8Pack Tests the Monster AMD Pro Duo GPU.

8 Pack · 12 May 2016 at 11:21

I have a history of using AMD dual GPU cards in my home system for years giving me in many cases great gaming performance. The last one I owned was the 7990 and it served me very well.

Having recently tested the AMD Fury X GPU in both VR and gaming with some good results I was really looking forward to seeing what the Pro Duo had to offer in terms of benchmark scores and performance.

My first impressions after un-boxing the Pro Duo card was it looked great. It comes with a 120mm AIO cooler installed and both a front and back plate which gives it a real feel of quality. It also looks in my view very understated which is great especially in a prominently black system. For a dual GPU card its very compact. Infact its almost the exact same size as the R9 390X. I was wondering upon examination if the 120mm RAD would be enough to keep this dual GPU card cool and quiet through testing and made a mental note to pay attention to the temps and fan profile applied by AMD.

Here are some pics of the card installed in my test rig:

For testing I used my following reference system:
Intel 5960X CPU 4875mhz
Corsair DDR4 2666mhz
ASUS Rampage V Extreme X99 Motherboard
8Pack Superflower PSU 2000w

Software:
Windows 10 64Bit Pro
AMD Crimson 16.3.2
MSI Afterburner

Now for the benchmark scores @ Stock clocks!!:
Fire Strike

Firestrike Xtreme

Firestrike Ultra 4K

Heaven 4.0 1080P

Valley 1080p

Heaven 4K

Valley 4K

I also tried the same benchmarks with some overclocking the boost in scores you can see below.
Fire Strike OC

Firestrike Xtreme OC

Firestrike Ultra

Heaven 4.0 1080P OC

Valley 1080P OC

Heaven 4.0 OC 4K res and one hour run for temp testing.

Valley OC 4K res and one hour run for temp testing.

So as we can see from the benchmarks very solid results all around for this card. The best I have seen of a single PCB solution. As with most dual GPU cards the overclocking was limited but the increase of 50 mhz on the core clock did give a decent benefit at 4K res. One real benefit I can see from this card is it is almost dual card Crossfire performance on a single PCB so offers incredible power for ITX solutions especially as its taking up no more space as a standard GPU from any other line than "AMD Fury". Also the standard 120mm cooler will fit into most cases and offers really great cooling while remaining quiet. This Pro Duo never exceeded 56C after running Valley maxed out at 4K for an hour plus and was not audible above the fans I had running on the CPU radiator which are Sythe GT and known for silent running. This card is obviously very string in VR too.

In summary I would recommend this card to those wanting crazy performance on a single PCB. As such I will be adding this option to both my Meteoroid Custom machine with custom EK blocks. This in its self shows the confidence I have in this card to deliver.

JediFragger · 12 May 2016 at 11:31

Great look at the Pro Duo, thanks 8 :cool:

And these would be sooooooooooo good for a powerful mITX sys

8 Pack · 12 May 2016 at 12:00

Yeah for MITX this is the king!!

Ferrari100 · 12 May 2016 at 12:05

Thanks for that.
It's really nice to see this card performing so great.
Its a little out of my league price wise right now but will keep my eye on it.

Diagro · 12 May 2016 at 12:06

Shame Crossfire sucks in most new games

Ferrari100 · 12 May 2016 at 12:08

Diagro said:
Shame Crossfire sucks in most new games

But great that multi GPU is the way forward and these cards will help in the development of that.

shankly1985 · 12 May 2016 at 12:16

With AMD releasing Xfire to GPUOpen here hoping more devs get working with it. And with DX12 and Vulkan coming fast I do hope MGPU has its place.

If DX12 and Xfire can kick off this thing will be a beast for years to come.

JediFragger · 12 May 2016 at 12:46

shankly1985 said:
With AMD releasing Xfire to GPUOpen here hoping more devs get working with it. And with DX12 and Vulkan coming fast I do hope MGPU has its place.

If DX12 and Xfire can kick off this thing will be a beast for years to come.

Didn't see that they'd done that, good news!!

And yes, this think will be a DX12 monster if Xfire is programmed for :cool:

CEUOTC · 12 May 2016 at 13:27

Nice solid offering from AMD, great results.

Diagro · 12 May 2016 at 13:36

its all well and good.

