This Black Friday bargain on Amazon lets you get your mitts on AMD's top-performing graphics card, the Radeon RX 9070 XT Reaper from PowerColor, for just $599.99. This matches the lowest pricing offered for this card, and is also the original MSRP marked for the 9070 XT at launch. However, that price increased to $799.99 when the card was actually released.

• Grab this deal at Amazon

The Radeon RX 9070 XT is based on AMD’s Navi 48 GPU, featuring 64 RDNA 4 compute units, a 2.97 GHz boost clock, and 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit interface. With a Total Board Power (TBP) of 304W, the card delivers a strong balance between performance and efficiency. On paper, the RX 9070 XT offers up to 48.7 TFLOPS of FP32 compute performance, marking a significant generational leap.

We gave the RX 9070 XT 4.5 stars in our review for its price-to-performance ratio, now that you can get the card for its original MSRP, the GPU represents good value for money, with excellent 1440p performance, and decent 4K performance at a much more palatable price compared to the competition.

In our review of the Radeon RX 9070 XT, our benchmarking tests found AMD's flagship graphics card to be an amazing performer for the price compared to the competition. Its main disadvantages were the initial availability and inflated prices. Now that we have more stock, prices have begun to drop from their astronomical highs. The 9070 XT is a great proposition for an upgrade or a new PC build.

You can see from our performance chart below that across our suite of gaming benchmark tests, the RX 9070 XT outperforms the RTX 5070, and is on par with Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti. The 9070 XT is also cheaper than the RTX 5070 Ti, but you do lose ground on the Nvidia card in terms of ray-traced performance and DLSS 4 integration.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best Black Friday PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

It appears that memory will not be the only differentiator between AMD's RX 9060 XT 16GB and 8GB GPUs. According to VideoCardz, PowerColor is preparing certain RX 9060 XT models, where the 16GB variant features slightly higher clock speeds than its 8GB counterpart. While we checked models from other AIBs, most have not yet listed their frequencies, so we will likely need to wait until the embargo lifts to confirm wider adoption of this strategy.

AMD introduced the RX 9060 XT family of budget GPUs at Computex last month. Much like the RTX 5060 Ti family, AMD has segmented these GPUs into 8GB ($299) and 16GB ($349) models. Both GPUs are powered by the same Navi 48 core, with 2,048 Stream Processors or 32 Compute Units, with an advertised boost clock of 3.13 GHz. The GPUs are set to launch on June 5, with the review embargo likely lifting a day earlier, as typically seen.

Based on data secured by VideoCardz, PowerColor is preparing seven RX 9060 XT models across its Reaper and Hellhound designations. Specifically, the Reaper family shows the RX 9060 XT 16GB model with a 3.23 GHz boost clock and a 2.62 GHz game clock, compared to the 8GB model's 3.13 GHz boost and 2.53 GHz game clock. This 2-3% frequency delta, though minor, indicates that Reaper-based 8GB models will stick to reference clocks, rather than receiving a factory-overclocked boost like their 16GB siblings.

PowerColor is rumored to be working on a new series of GPUs codenamed "Reaper" for AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 8000 GPUs leveraging the RDNA 4 architecture, per Videocardz. The Reaper series likely targets the budget/mainstream segment and should slot in with PowerColor's current offerings rather than replace any existing lineup.

PowerColor is one of AMD's longest and most loyal AIB partners, with over a decade of experience as a licensed producer of Radeon cards. The brand employs several GPU series to diversify its offerings: Liquid Devil, Red Devil, Hellhound, Red Dragon, and Fighter, ranked from most premium to budget-oriented. PowerColor decided not to release any Red Dragon models for the Radeon RX 7000 series. - but that lineup is expected to return with AMD's next-gen Radeon RX 8000 GPUs in January.

The new Reaper series likely serves to cater to the mainstream budget market, as it is expected to launch with the RX 8800 and RX 8600 models alongside their respective XT counterparts for a total of four SKUs, per the source. It is also claimed that we should see Red Dragon and Hellhound RX 8000 variants at CES 2025. This does put a question mark on PowerColor's flagship Devil series. Since RDNA 4 is primarily aimed at the budget segment, AMD has opted out of the high-end market so we likely will not see a Devil-badged RX 8800 with exotic cooling and extra perks anytime soon, but that's just speculation.

Speaking of RDNA 4, AMD has promised better Ray Tracing performance and enhanced AI capabilities; with the possibility of an AI-driven FSR 4. Battlemage has been quite a pleasant surprise since the B580 lands significant blows against the RX 7600 and RTX 4060, even in the RT department - while being cheaper.

A lot hinges on RDNA 4 if AMD wishes to turn heads towards Radeon and boost its market share. While we don't want to be the bearer of bad news, rumor has it that Navi-44 (Radeon RX 8600) will be limited to just 8GB of VRAM. Of course, AMD could launch an RX 8600 XT with 16GB (in clamshell configuration) but expect a higher price tag as well. We could go on and on regarding leaks and speculation but it is best to wait for the official unveil next month at CES 2025.

Amazon US is currently selling the PowerColor Hellhound Spectral White AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT for $620, an all-time low for Black Friday.

AMD Radeon's 7000 series has better ray-tracing performance than the previous 6000 series. The PowerColor Hellhound Spectral White RX 7900 XT 20GB GDRR6 has two clock speed modes: Boost Clock speeds at 2,500 MHz in OC mode and 2,395 MHz in Silent Mode. The default Game Clock speeds are 2,130 MHz in OC mode and 2,022 MHz in silent mode.

To keep things running, the Hellhound Spectral White has a 10+3+1 phase VRM with DrMOS and a 2+1 phase for the VRAM. PowerColor uses dual ball bearings in this graphic card's fans that turn on when it reaches 60℃ and shut down below 50℃.

The card has a fourteen-layer PCB with a dual-BIOS chip, triple ring-fan blade design, and a metal backplate—all in white, including the LED lights. The combination of dense PCBs and the backplate should help reduce any GPU sag nuisances. Both the BIOS chip and the LED lights have a dedicated switch on the graphic card for easy switching. The GPU has plenty of video outputs for a multi-monitor setup.

Based on this graphics card's Amazon price history, this has been the lowest to date. This Black Friday deal reduces the price down to 25%, bringing the listed price from $829.99. The last time we had a good deal on the RX 7900 XT was a month ago.

The difference is minimal compared to the previous deal, and this may be the best it can get on an AMD Radeon RX 7900 20GB for a while. If you're looking for a good Black Friday Deal on an all-white build- as a new or an upgrade- but want something good enough for 1440p gaming- this will likely be one of the options you'll shortlist.

PowerColor (via harukaze5719) is developing a new technology called "Edge AI" that enables AMD Radeon RX graphics cards to use NPUs (Neural Processing Units) to reduce power consumption.

In the vendor's demonstration, Cyberpunk 2077's power consumption decreased from 263.2W to 205.3W, representing a 22% power savings. It's noticeably better than AMD's power-saving mode, which came in at 18.5%. Numbers for Final Fantasy XV were also available, with power-saving results matching within a percentage point.

PowerColor describes that its Edge AI technology works through the communication of the graphics card and PowerColor's own GUI, which works together to bridge the gap to the NPU. According to IT Media, the testbench at Computex with the NPU powered on had it externally connected to the GPU, leaving us to wonder whether similar NPU power saving could be achieved via an NPU on the CPU, such as the Ryzen 8000 series. PowerColor also claimed in press material that Edge AI On increases performance slightly. At the same time, tech reviewers on-site confirmed a 10% dip in FPS between the more efficient NPU test computer and the standard GPU.

NPUs seem to be here to stay, and their potential viability in helping gaming performance would be a massive win for the tech on desktops. NPUs have become a standard offering on high-end laptops since 2023 when Intel Core Ultra, or Meteor Lake, was first released. NPUs make perfect sense for mobile applications; AI computations are extremely processor-heavy, so built-in AI accelerators fit in on laptops, which need high efficiency to conserve battery life. The desktop market has less need for NPUs; however, they typically run dedicated graphics cards that can pump out AI calculations with more power but less efficiency than NPUs.

AMD first brought NPUs to desktops with its Ryzen 8000G series, but it has no plans to bring back NPUs in its freshly announced Ryzen 9000 series. Depending on how PowerColor's continued research on Edge AI goes, it's plausible that we could see PowerColor AMD graphics cards released this year with an NPU built-in, or perhaps we may see a resurgence of desktop CPU NPUs that can be leveraged for gaming efficiency in the same way. We don't know when or where we'll next see Edge AI spring up in PowerColor's or AMD's stable.

A new EEC listing from PowerColor features the RX 7600 XT model name, including versions with both 10GB and 12GB memory capacities. (Hat tip to @harukaze5719 on X.) The Eurasian Economic Commission listing also includes an assortment of RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT models, with the former now ranking among the best graphics cards.

PowerColor unveiled four RX 7600 XT models in total, with two featuring 10GB capacities and the other two featuring 12GB. The model names are RX7600XT 12G-L/OC, RX7600XT 12G-F, RX7600XT 10G-L/OC, and RX7600XT 10G-F. Assuming these models are actually legitimate, it means AMD is working on an RX 7600 XT that will have more VRAM than the RX 7600, and possibly the same memory capacity as the RX 7700 XT (12GB).

Do note that EEC listings are often more placeholders than actual specs, however, so it's entirely possible the RX 7600 XT won't even materialize. From what we've seen of previous filings, it appears manufacturers can publish any name they want to the EEU/EEC, even if it's a made-up name based on educated guesses. This allows names of future graphics card models to be processed earlier if the manufacturer guesses correctly. Plus, there are good reasons for AMD to have such a card, like the $200 price gap between the RX 7600 and the RX 7700 XT.

AMD has not yet announced an RX 7600 XT, and recently SVP Scott Herkelman even said that the RDNA 3 lineup was "now complete." But there's always room for another intermediate GPU, if yields and market conditions allow for it, and in that same article Scott noted that it was possible AMD might develop more graphics cards based on its current Navi 31, 32, and 33 graphics dies — beyond the RX 7800 XT and 7700 XT. We're not sure if he was talking specifically about the RX 7600 XT, but it's as good of a hint as any.

If AMD goes through with an RX 7600 XT, a 12GB seems far more likely than a 10GB variant. The problem with a 10GB capacity is that it doesn't divide well into an RDNA 3 GPU featuring a Navi 32 die. A Navi 32 GPU features up to eight GDDR6 chips split up between four MCDs (Memory Cache Dies), with each MCD controlling two GDDR6 ICs. To get to 10GB, that would mean disabling one full MCD and half of a second MCD, which could create idiosyncrasies due to the non-uniform L3 cache sizes. 12GB spread across three fully utilized MCDs would make far more sense for a potential RX 7600 XT.

That means a hypothetical RX 7600 XT would look very similar to a RX 7700 XT, featuring the same memory capacity and bus width but packing fewer RDNA 3 Compute Units. There's a big gap between the RX 7600's 32 CUs and the RX 7700 XT's 54 CUs, leaving plenty of room for a potential RX 7600 XT with somewhere around 42–46 CUs. Navi 32 is also the only sensible option, since the vanilla RX 7600 already comes with a fully enabled Navi 33 die.

While we don't have any rumored specs, AMD has plenty of options for how to configure and price an intermediate RX 7600 XT. Price it around the $350 mark, give it 12GB of VRAM, maybe even clock the VRAM a bit lower than the RX 7700 XT if that would reduce pricing. Then use 42 CUs, give or take, with a more modest clock than the 7700 XT, and we could potentially have an RX 6750 XT replacement with better efficiency and performance. Will we actually get such a card? Only time will tell.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT has yet to launch officially. However, according to PowerColor's latest misstep, the upcoming RDNA 3 graphics card has what it takes to be one of the best graphics cards. The vendor (via All The Watts!) has accidentally listed the Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT ahead of AMD's announcement.

