AMD postpones Radeon R9 “Gemini” with dual graphics chips Fiji

During the summer, AMD promised to round up the Fiji family with one last member in the autumn of 2015. Now the year is coming to an end and the company’s flagship with dual graphics processors is not yet visible, something that of course raises a lot of questions.

The product schedule for Fiji Gemini had initially been aligned with consumer HMD availability, which had been scheduled for Q415 back in June. Due to some delays in overall VR ecosystem readiness, HMDs are now expected to be available to consumers by early Q216. To ensure the optimal VR experience, we’re adjusting the Fiji Gemini launch schedule to better align with the market.

In a statement to French Hardware.fr, AMD takes the magazine by the mouth and confirms that “Fiji Gemini” has been postponed to the second quarter of 2016. The delay of a full six months is attributed to the fact that the graphics card was originally intended to be released with the first VR headsets. June this year were scheduled for the end of 2015.

Worth noting is that AMD misses one or maybe two of the big launches for PC. The Oculus Rift will be launched in the first quarter of 2016 and followed up in April, ie the first month of the second quarter, by HTC Vive. It is therefore possible that the delay is due to something completely different.

An alternative that is close at hand is the water cooler giant Asetek’s call for a halt in sales of the Radeon R9 Fury X. This is based on the graphics card using a water cooler based on the Seidon 120M from Cooler Master, which lost a patent dispute in the US and had its products stopped selling.

Given AMD’s already close collaboration with Cooler Master, it is possible that they would also make the cooling solution for the Radeon R9 Gemini, but that AMD has now taken the safe before the unsafe and gone back to the desktop to find an alternative cooling solution for its compact and probably power-hungry flagships.