But with DX12 its up to the game makers to implement it. and they dont want to.

drunkenmaster · 12 May 2016 at 13:38

Kaap are you still going to claim that 8pack agrees with you that the cooling is inadequate on a Pro Duo?

More to the point are you still claiming that 56C in an extended run while overclocked is inadequate cooling?

shankly1985 · 12 May 2016 at 13:39

Diagro said:
its all well and good.

But with DX12 its up to the game makers to implement it. and they dont want to.

Once they have the inner works laid out, I think we will start to see decent MGPU Support.

By inner works I mean game engines built for DX12, atm we getting games with DX12 added on, the time to get MGPU working just isn't worth the time and money right now.

Future titles I feel will start doing well.

Stanners · 12 May 2016 at 13:46

shankly1985 said:
Once they have the inner works laid out, I think we will start to see decent MGPU Support.

By inner works I mean game engines built for DX12, atm we getting games with DX12 added on, the time to get MGPU working just isn't worth the time and money right now.

Future titles I feel will start doing well.

But the option of Xfire Vega will be with us which should destroy this by the time these engines are upon us.

Ayahuasca · 12 May 2016 at 13:52

drunkenmaster said:
Kaap are you still going to claim that 8pack agrees with you that the cooling is inadequate on a Pro Duo?

More to the point are you still claiming that 56C in an extended run while overclocked is inadequate cooling?

Lets not start that game, there's a lot of questions you need to answer yourself regarding the pascal release

This card looks solid but the pricing isn't doing it any favours.

nashathedog · 12 May 2016 at 14:05

Ayahuasca said:
Lets not start that game

+1

Ayahuasca said:
there's a lot of questions you need to answer yourself regarding the pascal release

This card looks solid but the pricing isn't doing it any favours.

Nor's only having 4gb's of memory. Once it hit's 5 or 6 hundred as the 295 did it'll be a great 1440p option if you don't mind the crossfire issues.

Ferrari100 said:
But great that multi GPU is the way forward and these cards will help in the development of that.

Going forward I'm expecting mgpu to become less of a thing because we end up with single gpu's with adequate grunt for 4k & VR etc.

Kaapstad · 12 May 2016 at 14:59

drunkenmaster said:
Kaap are you still going to claim that 8pack agrees with you that the cooling is inadequate on a Pro Duo?

More to the point are you still claiming that 56C in an extended run while overclocked is inadequate cooling?

I would say that a paltry overclock of 50mhz on the core by the worlds no.1 overclocker proves my point for me. What was the overclock again, the same as the Fury X default clocks lol.

This card has nothing in the tank compared to a pair of Fury Xs or even Nanos with waterblocks.

Kaapstad · 12 May 2016 at 15:01

Ayahuasca said:
Lets not start that game, there's a lot of questions you need to answer yourself regarding the pascal release

This card looks solid but the pricing isn't doing it any favours.

I will laugh my socks off if a single 1080 can beat the Duo for a third of the price.

drunkenmaster · 12 May 2016 at 15:26

Kaapstad said:
I would say that a paltry overclock of 50mhz on the core by the worlds no.1 overclocker proves my point for me. What was the overclock again, the same as the Fury X default clocks lol.

This card has nothing in the tank compared to a pair of Fury Xs or even Nanos with waterblocks.

The card ran with low temps, a card running with low temps doesn't have inadequate cooling. A card with inadequate cooling would crash at stock due to excessively high temperatures, inadequate means not enough for the purpose it's used for. It not only maintained low temps stock but overclocked, maybe not far but it absolutely did not overheat.

Once again, claiming if it had better cooling it would do even better isn't relevant to the argument at all with if the cooler provided is adequate or not.

Catanonia · 12 May 2016 at 15:53

Kaapstad said:
I will laugh my socks off if a single 1080 can beat the Duo for a third of the price.

I expect it may. Being one of the 1st to get a 7990 on the forums a few years ago, it was great for a few days and benching but I soon regretted it when the Crossfire and games issue raised its ugly head.

8 Pack · 12 May 2016 at 16:22

For a very high performance ITX system this is a great choice. Although I do agree OC headroom is low its physical size to performance given is very very good. This is what I need in my most compact builds the Asteroid and the Meteoroid.

I had no issues at all with anything I tested as far as driver support and Crossfire goes. I tried some games at home too all fine.