The information on the Radeon RX 7800 XT comes from one of AMD's trusted partners. The product page could be a placeholder, so throw a pinch of salt over the specifications. In fact, PowerColor has placed a small disclaimer at the bottom of the product page.

"The entire information provided herein are for reference only. PowerColor reserves the right to modify or revise the content at anytime without prior notice," wrote the vendor on the Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT's product page.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT reportedly features 3,840 stream processors, equal to 60 RDNA 3 compute units, and an equal number of ray accelerators. The silicon inside the Radeon RX 7800 XT remains to be confirmed. However, early speculation is that the Radeon RX 7800 series would leverage a new Navi 32 silicon. Unfortunately, the PowerColor leak doesn't corroborate or dispel the speculation.

Assuming that PowerColor's specifications are accurate, the Radeon RX 7800 XT may feature 16% fewer stream processors than the existing Radeon RX 6800 XT. However, the former is on the latest RDNA 3 microarchitecture that offers improved performance. Comparing to the widely available Radeon RX 7900 XT, the Radeon RX 7800 XT has 25% less stream processors.

Radeon RX 7800 XT Specifications

The Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT (RX 7800 XT 16G-E/OC) operates with a 2,210 MHz game clock and a 2,520 MHz boost clock in the default standard and silent mode. In OC mode, the game and boost clock speeds scale up to 2,255 MHz and 2,565 MHz, respectively. It doesn't make much sense to compare clock speeds now since the Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT comes with a factory overclock. As it looks now, custom Radeon RX 7800 XT clocks just as well as the custom Radeon RX 7900 XT that are on the market.

PowerColor's listing reveals that the Radeon RX 7800 XT has a similar memory subsystem as the Radeon RX 7900 GRE that recently came out of the oven. The 16GB of GDDR6 memory checks in at 18 Gbps with a 256-bit bus. As a result, the Radeon RX 7800 XT sports a maximum memory bandwidth of 576 GB/s, the same as the Radeon RX 7900 GRE.

The Radeon RX 7800 XT is almost identical to the Radeon RX 6800 XT in terms of the memory design. The biggest difference maker is the faster 18 Gbps memory, giving the Radeon RX 7800 XT a 12.5% higher memory bandwidth over the current Radeon RX 6800 XT.

Surprisingly, PowerColor didn't share the TDP for the Radeon RX 7800 XT. The graphics card depends on two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, with PowerColor, recommending an 800W power supply unit as the minimum. Based on the power connector layout, the Radeon RX 7800 XT probably has a TDP between 250W and 300W. The previous Radeon RX 6800 XT (300W) also has dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The display outputs, on the other hand, mostly stayed the same. At least from PowerColor, the Radeon RX 7800 XT features three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port. The caveat is that you can only use two DisplayPort 2.1 outputs simultaneously.

In the company's quarterly earnings call, AMD recently confirmed that "new enthusiast-class" graphics cards based on RDNA 3 will launch in Q3. That means the Radeon RX 7800 XT should hit the retail market between August and September. Given PowerColor's slipup, we wouldn't be surprised if the new RDNA 3 landed this month.

When PowerColor introduced its Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX with a factory-installed waterblock, it said the graphics card guarantees "ultimate" overclockability, but did not elaborate. This week renowned overclocker Roman "der8auer" Hartung finally took this card for a test drive. It turns out it can overclock very well: the GPU can be pushed to 3.25 GHz - 3.39 GHz, according to his YouTube video (via VideoCardz). The board pulled 650W of power in this case. 

With an up to 2,680 GHz boost clock with Unleashed BIOS mode activated, PowerColor's Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX comes with noticeably higher GPU frequency compared to AMD's reference design right out of the box, which makes it one of the best graphics cards. 

In this mode, the graphics board pulls around 420W of power, and the graphics processor can be pushed to 2.95 GHz – 3.0 GHz. While 3.0 GHz is an impressive clock for a GPU, it is still possible to go higher by increasing the voltage of the chip. 

Because it is impossible to increase the voltage of AMD's RDNA 3-based GPUs and optimize their voltage curves using software like More Power Tool, Roman "der8auer" Hartung had to use the ElmorLabs EVC2SE device that enables manual voltage control.  

The default voltage of AMD's Navi 31 GPU on the Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card is 1.030V. Once GPU voltage is increased to 1.050V, it can push itself to 3.05 GHz, but its power consumption will increase to 500W. 

By increasing voltages even higher (say, to 1.142V), der8auer has pushed the GPU to 3.25 GHz in the 3DMark TimeSpy Extreme test and to 3.39 GHz in light 3D rendering workloads. With a massively increased GPU voltage and at rather extreme frequencies, power consumption of the board from slots increased to 650W, which means that it sucked around 700W from the slot and from auxiliary PCIe power connectors. 

While such a colossal overclock brought about 28% of extra performance compared to AMD's reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX, it did so at an 83% higher power, which clearly indicates that the GPU was not designed to handle such frequencies. Yet, from a pure overclocking result point of view, 3.25 GHz – 3.38 GHz is an impressive achievement since AMD's boost clock for its Navi 31 GPU is 2.50 GHz.

PowerColor has introduced its Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card equipped with a waterblock co-designed with EK. The board is designed for systems equipped with a custom liquid cooling system and promises to guarantee "ultimate overclockability."

PowerColor's Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX 24GB uses the company's in-house designed printed circuit board (PCB) that features 14 layers, including a 2-oz power layer, and is equipped with a sophisticated voltage regulating module as well as three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors that can deliver up to 450W of power to the card. In addition, the board has two BIOS settings supporting enhanced performance: OC setting with more balanced energy consumption and Unleash mode supporting the highest clocks and higher total board power.

One of the interesting peculiarities of the Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX is that its water block is a single slot wide, so it is significantly more compact than graphics cards equipped with double-wide or triple-wide air cooling systems. As an added bonus, the waterblock has addressable RGB LEDs. Meanwhile, the board bundles with EKWB's EK-Loop Leak Tester Flex and a small pump to safely test possible leaks of bespoke liquid cooling systems.  

Liquid Devil is the brand that PowerColor uses to market its top-of-the-range graphics cards. For now, PowerColor does not disclose the specifications of its Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX, and we can only guess its GPU clocks. However, it is safe to say that the board will be one of the fastest AMD Navi 31-based products on the market, making it one of the best graphics cards.  

What remains to be seen is how much PowerColor plans to charge for its range-topping Liquid Devil Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. For obvious reasons, the product will cost more than a typical Radeon RX 7900 XTX as it uses a sophisticated PCB and, possibly, cherry-picked GPUs with enhanced overclocking potential. Yet, the exact price of the graphics adapter is unclear for now.

Nvidia was recently engulfed in the melting 16-pin connector fiasco, but now things are heating up for AMD. Reports and user feedback have shown that the Radeon RX 7900 XTX can get sizzling hot, with hotspots hitting 110 degrees Celsius. As a result, PowerColor, one of AMD’s notable partners, has issued a call for user reports on Reddit so it can send the details to AMD for further investigation.

Thus far, the 110C hotspot phenomenon appears only to affect MBA (Made By AMD) or reference Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards, whether you purchased them directly from AMD or one of the chipmaker’s partners. There haven’t been any reports of custom designs afflicted with the issue, suggesting a potential design flaw with the reference cooler. However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves: The million-dollar question is whether the 110 degrees Celsius junction temperature is within specification for Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards. We’ve reached out to AMD for confirmation; however, the chipmaker hasn’t gotten back to us yet, probably due to the holidays.

There’s a precedent of Radeon graphics cards reaching 110C, which aligns with AMD’s specifications. If you don’t remember, the normal junction temperature for the Radeon RX 5700-series graphics cards, such as the Radeon RX 5700 XT, was 110C.

“Instead of setting a conservative, ‘worst case’ throttling temperature for the entire die, the Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs will continue opportunistically and aggressively ramp clocks until any of the many available sensors hits the ‘hotspot’ or ‘Junction’ temperature of 110 degrees Celsius. Operating at up to 110C Junction Temperature during typical gaming usage is expected and within spec,” stated AMD in a blog post three years ago.

Besides the junction temperature, it’s essential to look at the edge temperature to determine whether there is an underlying problem. The edge temperature corresponds to the temperature measured at the edge of the silicon. So it’s an excellent metric to reveal the condition of the mounting pressure. A low value means there’s good mounting pressure. “110 hotspot is within spec if your card is getting up to 90° GPU edge temp... If 110 is hit at 70 edge, yeah that is not ideal,” commented an AMD representative on Reddit.

AMD has already said that its GPU team is investigating the problem. It’ll be essential to evaluate if the high temperatures are the culprit for the thermal throttling, forcing the graphics card to fall below the rated clock speeds. Otherwise, it’s normal behavior. Remember that AMD only guarantees the base clock speeds for its graphics cards.

Meanwhile, owners are reportedly RMAing or returning their Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. The feedback has been a mixed bag, though. In a Reddit thread, some said AMD had accepted their RMA, while others claimed the chipmaker rejected the RMA and refunds.

Some user reports say repasting solves the problem on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but it’s not a 100% fix. There is a theory that the cooler’s cold plate is uneven. That would explain why the thermal interface material (TIM) looks thicker in the middle than on the edge of the die. One Redditor suggested that a graphite thermal pad could solve the problem. That’s interesting because AMD opted to use thermal pads in previous generations of Radeon graphics cards, so it’s unknown why the chipmaker went for TIM on RDNA 3. Either way, we don’t recommend you tear off your cooler since it would likely void your warranty. The only option right now is to wait for AMD’s guidance or just attempt to RMA the graphics card, though the latter would be a fruitless endeavor if the card proves to be operating as expected.

PowerColor has announced two upcoming Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT graphics cards featuring the Hellhound name. These new cards will feature beefy triple fan cooling solutions and appear to slot just underneath PowerColor's Red Devil lineup of flagship cards.

Based on one of @momomo_us' Tweets, it appears PowerColor will be using different-sized coolers for the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT. As seen below, the image shows two cards, with the black-colored backplate card featuring a noticeably shorter length compared to the larger card and a thickness reduction from three slots to just two slots. We cannot confirm that this smaller card will be a dual-slot card overall, but it ensures the card will be thinner than the larger card.

If this tweet is accurate, the smaller card will inevitably be the Radeon RX 7900 XT, and the larger model the RX 7900 XTX. Going with this assumption, PowerColor has only released details of the RX 7900 XTX version according to its latest blog post, featuring a massive triple-slot triple-fan cooler design with a matte black shroud and backplate. Momo's tweet shows the card as a blue tint, but that could be an issue from the photo itself and isn't the card's actual color.

LED-lit fans with a see-through fan blade design accompany the card. Unfortunately, the colors aren't reportedly RGB, but you will get the option between a Cyan blue color and a new amethyst purple color, which is new for this generation.

For cooling, the 7900 XTX HellHound features a set of 8 x 6 nickel-plated copper heatpipes connected to a 91 x 89 x 2.6mm copper plate, providing heat extraction for the GPU die and memory chips. Attached to the copper heatpipes is a highly unobstructed heatsink clearly visible across all sides of the card. PowerColor has added a rear slit to the backplate to improve airflow, allowing air to pass through the card itself.

PowerColor has also upgraded the fan with a new 9-blade design that reportedly coolers more than 3C better than previous generations.

For power delivery, PowerColor is integrating a 14-Layer PCB into the RX 7900 XTX HellHound (this is confirmed by PowerColor and isn't based on @momomo_us' Tweet). This incredibly dense PCB supports a 20-phase power delivery system, which PowerColor says decreases signal loss during transmission, and helps support higher-end GPUs with high power consumption.

AMD's RX 7900 XTX and XT will be arriving on December 13th, so we should know the full spec sheet of these cards by then or soon afterward.

