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.

AMD issued a response to a recent report which states that liquid cooling components maker Asetek issued a cease-and-desist to the company, to stop sales of the Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card, which implements a closed-loop liquid-cooling solution made by Cooler Master. In its response, AMD argues that the jury in the Asetek vs. CMI (Cooler Master) case did not mention the cooling solution of the Radeon R9 Fury X specifically, as infringing Asetek-held patents. The statement reads:

"We are aware that Asetek has sued Cooler Master. While we defer to Cooler Master regarding the details of the litigation, we understand that the jury in that case did not find that the Cooler Master heat sink currently used with the Radeon Fury X infringed any of Asetek's patents."

While AMD is right in pointing out that the original judgement does not name the R9 Fury X, or its cooling solution as an infringing product; there's no word on whether AMD will stop sales of the card. From the looks of it, AMD has no plans to stop sales of its flagship graphics product, and appears to have convincing legal arguments up its sleeves to continue selling the card, in the near future.

The bets are off, AMD's latest flagship graphics card will indeed get a fancy name, and it will be named Radeon R9 Fury X. Korean tech-site HardwareBattle leaked a product flyer with the SKU name, and its catchphrase "revolutionary, inside out." Based on the 28 nm "Fiji" silicon, the R9 Fury X is expected to feature 4,096 stream processors, 256 TMUs, 128 ROPs, and a 4096-bit wide HBM memory interface, holding 4 GB of memory.

The reference-design Fury X will come with an AIO cooling solution, likely designed by Asetek, featuring a Cooler Master made fan, ventilating its 120 x 120 mm radiator. Just as the Radeon R9 290X did away with D-Sub (VGA) support (even with dongles), Fiji does away with the DVI connector. You still get three DisplayPort 1.2a ports, and a single HDMI 2.0 connector. The card has been pictured on the web featuring two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.