You can do it with drop_duplicates
as you wanted
# initialisation
d = pd.DataFrame({'A' : [1,1,2,3,3], 'B' : [2,2,7,4,4], 'C' : [1,4,1,0,8]})
d = d.sort_values("C", ascending=False)
d = d.drop_duplicates(["A","B"])
If it's important to get the same order
d = d.sort_index()