AMD and its partners plan to begin sales of the company's flagship Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards on December 13. Based on a media report, most RDNA 3 products will be reference designs on that date. Still, some custom-built models will also make it to the market.

Earlier this week, a post over Board Channel forums suggested that only reference design Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards will be available at the launch date on December 13. Custom designs from add-in-board (AIB) makers will only hit the market one or two weeks later, according to the post, which means that such cards might miss the lucrative holiday season in the U.S. and Europe. But this is not entirely correct.

As it turns out, custom-designed Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards from at least two manufacturers will be available starting December 13, according to information obtained by ComputerBase.de. Meanwhile, the website stresses that some other manufacturers admitted that they will only offer reference design models on December 13 and will follow up with custom boards later.

Enough Motivation, Not Enough Time

The Radeon RX 7900-series launch schedule was tight for makers of graphics cards, based on information from ComputerBase, so they did not have enough time to develop custom versions of the Radeon RX 7900 XT as well as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

It should be noted that all the information we have about the status of custom-designed Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards comes from third parties, so we cannot draw an objective conclusion here. But we can speculate for a bit.

Makers of graphics cards develop custom versions of their products to differentiate from their rivals in terms of performance and features and sell their parts at a higher-than-MSRP price to maximize profitability. Some designs are created to lower costs, but this is hardly the case with the first wave of AMD's Radeon RX 7900-series products that will retail for $899 - $999 or higher.

To build performance-enhanced high-end graphics boards, companies need quite some time to experiment with GPUs and memory in their possession, their printed circuit board (PCB) configuration, and cooling system performance to ensure that the final products can operate at desired clocks stably for an extended amount of time without failures.

Since AMD's RDNA 3-based Navi 31 graphics processor features two separate clock domains (for stream processors and everything else), there are many things for graphics card makers to experiment with, which takes time. In addition, since there are many moving parts to play with, AIB makers may opt to expand their high-end lineups with more SKUs to have enough time to test hardware in different configurations but, at the same time, roll out some SKUs ahead of the others. This is perhaps why Asus might be prepping as many as eight ROG Strix Radeon RX 7900-series (XT and XTX models) graphics boards.

Three AIB Makers

Meanwhile, it looks like initially, Asus will release TUF Gaming-branded Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX boards. Those cards will feature an enhanced-PCB design with three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors to provide them with some additional overclocking potential and therefore enable higher performance for those who do not want to settle with reference designs. Yet, Asus positions its TUF Gaming-badged products below its ROG Strix boards, so the latter is poised to offer higher performance.

In addition to Asus, only two AIB manufacturers — PowerColor and Sapphire — have teased their custom Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards. Meanwhile, the board makers committed to releasing AMD's Radeon RX 7900 products, including ASRock, Biostar, Gigabyte, MSI, Vastarmor, XFX, and Yeston.

PowerColor demonstrated elements of its top-of-the-range Radeon RX 7900-series Red Devil offering and Radeon RX 7900-series Hellhound product that will sit below the mighty range-topping board. Given that the Hellhound-branded card has only two eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors, we would suggest that this device is not aimed at overclockers who tend to squeeze every last bit of performance from their graphics cards.

By contrast, Sapphire showed design elements of its Nitro-series Radeon RX 7900 graphics board. The AIB features a modern and cleanly designed cooling system. Still, one has to remember that Sapphire's Nitro family usually comprises moderately factory-overclocked products that are better than reference designs, but this is about it. Sapphire's range-topping offerings belong to the company's Toxic lineup. They are equipped with exotic cooling systems, come with industry-leading clocks, and offer tangibly higher performance than reference designs. Yet, Sapphire has not even teased a Toxic Radeon RX 7900-series product.

Some Thoughts

So far, we have seen only one announcement of custom Radeon RX 7900-series graphics cards: the TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX from Asus. Considering that the company was the first to reveal its custom RDNA 3 boards, we expect it to start selling them sooner rather than later. We do not know whether Asus intends to make them available on December 13.

PowerColor and Sapphire have only teased their upcoming Radeon RX 7900-series products so far, but neither company has made any announcements. We are not going to speculate when we could expect PowerColor's Red Devil/Hellhound Radeon RX 7900-series or Sapphire's Nitro Radeon RX 7900-series to arrive. Still, we can presume that the companies are optimistic about their launch date and believe it is time for a tease.

As for other makers, they still have 19 days to show their custom designs and if they are ready to ship those boards, ship them by air to markets they want to address. Meanwhile, since AIB makers reportedly complain about the tight schedule for custom Radeon RX 7900-series boards, we would instead assume that it will take a little longer for custom Radeon RX 7900-series cards to hit the market.

PowerColor Japan has published the first picture of what is believed to be the company's upcoming Hellhound Radeon RX 7900-series graphics card. The board will complement PowerColor's Red Devil-branded Radeon RX 7900 boards that the company teased a while ago, though the products will likely be positioned differently. 

There are three things that immediately stand out in the photo of PowerColor's new Hellhound add-in board (AIB). There's a very sophisticated three slot cooling system with two radiators and multiple heat pipes, two eight-pin PCIe auxiliary power connectors, and blue LEDs (or RGB LEDs set to blue). 

Huge coolers will likely be common for AMD's Radeon RX 7900-based graphics cards, so we are not surprised to see the one here. Meanwhile, considering the fact that PowerColor equipped its Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6950 XT graphics cards with three eight-pin PCIe power connectors, it is a bit unexpected to see a Hellhound Radeon RX 7900-series graphics card with two eight-pin connectors. There is, though, a possible explanation for this.

"A Hellhound is born with fur as tough as armor and claws as sharp as a razor," the tweet by PowerColor reads. "Its eyes burn in the dark and track prey with precision. It was once a fighting dog owned by a hero. But your bravery did not go unnoticed by the Red Devil, and it gave you an opportunity to become Hell's Keeper." 

Typically, PowerColor uses Red Devil and Liquid Devil brands for its range-topping graphics cards, whereas the Hellhound brand is reserved for performance mainstream boards as well as for products aimed at modders looking for stylish AIBs. Without any doubt, the PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7900-series card looks impressive. But to distinguish between its top-of-the-range Devil-branded graphics cards and Hellhound-branded offerings, PowerColor may have limited the number of power connectors on the latter. This will of course limit the power budget and overclocking potential of the product, but that should also ensure that its cooling system is enough for this part. 

What remains to be seen is whether PowerColor will offer Radeon RX 7900 XTX under its Hellhound brand, or will it sell the top-of-the-range card solely under Red Devil and Liquid Devil trademarks and limit the Hellhound brand for lesser Radeon RX 7900 XT offerings.

AMD plans to start selling its reference AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XTX products, which are set to compete in the ranks of the best graphics cards for gaming, on December 13. At this point, it's unclear whether all of AMD's AIB partners will be able to roll out their custom Radeon RX 7900-series products by that date. But considering companies like Asus and PowerColor are already testing their new Radeons, we will likely see at least some custom offerings by mid-December.

We are a day ahead of AMD’s unveiling of its next generation graphics processors based on the RDNA 3 architecture, but the company’s partners are eager to start their marketing campaigns for the new family of graphics boards --or at least PowerColor is. The company has already tweeted an image of what is very likely one of its upcoming Devil-badged cards, belonging to the Radeon RX 7000-series family, which is due to be unveiled tomorrow. 

"The Devil will morph into many shapes," a Tweet by PowerColor reads. "Beware!" 

Those who retweet the tweet might win a PowerColor Devil graphics card. 

Now, formally, PowerColor does not state that its next-generation Devil graphics card belongs to the AMD Radeon RX 7000 family. Yet there are several factors that imply that the company is talking about RDNA 3, which is set to be formally unveiled tomorrow, on November 3. 

First up, PowerColor has been a loyal partner of AMD for over a decade now. Secondly, the Devil logotype is red, which is AMD's Radeon color. Thirdly, AMD is indeed set to reveal its RDNA 3-based GPUs tomorrow. So it does not make much sense for PowerColor to talk about anything else today. Therefore, the add-in-board (AIB) maker is clearly talking about AMD's Radeon RX 7000 family, which is set to compete in the ranks of the best graphics cards for gaming. 

In addition to timing, there are other things that are worth pointing out about PowerColor's tweets today. The element of the graphics card (which is presumably PowerColor's Devil logotype on the backplate of the board) differs from the one the company uses now. Whether or not this means a new design for the AIB is something that remains to be seen. Also, PowerColor says that the winner will get their prize by December 31, 2022. This may indicate that AMD is set to start sales of its Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards this calendar year. Given they have an event planned for early in November to talk about the cards, we would hope that to be the case.

Previously it was reported based on data from unofficial sources that AMD intends to start sales of its flagship and next-to-flagship graphics cards in the second half of December, which would corroborate with PowerColor's plans to ship its upcoming Devil boards in 2022. 

The AMD Radeon RX 6400 should be the last 'new' GPU we'll see before the next-generation architectures slated to launch before the end of the year. Officially launched as an OEM-only product at the start of the year, AMD and its partners later decided to sell the cards on the retail market. It's not going to make our list of the best graphics cards, but if your primary requirement is a GPU that doesn't need a 6-pin or 8-pin power connector or a modern GPU that can be found in a half-height form factor, this is it. Still, we wanted to include it in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, and it does fill a potential market niche.

We purchased this PowerColor ITX card at retail because no one wanted to send us a review sample. It sounds a bit like Intel's Arc A380 right now, though at least you can find the RX 6400 in the US market. We opted for the dual-slot model, mostly because that should represent the maximum level of performance you're likely to see from the GPU, whereas a half-height card might end up running a bit slower.

The primary competition for the RX 6400 consists of Nvidia's older GTX 1650 Super and GTX 1650, along with AMD's previous-gen RX 5500 XT and the slightly more expensive RX 6500 XT. Here's how the specifications stack up. 

It's not a good look to have a new GPU competing against the three-year-old GTX 1650, but that's effectively where things stand. Nvidia hasn't really tried to launch a budget card in recent years, though there are plenty of indications that we'll soon see a new GeForce GTX 1630. That seems silly, as we already have the GTX 1650, and Nvidia should just make more of those instead of cutting features even more to create a 1630, but I digress.

One item of business we need to discuss is the out-of-box experience with the RX 6400, specifically the card's completely locked-down nature. Our understanding is that all overclocking options for the RX 6400 are disabled, and at least in AMD's drivers as well as MSI Afterburner, there's no ability to change any of the clocks or other elements. That probably means we won't see factory overclocked cards, which isn't the case for the other GPUs.

The RX 6400's biggest selling points will be size and power requirements. It's one of the few current options if you want a single-slot card that will fit into a slim form factor PC. Theoretically, you can put the RX 6400 into any PC that has a PCIe x16 slot, and it should work. However, we need to mention that performance will be lower with a PCIe 3.0 system, thanks to the x4 PCIe link width. (We measured about 8–10% lower performance on average when testing the RX 6500 XT with PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0.)

Current graphics card prices are often hitting MSRPs, sometimes lower. For example, the RX 6400 can be purchased at AMD's official $160 starting price, while the RX 6500 XT can be had for just $15 more — but it needs a 6-pin power connector. AMD's older RX 5500 XT 4GB can only be found as a used option these days, and the same generally goes for the GTX 1650 Super and GTX 1650, though new cards can sometimes be had for $200. There were a few GTX 1650 cards that didn't need a 6-pin adapter, but they're hard to come by and tend to perform a bit worse than the typical 6-pin models. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

As you'd expect, the packaging and features on the PowerColor RX 6400 ITX are about as budget as budget can get. You get a brown cardboard box with a few specs and other details, and inside, the card itself is wrapped in an anti-static bag. There's no padding or protection for the card, though ours arrived without incident and works fine.

