoCardz' trigonometry pins as being shorter than a Radeon R9 390X reference board. It could be a reference R9 380X, but then a reference dual-GPU "Fiji" PCB is roughly of the same length, and a R9 380X wouldn't earn the title of being the "world's best" from a senior AMD exec while there are faster AMD cards, such as the R9 Fury. The ability of the full-spec "Fiji" silicon to cope well with a rather simple air-cooler in the R9 Nano fans even more speculation that a dual-GPU "Fiji" board could make do with a powerful air-channel cooler.
Sources:
VideoCardz, TweakTown
A close look at AMD's VR dev box, through its windowed graphics card compartment, reveals an air-cooled AMD reference graphics card, which VideoCardz' trigonometry pins as being shorter than a Radeon R9 390X reference board. It could be a reference R9 380X, but then a reference dual-GPU "Fiji" PCB is roughly of the same length, and a R9 380X wouldn't earn the title of being the "world's best" from a senior AMD exec while there are faster AMD cards, such as the R9 Fury. The ability of the full-spec "Fiji" silicon to cope well with a rather simple air-cooler in the R9 Nano fans even more speculation that a dual-GPU "Fiji" board could make do with a powerful air-channel cooler.
39 Comments on AMD Radeon Fury X2 Reference Air Cooled?
Kind of like this www.evga.com/articles/00935/EVGA-GeForce-GTX-TITAN-X-HYBRID/
But if it's the Fury X2, it's strictly throttled and would run at 700-800 MHz maximum, if on air only. If it's a hybrid, it would run on maximum of 1000 or 1050 MHz, but then again, only 2x 8 pin plugs? That's little, compared to a Fury X with only 1 Fiji GPU that also has 2x 8 pin plugs then, which makes it somewhat unlikely again.
Also don't forget, AMD moved away from that single radial fan construction for dual GPU graphics cards with the 7990. And the 6990 had the fan in the middle, not at the end of the card (because that way both GPUs get fresh air, not only the right one). Thats also a reason why I don't think it's the Fury X2, because it would be a odd move to go back to the cooler construction of HD 5970 all those years ago, basically a flawed/old design compared to the design of the 6990 / 7990 / 295X2.
The last idea I have for it, would be that it's a prototype design of the Fury X2 and the final consumer version will be something with more fans or hybrid air/water, so that the graphics card is better cooled and faster.
PS. "Best" doesn't mean "the fastest". Also another reason why it's most likely not the Fury X2. I think "best" does refer to the size and style of this PC, combined with the hardware in it, not especially the performance of it.
732 core speed * (2 * 4096 cores) * 2 ops/clock = 12 TFLOPS The Fury Nano gets by OK with a single 8-pin, so further downclocking and two 8-pin power should be more than enough. True that. A central fan would seem to be a more sensible cooling arrangement. The Falcon Northwest Tiki VR promo doesn't show any air intake that would benefit a conventional blower shroud so it is a little difficult to see why the design would be chosen given (as you say) that air cooling will mean less thermal headroom if only because one of the GPUs would appear to be getting "secondhand" air coming off the first GPU and the power circuitry. Possibly more than one cooling solution will be available. A conventional blower shroud might be advantageous for a chassis with through-and-through cooling. AMD could release this as an OEM/reference design, and let AIB's have more leeway with cooling options.
GTX Titan X is 375W TDP
R9 Fury x2 is also estimated at 350-375W
Could work with an air cooler? They seem to be sacrificing core clock for that purpose.
Titan Z was really underclocked and 3 slots. Air cooling wasn't the best choice for that card.
I believe this is just a place holder video card and they are just advertising it as being the dual GPU Fiji saying it will be there eventually (Or its a temporary cooler). They probably are hiding their actual dual GPU Fiji card until they are more ready to release information on it. The R9 295X2 gave the middle finger to the power specifications before so I would not find it hard to believe they would be unwilling to do it again.
The binned chip is probably how and why its feasible.
When is the Titan X2 coming out?
Titan - single gpu
Titan Z - dual Titan (underclocked)
Titan X - single gpu
I suppose the only letter left is 'Y'.
And that would some up everyone's thoughts.
Titan 'Why?'