As you'd expect, the RX 6400 is a featherweight compared to typical cards like the PowerColor RX 6650 XT. It tips the scale at just 351g, making it one of the lightest cards we've had in-house in recent years — and half-height models would be even lighter. That also means the heatsink isn't likely a very high-quality model, and we saw slightly higher thermals as a result, though nothing we'd really worry about.

Dimensions for the card are 165x125x40mm, basically as long as your PCIe x16 slot, as tall as the expansion slot, and nothing more, though it is a dual-slot cooler. We bought the dual-slot card just because we wanted the theoretically best possible experience with the RX 6400. A half-height card with a tiny 40-50mm fan should probably perform just as well, given the low TBP, but we wanted to be sure.

This is a barebones card with no lighting of any form, perfectly fit to go inside cases that don't have windows or try to show off the PC hardware. The fan is a 90mm model with 11 blades, a 4-pin connector, and three mounting screws.

As noted earlier, there's no factory overclock or any ability for end-users to overclock the RX 6400, at least for now. So the PowerColor card in that sense is a fully reference configuration, with a 53W TBP (typical board power) and a 2321 MHz boost clock.

The 4GB GDDR6 comes clocked at 16Gbps, and the 64-bit interface means the GPU only has 128 GB/s of bandwidth, though AMD lists the 16MB Infinity Cache bandwidth at 208 GB/s. That cache bandwidth will help a lot more at lower settings that are less likely to exceed the cache capacity, as we saw with the RX 6500 XT. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Our 2022 GPU testbed consists of a Core i9-12900K processor, MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 WiFi motherboard, and DDR4-3600 memory (with XMP enabled). We're running Windows 11 to ensure we get the most out of Alder Lake, and we're running the latest game patches and drivers for this testing — 22.5.2 in the case of the RX 6400, and we retested the RX 6500 XT as well for good measure.

Our gaming tests consist of a "standard" suite of eight games without ray tracing enabled, and a separate "ray tracing" suite of six games that all use multiple RT effects. We're not expecting much in terms of DXR performance, but we tested at 1080p medium and ultra in our standard suite, and 1080p medium in the DirectX Raytracing (DXR) suite. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

The RX 6400 makes the most sense at entry-level settings, so we'll start with 1080p medium testing. You might be able to push some games to high or even ultra settings, but the GPU already struggled with a few of the games in our current test suite at medium.

The RX 6400 averaged 56 fps across the eight games we tested, just 3% faster than the old GTX 1650 GDDR5. It was also 21-23% slower than the RX 6500 XT, GTX 1650 Super, and RX 5500 XT 4GB, which were basically in a three-way tie at around 71–72 fps.

In the individual game charts, there's plenty of variability between the games. Total War: Warhammer 3 was by far the worst result, where the RX 6400 only managed 26 fps and came in 23% behind the GTX 1650. The best result was in Red Dead Redemption 2, where it was 15% faster than the 1650.

The main attraction is the card's size and power requirement, and the RX 6500 XT right now can be had for just $15 more (a 9% increase in GPU cost) while delivering 25–30% more performance. Yes, it needs a 6-pin power connector, but the vast majority of PCs should be able to manage that.

Cranking the settings to maximum presents a lot of difficulty for the RX 6400, even at 1080p. Multiple games exceed its 4GB VRAM, and the texture thrashing that occurs — where the GPU needs to pull data over the PCIe interface — gets hampered by the x4 connection. Basically, more demanding games will often fail to break 30 fps, and you'll generally want to use lower settings.

As a result of the above, the RX 6400 trailed the GTX 1650 by 11% at 1080p ultra. The RX 6500 XT also struggled, for the same reasons, so the performance gap was relatively consistent and remained at 24%. The RX 6400 was also 29% slower than the RX 5500 XT 4GB and GTX 1650 Super, and 40% slower than the RX 5500 XT 8GB that has enough VRAM to generally avoid memory thrashing.

Our ray tracing test suite really exists to test higher-end graphics cards, but since the RX 6400 has the requisite DirectX 12 Ultimate feature set, we gave it a shot. As with the 6500 XT, Control failed to run in DXR mode because it needs 6GB or more VRAM, but the rest of the games at least ran… or at least wobbled along drunkenly. And again, you don't need to enable ray tracing to enjoy a game, certainly not on a GPU like the RX 6400.

The RX 6500 XT maintained a 25% lead over the RX 6400, just as with our standard test suite. The DXR requirement means that most of the other competing GPUs are completely unable to run these tests, so the next closest GPU is the RTX 3050, which is a huge step up in performance. It was already over twice as fast at 1080p ultra without DXR, and now it's triple the performance — for a bit less than double the cost.

Don't feel too bad about the performance on tap. As bad as this might look compared to dedicated graphics cards, the RX 6400 should still deliver superior performance to any current integrated graphics solution. It has the same number of compute units (CUs) as the Ryzen 7 6800U, with a higher power limit and dedicated VRAM, plus 16MB of Infinity Cache. It will also be faster than the GPU in Apple's new M2, based on specs and features. Just remember to keep your expectations and settings in check. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

For our power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing, we use Powenetics testing hardware and software. We capture in-line GPU power consumption by collecting data while looping Metro Exodus — this time at 1080p medium instead of our normal 1440p ultra, due to the VRAM limitations. We also test with the FurMark stress test at 1600x900. Our power testing PC uses an open testbed, as that's required for all the extra wires and riser card, and it's the same Core i9-9900K that we've used for the past several years.

Both FurMark and Metro Exodus basically flatline at a steady 54W power draw with the RX 6400. That's technically 1W higher than the official board power rating, but it's definitely nothing to worry about. If you're wondering, the GPU power draw (not including VRAM or the rest of the board) peaked at around 43W.

Despite using about half the power of the RX 6500 XT, clock speeds on the RX 6400 were still pretty high, averaging 2272 MHz in Metro Exodus. That dropped to 1990 MHz in FurMark, putting a much higher load on the GPU cores. You can imagine that even at a lower power limit of 15W, clock speeds and performance would still remain decent, which is basically what you get from integrated graphics solutions like the Ryzen 7 6800U.

Temperatures peaked at around 70C in both our test scenarios, with fan speeds generally holding steady at around 1250–1300 RPMs. That's not very high on the fan speed, and the fan wasn't loud by any metric, but it was still slightly audible above ambient room levels.

We measured noise levels at 10cm using an SPL (sound pressure level) meter aimed at the center of the fan. That helps to minimize the impact of the CPU cooling fans, and the noise floor (with the CPU fans running) of our test environment and equipment was <33 dB(A). The PowerColor RX 6400 reached the same ~1250 RPM after 15 minutes of gaming, with a stable noise level of just 37.3 dB(A). Just by way of reference, simply powering up my normal gaming PC six feet away from the testbed brought the room's ambient noise level up to 42 dB. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

AMD's Radeon RX 6400 is geared for a very specific niche. If you happen to fall into that niche, go ahead and add 1.5 stars to our score and pick one up. For most people, however, it's a relatively anemic card that basically matches the performance of Nvidia's three-year-old GTX 1650 for roughly the same price. That's not progress, though a lot of the blame lies with the pandemic, cryptocurrencies, and the supply chain issues of the past two years.

The target market is anyone needing a GPU that doesn't require any form of external power, and people that need a half-height GPU for a slim PC. Such users do get a mostly modern GPU, but as we noted in our RX 6500 XT review, AMD arguably cut features a bit too much with Navi 24.

The biggest issue is the outdated video engine. Yes, you can watch YouTube and NetFlix on the RX 6400, as it still supports H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC) decoding. What you can't do is any form of accelerated video encoding. That probably won't matter for a lot of people, but any budget gamers thinking about doing a Twitch stream will be disappointed — especially since you get both H.264 and H.265 encoding support with Nvidia's older GTX 1650. HTPC users that want to encode live streams for later viewing will also be disappointed.

If you do end up buying an RX 6400, note that AMD's Raise the Game Bundle is now live, and you'll get a free copy of the Saints Row reboot. No, you don't get the choice of one of the other games, sorry.

AMD revealed that the Navi 24 GPU at the heart of the Radeon RX 6400 (and RX 6500 XT) was originally intended for laptops. As such, some of the missing features like video encoding support can be easily explained. On a laptop, the integrated graphics — either from AMD or Intel — would have handled video encoding and decoding. But the crazy GPU market of the past year caused AMD to rethink the product line and ultimately release dedicated GPUs for desktops.

The lack of video encoding hardware doesn't make this a terrible card, but it's one more factor to consider. We'd prefer Nvidia's GTX 1650 Super, which you can often find used for about the same price, or AMD's previous-gen RX 5500 XT 4GB. And while we would normally have concerns with buying a used graphics card, neither of those were likely to be used as mining GPUs, so they should be okay. But those GPUs need a 6-pin power connector and aren't available in half-height form factors.

The last two years of GPU and component prices were especially awful, but thankfully those days appear to be over. The RX 6400 at least makes some progress in providing an entry-level GPU that doesn't suck horribly (I'm looking at you, GT 1030 and RX 550), but we used to see $90–$120 budget GPUs, and now the best we can do is $160. AMD's RDNA 2 architecture manages to perform quite well for a chip that only has a 64-bit memory interface, but it's still not a step up in performance from the prior generation of hardware.

We wouldn't hold out hope for a better alternative from AMD or Nvidia, either. Nvidia's GTX 1630 might challenge the RX 6400 on price, but it will be slower than the existing GTX 1650, which is already basically tied with the RX 6400. The real potential savior for the budget market may come in the form of Intel's Arc A380. Specs and performance look like they could compete with the GTX 1650, if Intel can get its drivers up to snuff, and Intel will include one of the best video codecs around with hardware AV1 encoding and decoding support alongside H.264/H.265. Once the cards hit the US market, which should happen in the next few months, we'll see what Arc has to offer budget gamers.

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

PowerColor has quietly added Radeon RX 6700 non-XT graphics cards into its lineup of products (and no matter how quiet the listing was, @momomo_us discovered it earlier today). The board is aimed at mid-range gaming systems, is based on a cut-down Navi 22 XL graphics processor and features 10GB of GDDR6 and a 160-bit memory bus.  

PowerColor's Fighter Radeon RX 6700 closely resembles the company's Fighter Radeon RX 6700 XT, which is not surprising as both use the same Navi 22 GPU. However, in the case of the new board, that GPU comes in a Navi 22 XL flavor and features 2304 stream processors and 80MB of Infinity Cache. In addition, the GPU is clocked at 2330 MHz – 2495 MHz, slightly above AMD's recommendations for regular and boost frequencies, which will yield slightly higher performance. The new board also comes with 10GB of memory connected to the GPU using a 160-bit interface for a 320GB/s peak memory bandwidth. 

Rated for up to 175W thermal graphics power, the card is equipped with eight- and six-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors. Meanwhile, the board is cooled down using a dual-fan dual-slot cooler featuring multiple thick heat pipes. The card measures 228x109x32 mm, so it will not fit into a Mini-ITX system, but almost any decent ATX case for gaming systems will have enough space inside for this device.

Like other Navi 22-based graphic boards, PowerColor's Fighter Radeon RX 6700 XT has three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1 display output.  

Arguably one of the most interesting aspects about AMD's Radeon RX 6700 non-XT boards is their price. The RX 6700 (11.3 FP32 TFLOPS) model sits between the RX 6700 XT with 2560 stream processors (13.2 FP32 TFLOPS) and 12GB of memory priced at $479 and the RX 6650 XT with 2048 stream processors (10.8 FP32 TFLOPS) with 8GB of memory priced at $399. On paper, these three products are very close in terms of their performance, but our own Jarred Walton will uncover the actual performance gaps between these models in due time. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how much AMD and PowerColor will charge for a Radeon RX 6700 board. 

PowerColor has not announced when its Fighter Radeon RX 6700 10GB board will be available, but given that it is already listed on its website, expect it on store shelves rather sooner than later.

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT rounds out our trifecta of refreshed RX 6000-series cards, joining the Radeon RX 6950 XT and Radeon RX 6750 XT. So does the RX 6650 XT rank among the best graphics cards, and where does it land in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy? Let's find out.

Our test card comes courtesy of PowerColor, which sent its RX 6650 XT Hellhound Spectral White. There's also a 'normal' Hellhound in the more traditional black/gray motif. Like the other 6x50 XT third-party cards we've looked at, the Hellhound comes with a factory overclock. Here's the specs sheet for the PowerColor model alongside the reference designs from other competing GPUs. 

Thanks to the factory overclock and the color scheme, the PowerColor RX 6650 XT costs a bit more than the reference model. The GPU boost clock is 54 MHz higher and 100 MHz higher than the RX 6600 XT, but that's really about it. However, we don't have a reference RX 6600 XT, and in our gaming test, the XFX RX 6600 XT we used averaged higher GPU clocks than the RX 6650 XT. But the higher clocked GDDR6 memory does come into play, at least.

Unlike the 6950 XT and 6750 XT, which will coexist alongside the 6900 XT and 6700 XT, AMD has stated that it's phasing out the RX 6600 XT and replacing it with the RX 6650 XT. Right now, there's about a $25 price premium for the new GPU, which is basically in line with AMD's official MSRP, except you can find both the 6600 XT and 6650 XT for less than the recommended price.

Graphics card pricing and availability have also improved a lot since 2021, and you can find links to online resellers for the above GPUs. The AMD cards are selling at or below MSRP, while the competing Nvidia GPUs are still marked up by 20–30%. Prices continue to drop, however, and we wouldn't be surprised to see most if not all current-generation GPUs selling below their official MSRPs this fall — just in time for new cards to arrive.

We should also see RDNA 3 GPUs from AMD by the end of the year, but we expect both those and Nvidia's upcoming Ada GPUs to target gaming enthusiasts and extreme performance first. Unfortunately, that means we likely won't see an RX 7600 XT or RTX 4060 (or whatever they end up being called) until some time in 2023.

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

If you're looking for a change of pace from the traditional black, silver, and/or gray color schemes that have graced graphics cards since time immemorial, you might enjoy the Spectral White motif on PowerColor's card. It won't make your PC run any faster, but it could go nicely with a white case. However, fans of RGB lighting will be disappointed as the card has static white LEDs on the fans. Sorry, no technicolor light shows from this GPU.

The PowerColor RX 6650 XT is relatively lightweight compared to higher-end graphics cards. It measures 220x132x45mm and only weighs 740g. That's still heavier than the Sapphire RX 6600 XT Pulse but nowhere near the size of the triple-fan ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming. There will, of course, be other RX 6650 XT designs with triple fans, but the official TBP of 180W means we shouldn't need massive coolers — unless you want a quieter running card.

Speaking of which, there's a switch to toggle between OC mode and Silent mode on the Hellhound. Normally, such switches apply different clock speeds and other settings, but as far as we can tell from testing, this mostly impacts the temperature and fan speed targets. Nevertheless, performance remained effectively unchanged, so if you don't mind a slightly hotter running GPU, give the silent mode a shot.

While the white color scheme might be aesthetically pleasing to some users, the Hellhound design is otherwise pretty boxy, with right angles on most edges and no other sculpting of the shroud. That's not necessarily bad, just a bit simplistic compared to something like an Asus ROG Strix or MSI Gaming X design. Also, note that the fans don't have an integrated rim, so they'll generally have to spin faster to provide the same cooling performance as better fans.

There's a reflective rim surrounding the fans, which serves the same goal of directing airflow. The mirror finish looks pretty cool and helps spread the LED lighting. PowerColor also gets a few bonus points for orienting the heatsink fins perpendicular to the IO plate, which means at least some of the heat from the card will exit out the back of the case — probably not much, but it's better than nothing.

A single 8-pin PEG connector provides power for the card, and a metal backplate protects surface-mounted devices. As we've seen with so many other cards, you get the typical three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and a single HDMI 2.1 connection, which should suffice for most people. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Our 2022 GPU testbed consists of a Core i9-12900K processor, MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 WiFi motherboard, and DDR4-3600 memory (with XMP enabled). We're running Windows 11 to ensure we get the most out of Alder Lake, and we're running the latest game patches and drivers for this testing — 22.5.2 in the case of the RX 6650 XT, which is supposed to boost DirectX 11 gaming performance. (We've retested the RX 6950 XT with the latest drivers, which netted a mere 2–3% increase overall.)

Our gaming tests consist of a "standard" suite of eight games without ray tracing enabled, and a separate "ray tracing" suite of six games that all use multiple RT effects. As this is a midrange card (even if it's at more of a high-end price now, thanks inflation), we've tested at 1080p medium and ultra, and 1440p ultra in our standard suite. We limited our DirectX Raytracing (DXR) suite to testing at 1080p medium and ultra.

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

The RX 6650 XT generally targets 1080p gaming, though it can often handle more than that, depending on the game. At 1080p ultra, the RX 6650 XT Hellhound averaged 86 fps, and was above 60 fps in every game except Total War: Warhammer 3. That's a good start, though comparing the 6650 XT with other GPUs puts a damper on things.

Overall, the factory overclocked 6650 XT was only 2% faster than the factory overclocked 6600 XT. Other card models might perform a bit better than the Hellhound, especially if they raise the power limit beyond 180W, but there's little difference between the old and new AMD GPUs. AMD's newcomer also outperformed the RTX 3060 by 15%, but the RTX 3060 Ti was 13% faster overall.

There's no real need to drop settings down to medium, at least with our current gaming suite, but it's interesting to see how performance changes. Our standard suite averaged 150 fps, and while the RX 6650 XT was only 1% faster than the RX 6600 XT, its standing relative to Nvidia's GPUs improved slightly. It was 19% faster than the RTX 3060, and this time the RTX 3060 Ti was only 6% faster.

That's thanks to the 32MB Infinity Cache, which has higher hit rates as the amount of unique data requests decreases, boosting the effective bandwidth. Conversely, running at a higher resolution and settings will reduce the cache's efficacy, which happens at 1440p ultra.

The RX 6650 XT still averaged just a hair more than 60 fps at 1440p ultra, but half of the games fell below that mark. The gap between the 6650 XT and the 6600 XT remained the same 2% as at 1080p ultra, but the lead over the RTX 3060 shrank to 9%, while the RTX 3060 Ti increased its lead to 22%.

As long as you're not using ray tracing, 1440p gaming is still viable on the RX 6650 XT. Games with FSR 2.0 will also be quite playable, not that there are many of those right now, though more are coming. You could even play some games at 4K ultra, provided you're okay with mostly targeting 30 fps instead of 60 fps. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Flipping over to our ray tracing test suite, the RX 6650 XT doesn't look quite so compelling. It was 2% faster than the outgoing 6600 XT at 1080p medium, but the RTX 3060 — even without DLSS — was 25% faster overall, and the RTX 3060 Ti was 67% faster. The 6650 XT managed a playable 44 fps on average, though Cyberpunk 2077 still dropped below that mark, and Metro Exodus Enhanced was the only game to break 60 fps.

We've said this before, and it bears repeating: Ray tracing in games definitely isn't required. It can be a nice extra, but most gamers will take smoother frame rates over the improved visuals. Ray tracing only really starts to matter when you have excess GPU performance, like with an RTX 3090 Ti or similar. Even then, you're still often faced with running at lower resolutions to get smooth performance.

1080p ultra with ray tracing ended up being too much for the RX 6650 XT in most cases, at least for demanding RT effects — which is what we prefer, as the less demanding RT effects also tend to be less noticeable. Just two of the six games remained playable, Control and Metro Exodus Enhanced. The others dropped below 30 fps, and Cyberpunk even fell into the teens.

This is where AMD's smaller 32MB Infinity Cache and the narrower 128-bit memory interface prove insufficient. Ray tracing needs more memory and bandwidth, and the RX 6650 XT comes up short. The RTX 3060 was also 30% faster now, while the RTX 3060 Ti increased its lead to 73%. With DLSS Quality mode, you can tack on another 20–30% performance for the RTX cards with little loss in discernable image quality.

We're interested to see where AMD goes with RDNA 3. Intel doesn't appear to be putting much effort into the ray tracing hardware on its Arc GPUs, and considering the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have a fixed hardware configuration, we likely won't see a major push from the game developers to go beyond what consoles can handle. But we might be wrong, and AMD might end up investing more resources into the ray tracing hardware with its next-generation GPUs. Time will tell. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

For our power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing, we use Powenetics testing hardware and software. We capture in-line GPU power consumption by collecting data while looping Metro Exodus at 1440p ultra as well as while running the FurMark stress test at 1600x900. Our power testing PC uses an open testbed, as that's required for all the extra wires and riser card, and it's the same old Core i9-9900K that we've used for the past several years.

We tested the PowerColor card in both OC mode and Silent mode, powering off the PC in between mode changes. The only differences appeared to be in fan speed and GPU temperatures, with clock speeds, power, and performance remaining mostly unchanged (within the margin of error).

First things first, note that the power use of our sample RX 6600 XT card was significantly higher than the reference TBP (Typical Board Power). The 6600 XT was supposed to be a 160W card, but AMD sent us an ASRock Phantom Gaming D that looks more in the 215W range. That helps to explain some of the lack of performance differences earlier, not that it really matters now that the RX 6600 XT has officially reached end of life.

Clock speeds for the 6650 XT Hellhound are right in line with the advertised boost speed of 2589 MHz while gaming, just a bit below the RX 6600 XT. Clocks drop about 200 MHz with FurMark, though GPU power use hardly changed at all.

The fan speeds and temperatures on the Hellhound are perhaps the most interesting aspect of the design. In OC mode, temperatures stayed below 65C while the fans spun at about 2,000 RPM. On the other hand, silent mode limited the fan speed to around 1,400 RPM, with a temperature target of around 72C.

We measured noise levels at 10cm using an SPL (sound pressure level) meter aimed between the two fans. That helps to minimize the impact of the CPU cooling fans, and the noise floor (with the CPU fans running) of our test environment and equipment was <33 dB(A). OC mode resulted in fan speeds of 42% and 44.9 dB(A) noise, while silent mode dropped the fan speed to 35% with just 39.0 dB(A) — a very good result.

We also set the fan speed to a static 75%, just to see what the card might sound like when it's heavily overclocked. It reached 60 dB(A), which wasn't particularly good, though people should never see such high fan speeds during normal use. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Of the three new GPUs in AMD's RX 6000-series May 2022 refresh, the RX 6650 XT feels the least necessary. Performance barely improved, though that's based on our comparisons with an RX 6600 XT that has a higher TBP and a rather large factory overclock. Regardless, it seems like AMD must have a steady supply of 18Gbps GDDR6, and it wanted more of a gap between the RX 6600 and the next GPU up the pecking order.

Right now, the least expensive RX 6650 XT we can find costs $385, compared to $360 for the least expensive RX 6600 XT. That's a 7% increase in price, for what will more likely be a 3–5% increase in performance if we were to compare similar card models. It won't really matter over the long term as the RX 6650 XT replaces the RX 6600 XT, with the latter being phased out.
Graphics card prices have dropped substantially in the first half of 2022, which is likely part of why the RX 6650 XT feels so unnecessary. At the end of 2021, the only place to reliably find the RX 6600 XT was on eBay, where you would pay upward of $600 — we tracked an average eBay price of $659 for December. Even as recently as March 2022, the RX 6600 XT still sold for close to $500. Today, cards are available at retail for as little as $360, and the average eBay price on a sold RX 6600 XT is only $340. That's how quickly things can change.

A $400 MSRP on the RX 6650 XT probably looked like a good idea in April. However, by the time May rolled around and the card launched, it already felt a bit too high, and not surprisingly, cards are now selling for less than MSRP. Ultimately, it's the real-world price and performance that matters, and the RX 6650 XT remains one of the best values — only the RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT rank ahead of it in terms of bang for the buck (FPS per dollar spent). Factor in ray tracing and DLSS, though, and you can certainly make a case for the RTX 3060.

AMD's Raise the Game Bundle is supposed to sweeten the pot, so if you're thinking of buying the Saints Row reboot or Sniper Elite 5, that's something else to consider. There will be other games added over the coming months as well, in case those games aren't on your wish list.

AMD's RX 6650 XT isn't a bad GPU by any stretch, but what you think of the card will ultimately be influenced by how much you have to pay for it. In the before times, this would have been a midrange GPU priced at under $300. Now our "midrange" offerings tend to cost $400 instead, and that's a bitter pill to swallow.

We didn't include Nvidia's older RTX 20-series GPUs in our charts, but the RTX 2070 from 2018 would compete pretty favorably against the RX 6650 XT, especially if you factor in DLSS and DXR performance. That card is now almost four years old, with a similar power draw. AMD might be 15% faster in standard gaming performance without DLSS, but that doesn't really feel like a win. Pandemics, supply chain issues, and cryptocurrency mining combined with inflation mean GPU values — meaning the amount of performance you can get for a set amount of money — have stagnated in the midrange to high-end markets compared to 2018.

As for PowerColor's RX 6650 XT Hellhound Spectral White, the aesthetics are the main selling point. If you want a white-themed graphics card, your options are limited. Zotac has a white RTX 3060, but among RX 6600 XT and RX 6650 XT GPUs, other than this PowerColor, the closest you can come would be the yin-yang Sapphire RX 6600 XT that has a white backplate and a white and black front shroud — and of course, it's discontinued now. We've done worse things than paying $50 extra for a specific color, so the Hellhound Spectral White is a viable option. If you don't care much about the color, just about any other RX 6650 XT should deliver roughly the same level of performance, perhaps at a lower price.

Overall, the RX 6650 XT doesn't really distinguish itself from the existing GPUs. You couldn't find an RX 6600 XT at a reasonable price last year, so if you haven't picked one up this year amid the falling prices, the RX 6650 XT may warrant a look. Prices will likely continue to drop, though the $400 MSRP limits how much more the RX 6650 XT can fall. It's a good card for 1080p and potentially 1440p gaming, with basically the same performance as what was already available. 

Pick up a PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Red Devil for $499 at MicroCenter — that's so close to MSRP for this triple-fan variant. This is a great mid-tier graphics card for gaming. Check our review of the Radeon RX 6700 XT for more information.

If you're looking for a budget gaming laptop then the Asus TUF Gaming 17.3-inch laptop for $699 at Best Buy may be a good choice for you. With an RTX 3050 Ti, this laptop should be able to play the latest games on a medium to high setting. 

Need a new PSU? The EVGA 750 GA Super Nova for only $74 at Amazon is a good price for a 750W power supply.

Check out more deals below. 

TL;DR — Today’s Best Deals

• PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT Red Devil GPU: was $699, now $499 at MicroCenter
• Asus TUF Gaming 17.3 Gaming Laptop: was $999, now $699 at Best Buy
• EVGA 750 GA Super Nova PSU: was $139, now $74 at Amazon
• MSI Spatium M450 M.2 PCIe Gen 4.0 1TB SSD: was $109, now $84 at Newegg
• Monoprice Dark Matter 32in QHD IPS Gaming Display: was $274, now $249 at Amazon

Today’s best deals in detail

Looking for more deals?

• Best deals on tech & PC hardware
• Best gaming laptop deals
• Best monitor deals
• Best PC and laptop deals
• Best SSD deals
• Best CPU deals
• Best Dell and Alienware deals
• Best 3D printer deals
• Best Raspberry Pi deals

The current rumor around town is that the Radeon RX 6650XT will launch soon to rival the best graphics cards out on the market. However, VideoCardz's freshly obtained information indicates that the Radeon RX 6650 XT might not be much faster than the current Radeon RX 6600 XT.

Despite all the leaks and whatnot, it remains a mystery whether the Radeon RX 6650 XT will use the same Navi 23 silicon as the Radeon RX 6600 XT. AMD probably won't refresh the die, meaning the Radeon RX 6650 XT should still arrive with 2,048 stream processors and 32 ray accelerators. In addition, we should expect the new Radeon graphics card to retain the same 32MB Infinity Cache.

According to the leaked specifications, the reference Radeon RX 6650 XT reportedly features a 2,410 game clock and a 2,635 MHz boost clock. The vanilla Radeon RX 6600 XT has a 2,359 MHz game clock and a 2,589 boost clock. So we're looking at a 2.2% improvement on the former and a 1.8% uplift on the latter.

The Radeon RX 6650 XT Hellhound comes with dual-BIOS support. The Silent Mode adheres to the reference specification, whereas the OC Mode operates with a small factory overclock. The Radeon RX 6600 XT Hellhound runs a 2,382 MHz game clock and 2,593 MHz boost clock in OC Mode. When in the same mode, the Radeon RX 6650 XT Hellhound reportedly functions with a 2,486 MHz game clock and 2,689 MHz boost clock, representing a 4.4% and 3.7% increase, respectively.

The Radeon RX 6650 XT will not receive an 18 Gbps memory, contrary to the early rumors. VideoCardz believes that AMD will equip the graphics card with 17.5 Gbps memory instead, 1.5 Gbps higher than the GDDR6 chips on the Radeon RX 6600 XT. The Radeon RX 6600 XT offers a maximum memory bandwidth of up to 256 GBps, whereas the Radeon RX 6650 XT would be suitable for 280 GBps. It's only a mere 9.4% enhancement.

Typically, clock speed and memory upgrades bring along a higher TBP (typical board power). Sadly, VideoCardz didn't obtain that piece of information. However, the publication did notice an increase in the recommended power supply capacity from 500W to 600W. Therefore, it's safe to assume that the Radeon RX 6650 XT would have a higher TBP. AMD rated the Radeon RX 6600 XT for 160W, so the Radeon RX 6650 XT may be around 170W to 180W. In any event, PowerColor's Radeon RX 6650 XT Hellhound still only commands a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, so the TBP increase shouldn't be significant.

AMD's RDNA 2 refreshed graphics cards recently appeared on an overseas retailer, lending some credence to the rumored May 10 launch date.

While there have been reports about AMD's plans to update its graphics lineup with Radeon RX 6x50 boards in late April, we have never seen any actual confirmation of this. Now, a filing with the South Korean National Radio Research Agency (RRA) that certifies hardware sold in the country, indicates that AMD's Radeon RX 6750 XT could be incoming, but for now treat the news with a healthy dose of salt.

Tul Corp., the owner of the PowerColor brand, has added its Radeon RX 6750 XT to RRA's database, as discovered by a well-known hardware investigator @harujaze6179. The card is officially designated as the PowerColor RX 6750 XT Devil D6 12GB, which basically leads us to the fact that the model RX 6750 indeed exists and the aforementioned graphics card carries 12GB of GDDR6 memory.  

Meanwhile, the Devil moniker indicates that this is a custom graphics card with PowerColor's typical perks like a sophisticated printed circuit board (PCB) with an enhanced voltage regulating module (VRM) and a high-end cooling system.  

Specifications of the graphics card are unknown, but from previous leaks we know that the main difference between the Radeon RX 6750 XT and the regular RX 6700 XT model is GDDR6 memory with an 18 GT/s data transfer rate (vs. 16 GT/s), which will give the GPU up to 12.5% more memory bandwidth. 

While we can only speculate, but PowerColor's 'Devil' VRM design might add some additional quality power supply to the graphics processors and therefore both out-of-box clock-speed as well as additional overclocking potential. Will it be one of the best gaming graphics cards around? Only tests will tell. 

Along with the Radeon RX 6750 XT, AMD reportedly intends to release its Radeon RX 6950 XT and Radeon RX 6650 XT boards in late April. The company has not formally confirmed such plans, so the launch time frame should be taken with a grain of salt. 

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics cards are now being sold for far less than the manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) in Europe. One of Germany's biggest online PC tech retailers, Mindfactory, has a twin fan cooler PowerColor design advertised at €169 including VAT. This Euro price is equivalent to USD $189, and we must remember that Germany's VAT is quite an impactful sales tax at 19%. If we remove the added VAT to get to a price that would be advertised in the US, we would have $159.

Taking another view of the above figures, the Radeon RX 6500 XT sells about 35% below MSRP in Europe. If the same discount were applied to the US MSRP, we would be seeing these graphics cards advertised by retailers at about $130.

If you browse to the MindStar special offers section of the site, you can see there are two PowerColor models on special offer at Mindfactory today. The single-fan ITX model is €169, and the dual-fan Fighter model is just €10 more.

We visited this special offers section from the RX 6500 XT search results page, which had the same cards listed at a higher price. However, on returning to the search results page (with seven different models available) we noticed the prices had dipped to match the special offers. With these cookie-induced shopping shenanigans in mind, please check around the Mindfactory site and peruse the MindStar section if you're looking for the best prices.

Three weeks ago, we reported on Mindfactory being perhaps the first retailer of any significant size selling graphics cards beneath MSRP. At the time its best RX 6500 XT price was €199, so to drop to €169 in three weeks represents significant movement. 

PC enthusiasts and gamers might not be that interested in the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT due to its panning by reviewers. We reviewed the XFX RX 6500 XT QICK 210 and were disappointed at the MSRP and the fact that previous budget GPUs could easily outgun this new 4GB kid on the block.

That begs the question of whether the RX 6500 XT is a bellwether of trends in the graphics card market, or a special case. Looking at the data we have, it is indeed something of a special case due to how far it undershot expectations and how much it is improved upon by its nearest Nvidia Ampere competitor, the GeForce RTX 3050 (MSRP $250, just $50 more). However, there are have been plenty of other reports in recent days and weeks showing the house of cards that supports the crazy PC GPU pricing is starting to teeter.

Four days ago, we reported some welcome price reductions for GeForce RTX 3080 models and noted that EVGA's online store offered cards like the RTX 3080 12GB and RTX 3080 Ti at MSRPs. Taking a wider view, we also noted that GPU prices had dropped another 9% in the first half of March. Normally this overall market view has been a monthly update, but thanks to the accelerating rate of price drops, we thought it was worth keeping you up to date with the (good) news.

When we talk about the shortage of graphics cards available to PC enthusiasts and DIYers, we often go into length regarding the various pressures on manufacturers and the consumer/demand side of the equation. However, a less commonly highlighted reason for manufacturers not producing as many GPUs as they would like is the ongoing Ajinomoto Build-up Film (ABF) substrate shortage. Today, a report published by DigiTimes offering insight into the business of ASRock and TUL (PowerColor) cites insiders remarking that ABF substrate shortages should recede sometime around mid-2022.

To recap the importance of ABF substrate, this material was first discovered in the 1970s. In the 1990s, Intel pioneered its use in helping connect the most intricate circuit designs to the underlying PCB (substrate), as it established the material's superior electrical insulation properties. ABF substrate has been a staple of the industry ever since that time and is used to manufacture packaging for CPUs, GPUs, chipsets, networking ICs, automotive processors, and more.

Both ABF substrate and packaging production capacity have been in short supply during 2020 and 2021 due to the increased demand for computing devices during the pandemic. Major ABF substrate suppliers include the likes of Unimicron and NanYa in Taiwan. Numerous reports have indicated that these companies are accelerating packaging production and building additional factories to ramp up availability as fast as possible.

The DigiTimes report cites industry sources as saying that additional substrate capacity should greatly reduce the shortages after mid-2022, thus helping increase the overall number of graphics cards shipped this year.

The report appears to be sourced from insiders at ASRock and TUL (PowerColor), both AMD-exclusive GPU partners. With specific reference to these companies, it is claimed that they are both buoyed by very strong graphics card sales in recent months. According to the report, the companies hope to slowly scale up their GPU shipments throughout the second half of 2022, thanks in part to greater ABF substrate availability. That will be even better for profits as we glide through 2022.

It's important to note that there have been previous reports regarding ABF substrate supplies that don't sketch out such a quick recovery. For example, in September last year, Singapore's Business Times said that "supplies [of ABF substrate] are likely to remain constrained until at least 2025."

Without additional sources to turn to at this time, it could simply be the case that the likes of ASRock and TUL have managed to get more of a low-availability material as they are willing to pay more. We'll have to wait for further corroborating reports or see how supply/demand changes through the summer. There are many other factors at play that could be more telling over the next six months, though none perhaps more important than the current cryptocurrency value collapse.

Unit sales of graphics cards dropped from over 20 million per quarter a little over a decade ago to around 10 to 12 million per quarter nowadays. While average selling prices of these boards increased tangible, makers of graphics adapters are very inclined to offer other types of products. PowerColor was among a few suppliers focused solely on graphics cards, until this week when it launched its first keyboard.

To build its first mechanical gaming keyboard, PowerColor teamed up with two renowned specialists: Kailh, a maker of switches, and Ducky, a maker of keyboards as well as ultra-durable high-quality keycaps. The PowerColor x Ducky One 2 SF RGB is a compact 65% keyboard that uses Kailh's Box White (tactile and clicky with a 3.6-mm travel) or Brown (tactile, but not clicky) mechanical switches (rated for up to 50 million presses) with doubleshot side-printed PBT keycaps and is made by Ducky. 

The compact keyboard has five rows (meaning there are no F keys and no numpad) and an addressable LED inside each key. The unit can record macros and has an Fn key to access F keys, volume controls, and control things like brightness.

Since the product is designed for gamers, PowerColor bundles it with 10 additional red keycaps to make them visually distinguishable from other 10 keys. Also, there are four more black replacement keycaps (for Esc, Del, PgUp, and PgDnkeys) and one replacement keycap for the space key. To make it easier to replace keys, PowerColor x Ducky One 2 SF RGB ships with a keycap puller. The keyboard connects to the PC using a replaceable USB Type-C to Type-A cable.

PowerColor's first keyboard primarily addresses fans of the company with its unique style. To that end, it is not particularly surprising that the company teamed up with a contract maker of keyboards as this is essentially an experimental product that will reveal the potential of the PowerColor brand on the market of gaming peripherals. If Tul, the owner of the brand, finds the keyboard a success, expect other products of this kind to emerge in the future. 

The PowerColor x Ducky One 2 SF RGB is available immediately from the company's resellers for $109. The first clients to get the product will also get PowerColor's signature Red Devil Keycap (valued at $49.99) featuring a standing Red Devil logo carved with aluminum anode technology.

When AMD introduced its Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled graphics card earlier this year, it said the product was only meant for system integrators and therefore would not be available for home system builders. Nonetheless, a few of the cards are now available from MindFactory.de, a major retailer from Germany.

At press time, MindFactory.de has over five reference Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled supplied by PowerColor in stock (thanks to VideoCardz for the tip), which is not many, but good enough for a product that was not to be sold at retail at all. The card costs €1749 ($1960 with VAT, $1650 without VAT), which is more expensive than the price of air-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT (which retail for €1500 ~ €1700), but is cheaper than the price of custom liquid-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT (which are available for €1800 ~ €2000).

This is not exactly the first time such boards have hit the retail market, as the product was previously spotted in India for about $3000 with taxes, as well as in Brazil, but it is not unusual for certain products to 'leak' in such large markets, as nobody notices if a company sells a graphics board, or even a dozen of them, without permission. 

A listing at a major European retailer, however, indicates that the card got there through authorized channels and is 'officially' available. To that end, we may well see AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled become available from other retailers and in different markets.

AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled is based on the Navi 21 XTXH GPU with 5120 stream processors clocked at up to 2250 MHz (game clock) and paired with 16GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 18 GT/s data transfer rate. 

From a GPU frequency point of view, AMD's reference Radeon RX 6900 XT LC looks rather pale compared to Sapphire's, PowerColor's, ASRock's or Asus's liquid-cooled Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics boards. However, that fast GDDR6 memory is a feature exclusive to AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT LC, which is why some users may prefer it to custom-designed liquid-cooled adapters. 

At this point it remains unclear whether AMD intends to change its position and offer the reference Radeon RX 6900 XT LC as a full retail product, but it looks like some of its partners certainly want to.

New Zealand retailer PB Tech has listed three of PowerColor's upcoming Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics cards, ahead of the new AMD GPU's official launch. However, MSRP continues to be a waking dream for anyone interested in getting a current GPU. Prices have been set at $1,248.99 New Zealand dollars, which convert to approximately $869 USD. Via VideoCardz.

The listed graphics cards include the RX 6600 XT Fighter (an entry-level solution which typically sports a dual-fan cooling solution with a simple black shroud), the RX 6600 XT Hellhound (also a dual-fan solution, with white PCB and shroud), and the RX 6600 XT Red Devil, which sits at the top PowerColor's RX 6600 XT lineup in both cooling design and clockspeed. All of them are listed for the same $869 USD, and there are only placeholder images for now. Pricing also appears to be a placeholder, since the same store lists the RX 6700 XT Hellhound for the same $869 as these three cards.

The RX 6600 XT is currently rumored for an August 11th launch; official pricing details are yet to be known. However, this particular card won't be available via a reference AMD design, which also means it won't be available for direct purchase via AMD - practically the only place where users can currently still snag an RX 6000-series graphics card at MSRP. Perhaps the introduction of this AMD model to the retail space, and its anticipated volume of units, could help accelerate the currently parachuting pricing for current-gen cards from AMD and NVIDIA. Then again, maybe not.

It appears that PowerColor has joined Sapphire in 'leaking'  the unannounced RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled reference card. As tweeted by @momomo_us, PowerColor has officially listed a new reference RX 6900 XT LC card on its site, but with no pictures at this time. (Note: The picture above is the Sapphire version.)

This information comes just 9 days after Sapphire spilled the beans on AMD's liquid-cooled version of the RX 6900XT. This all-new liquid-cooled reference design for the RX 6900 XT remains very similar to the air-cooled model, but it replaces the triple-fan cooling system with a single 120mm AIO, that presumably cools the entire card, including memory.

Another interesting feature is the addition of 18Gbps memory, a noticeable upgrade over the current 16Gbps ICs used on the air-cooled 6900 XT. This would bump up the card's memory bandwidth from 512GBps to 576GBps. That would also be the fastest shipping GDDR6 memory we've seen, as Nvidia moved to GDDR6X for the 3080 and above. However, that could simply be a typo, so take it with a grain of salt. Still, we've successfully overclocked the VRAM on the other RX 6000-series GPUs to 17.2Gbps, so it's possible the extra cooling allows for even higher stock clocks.

So far, PowerColor and Sapphire are the only AMD AIB (add-in board) partners that have revealed this new version of the RX 6900 XT. Assuming these are actual reference designs that have leaked early, we suspect more partners will join the party once we get the official announcement of the card from AMD. Once that happens, we'll also get official specs and details on pricing and 'availability'.

Der8auer, a star overclocker from Germany, has managed to set a new GPU frequency record with PowerColor's custom-designed AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. With the help of liquid nitrogen cooling, the specialist managed to boost the clock rate of 6900 XT, which made our list of best graphics cards thanks to its 26.8 billion transistors, to a whopping 3,225 MHz. 

While all 6900 XT-based cards are fast, PowerColor's LiquidDevil Ultimate Radeon RX goes above and beyond with a 16-phase VRM, three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors, and some liquid nitrogen. The board does not appear to have any clock speed cap, which is why it was possible to push it all the way to 3.225 GHz without modifying its VRM. Previous GPU overclocking records involved graphics cards with power delivery modifications or usage of K|NGP|N-branded boards with a configurable VRM.

When AMD introduced its Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT graphics cards about half of a year ago, users soon discovered that the company had capped the maximum frequency of the RX 6800 XT (Navi 21 XT) at 2.80 GHz and the maximum clock of the Radeon RX 6900 XT (Naxi 21 XTX) at 3.0 GHz.  

More recently, unofficial sources said that AMD began to offer its partners its Navi 21 XTXH GPU with a higher frequency potential, yet it was not completely clear whether AMD binned the new processors itself, or just let its partners factory overclock them. ASRock and PowerColor indeed started to offer Radeon RX 6900 XT products with a maximum boost clock of up to 2,500 MHz, up from 2250 MHz maximum boost clock that AMD recommends for its Radeon RX 6800 XT & RX 6900 XT products. 

As it turns out, the Navi 21 XTXH silicon is a real thing, though looks like its main difference from the regular Navi 21 XTX GPU is the absence of a frequency cap. 

Overclocking databases, such as HWBot.org, do not keep GPU frequency records, though a quick check with overclockers actually indicates that der8auer has indeed managed to set the new world's GPU frequency record as no graphics processor has ever hit a clock significantly higher than 3.0 GHz.

ASRock has introduced its fastest air-cooled graphics cards to date, the Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula 16GB. The new board carries factory-overclocked AMD's top-of-the-range Navi 21 XTX GPU (5120 stream processors) GPU that can boost to almost 2.50 GHz and backed by a sophisticated voltage regulating module (VRM). 

The Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula has a 21-phase VRM along with three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors to deliver up to 450W of 'clean' power to the GPU to guarantee stable operation at factory clocks as well as enable some further overclocking potential.

Speaking of clocks, the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula 16GB has a base GPU frequency of 2125 MHz, up from 1825 MHz recommended by AMD. Meanwhile, the board comes with two BIOS modes: the Q mode and the P mode. In Q mode the GPU features game clock of 2165 MHz and a boost clock of 2365 MHz. In P mode, the graphics processor operates at 2295 MHz ~ 2475 MHz, which is considerably higher when compared to frequencies of other factory-overclocked Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards introduced so far.

ASRock's Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards

Being one of the fastest factory-overclocked Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards announced to date, the ASRock Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula comes with an extremely large triple-slot OC Formula 3X cooling system featuring two aluminum heatsinks, seven heat pipes, three striped axial fans, and a backplate. To make the cooler look and feel even more attractive, it is equipped with ARGB LEDs and has a metal cover. Since the cooling system is large, the card measures 332 × 137 × 61 mm, so those who plan to use will need to ensure that it fits into their chassis.

ASRock unveiled its Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula board at the same day when PowerColor launched its Red Devil Ultimate and Liquid Devil Ultimate graphics cards that support GPU clocks of up to 2425 MHz and 2525 MHz, respectively. PowerColor officially stated that its graphics boards were based on cherry picked GPUs, but ASRock did not make such a claim. Therefore, it is unclear whether ASRock used hand-picked GPUs to build its Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula or its advanced VRM and cooling system can enable Navi 21 XTX GPUs operate at clocks that are about 10% higher when compared to those recommended by AMD. 

ASRock did not say when it plans to start shipments of its flagship Radeon RX 6900 XT OC Formula 16GB nor did it disclose its MSRP. Setting a recommended price on graphics card these days does not make a lot of sense as it will be sold at a price that significantly exceed its MSRP. Nonetheless, it would still be interesting to see — at least on paper — how much ASRock charges for a ~10% performance gain over AMD's reference design.

PowerColor has unveiled Ultimate editions of its top-of-the-range Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards with hand-selected GPUs that guarantee a great overclocking potential.

The new Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT Ultimate and Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT Ultimate use exactly the same custom PCB design with a 14+2-phase voltage regulating module (VRM) as well as three eight-pin auxiliary power connectors and cooling systems as their regular versions introduced earlier this year.  

Their key difference of the Ultimate boards from their predecessors is frequency of the Navi 21 XTX GPU (5120 stream processors, 320 TUs, 128 ROPs, 80 RT units). The Red Devil RX 6900 XT Ultimate can boost its Navi 21 GPU to 2425 MHz, whereas the Liquid Devil RX 6900 XT Ultimate can boost its graphics processor to 2525 MHz. To put the numbers into context, AMD's reference Radeon RX 6900 XT does not go higher than 2250 MHz. 

PowerColor's Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards

In addition to higher clocks, the Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT Ultimate is programmed to deliver up to 303W to the GPU, whereas the Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT Ultimate can deliver up to 332W to the GPU in a bid to further increase their overclocking potential beyond what PowerColor offers out-of-box. 

PowerColor's Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards

We recently reported that early reviewers of PowerColor's Ultimate Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT had discovered that the graphics card carried a Navi 21 XTX GPU which featured an id/firmware which GPU-Z did not recognize. The new identification implied that they were dealing with a die binned by AMD for higher clocks that even received a new designation (Navi 21 XTXH) and id. PowerColor says that its Ultimate graphics cards carry GPUs cherry-picked by the graphics cards maker. 

"Every overclocker knows that every GPU is different; sometimes, one can get lucky and find a card that can be highly overclocked due to the silicon lottery," a statement by PowerColor reads. "With the PowerColor Red Devil Ultimate and Liquid Devil Ultimate cards, you remove the element of chance and guarantee a specially binned GPU with exceptional overclocking — PowerColor assures performance every time."

Like every other semiconductor companies, AMD and its manufacturing partner TSMC have continuous process improvements (CPI) protocols in place and constantly analyze every new batch of chips they produce. Over time, they can improve yields and reduce performance variations, which either reduces costs of higher-end units or opens doors to binning for parts with higher overclocking potential.

For AMD, it does not make much sense to cherry pick GPUs with the highest frequency potential amid dramatic shortages as additional binning takes time, costs money, and creates demand for SKUs that are by definition rare. Graphics cards manufacturers tend to differentiate themselves from their rivals by offering boards with the highest GPU and memory clocks, so cherry-picking GPUs is not something completely new for them (something that EVGA has done for its K|NGP|N cards). However, such cherry-picked GPUs never come with new id/firmware as the latter are AMD's prerogative. That said, it is still unclear whether AMD decided to sell crème-de-la-crème Navi 21 XTX GPUs at a premium, or gave its partners a new degree of freedom with factory-overclocked products.

In its review of PowerColor's Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate, French publication Overclocking.com discovered that the graphics card is based on a new variant of the Navi 21 (Big Navi) silicon. The review brought to light the possibility that other vendors may also be preparing faster custom Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards.

There are currently three variations of the Navi 21 die on the market. The XL version is used in the Radeon RX 6800, the XT in the Radeon RX 6800 XT and lastly, the XTX in the Radeon RX 6900 XT. As exposed in the review, the Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate leverages the Navi 21 XTXH die, which is why even the latest version of GPU-Z doesn't recognize the die. Through the help of PowerColor, Overclocking.com got its hands on the latest version of AMDVbFlash, a utility to flash firmware on Radeon graphics cards. The tool effectively confirms the existence of the Navi 21 XTXH silicon on the RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate.

The Radeon RX 6900 XT already utilizes the full Navi 21 die, which brings 5,120 shading units and 80 ray tracing acceleration cores. Therefore, the XTXH variant in all likelihood is just a higher-binned die with improved clock speeds and a more generous power limit. Since AMD provides the dies to its partners, it's reasonable to think that the XTXH is AMD's idea rather than the partners doing their own binning.

Coming back to the Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate, the RDNA 2 graphics card comes with two modes of operation. The silent profile limits the game and boost clocks to 2,135 MHz and 2,335 MHz, respectively, while the OC profile cranks them up to 2,235 MHz and 2,425 MHz, respectively. Basically, we're looking at a 10.9% and 7.8% higher game and boost clock speeds, respectively, in comparison to the vanilla Radeon RX 6900 XT. Does the increase warrant a new die revision? Apparently AMD (or at least PowerColor) thinks so.

Overclocking.com noticed that with the Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate the core and memory frequency sliders were unlocked in AMD's Radeon software. It's uncertain if the newly lifted limits are a product of the Navi 21 XTXH's firmware. The power limit option is still locked though. But the Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate has a 330W power restriction, so there is enough thermal headroom for overclocking. Overclocking.com got its sample to 2,750 MHz on air and up to 2,850 MHz under liquid nitrogen.

The Radeon RX 6900 XT Red Devil Ultimate is probably just one of many custom Radeon RX 6900 XT iterations that will leverage the Navi 21 XTXH silicon. Given the timing of the review, we wouldn't be surprised if vendors announce these higher-binned Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards in the next couple of days. But with the current situation for graphics cards, we fear the announcements might as well be vaporware.

In a world where more or less up-to-date graphics cards cost hundreds of U.S. dollars, it is hard to call any of them an entry-level product, but this is exactly the kind of graphics board that PowerColor is preparing to launch. The company is about to release its Radeon RX 6700 Fighter graphics board with 6GB of memory that promises to cost less than existing offerings.

AMD's Radeon RX 6700 non-XT is a yet-to-be-announced product that is expected to be based on a cut-down version of the company's Navi 22 GPU, so expect it to feature less than 2560 stream processors and offer lower performance than the RX 6700 XT model. AMD is projected to position its Radeon RX 6700 for gamers that play at a 2560x1440 resolution, though at this point, it is unknown how the RX 6700 stacks up against the RX 6700 XT.

PowerColor has accidentally published images of its Radeon RX 6700 Fighter graphics card with 6GB of memory, reports TechPowerUp. The maker of add-in-boards (AIBs) did not really publish the product's specifications but demonstrated its looks. The card seems to be rather long but not as 'tall' as the Radeon RX 6700 XT/6800 XT product and is two slots wide. Meanwhile, it is equipped with a cooling system featuring at least four thick heat pipes and two fans.

It's unclear whether AMD plans to give its partners some freedom and allow them to install either 6GB or 12GB of GDDR6 memory on their Radeon RX 6700 cards, but there are reports Asus might offer a Radeon RX 6700 board with 12GB of memory.

Graphics cards with 6GB of memory will naturally cost less than boards with 12GB of GDDR6 DRAM. Still, it is unclear whether the difference will be significant enough for the end-user to justify performance drops in memory-hungry games. Furthermore, it is unclear whether it makes any financial sense for GPU makers to release AIBs with less memory onboard, because they cannot get enough GPUs from their partners.

In any case, the unintentional leak by PowerColor indicates that the company is ready to launch its Radeon RX 6700 Fighter soon and is waiting for AMD to formally announce the vanilla Radeon RX 6700 based on a cut-down Navi 22.

VideoCardz has just leaked renders of one of PowerColor's new Hellhound series graphics card. As it's pretty straightforward, the Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound is based on AMD's latest Radeon RX 6700 XT and designed to contend with the best graphics cards on the market.

For the Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound, PowerColor is experimenting with a black and blue theme. The graphics card arrives with a dual-slot black cooler that employs a trio of cooling fans with translucent fan blades. PowerColor even dipped the bracket in black paint, which is a nice finishing touch on the vendor's part. 

The cooling fans feature blue lighting, but it's uncertain if the RGB palette is available or not. The Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound also incorporates a full-cover backplate that has the new Hellhound logo. The cutout on the backplate should help with heat dissipation.

The clock speeds for the Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound remain a mystery. Given the tier of the Hellhound series, it should come with lower operating clocks than PowerColor's other higher tier models, such as the Liquid Devil, Red Devil or Red Dragon family of graphics cards.

The Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound may be using a custom PCB as the PCIe power connector layout is different from AMD's reference design. The vanilla Radeon RX 6700 XT utilizes one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCIe power connector. The Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound, on the other hand, resorts to two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, which also insinuate a strong factory overclock.

The display outputs on the Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound fall in line with the reference design though. You get access to one HDMI 2.1 port and three DisplayPort 1.4a outputs with DSC support.

The Radeon RX 6700 XT will have its official coming out party on March 18 so we should know pricing for the Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound in the upcoming days. For reference, the Radeon RX 6700 XT will start at $479. Taking into account the amount of customization on the Radeon RX 6700 XT Hellhound, it'll probably carry a small premium.

PowerColor has lifted the curtains on the brand's Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT. The new graphics cards arrive with a full-cover EKWB designed waterblock and are ready to be integrated into your custom watercooling system.

The Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT jump out of the same mold. Both offerings measure 266 x 162 x 42mm while only requiring two slots from your case. PowerColor has outfitted the RDNA 2 graphics cards with a 14+2-phase power delivery subsystem to unleash Big Navi's full potential without any compromises. 

Both of the cards come with 16GB GDDR6 of memory but their clock speeds differ, with the RX 6900 XT offering a 2,135 MHz game clock, and 2,365 MHz boost and the 6800 XT coming in at a slightly slower 2,110 MHz and 2,360 MHz respectively. Powercolor has also implemented high polymer capacitors into the card that can deal with over 400W of power. Naturally, the EKWB waterblock plays an important role in cooling the graphics cards.

The waterblock features a nickel-plated copper baseplate that effectively transfers the heat away from the GPU. It features a full-cover design that covers all the important components inside the graphics card, such as the GPU, memory and PWM. The waterblock is partially made from acrylic so it also offers some RGB flair. A matching aluminum backplate rounds out the design.

The perks of putting a graphics card under liquid cooling include performance and silence. In regards to performance, Liquid Devil models are up to 6% and 5% faster than AMD's reference specification.

Since not everyone wants to go all out on performance, PowerColor added a handy switch on the graphics card to switch between the vBIOS profiles. Both the Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT come with two operational modes: Unleash for the utmost performance and OC for stable overclocked performance.

The graphics cards require three 8-pin PCIe power connectors to function correctly. PowerColor recommends a power supply that has a minimum capacity of 900W to feed these monsters. As for display outputs, both offer one HDMI 2.1 port and two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and the USB Type-C port.

The Liquid Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT will be available starting March 15, but PowerColor didn't reveal their pricing.

PowerColor has filed a list of model names for the yet unannounced RX 6700 and RX 6700 with the Eurasian Economic Union. Interestingly, the listing shows potential memory configurations for both GPUs: The RX 6700 XT features 12GB of VRAM and 6GB for the RX 6700. This information comes just a week after ASRock shared product names with the EEU, listing a 6GB RX 6700 and a 12GB RX 6600 XT. This makes PowerColor the second company so far to suggest an RX 6700 6GB could be on its way.

Even with PowerColor and ASRock backing each other up, the only evidence for a 6GB RX 6700 comes from the EEC and EEU. We've seen plenty of product names enter the Eurasian Economic Commission/Union that turned out to be false. So take this info with a grain of salt. Still, there's plenty of reason to suspect it's viable.

Will the RX 6700 be bottlenecked due to the low VRAM capacity? We've discussed how low VRAM capacity cards will be affected in the past, and we're reaching the point where 6GB is becoming a minimum requirement to run the latest titles at high or ultra detail settings. Perhaps if AMD does a ton of optimization for this card, and you run games without ray tracing (which is a VRAM hog), that might make 6GB okay for a mid-range RDNA2 card.

This could also be a temporary measure. GDDR6 — along with most computer parts — is experiencing massive shortages, forcing graphics card production to slow down for Nvidia and AMD. AMD could be decreasing VRAM capacity to the absolute minimum to keep production going as much as possible. Plus, there's nothing stopping AMD from making a 12GB RX 6700 in the future by using higher capacity memory chips.

The good news is that it seems like the RX 6700 XT will feature 12GB of VRAM, which should be perfectly adequate for 1440p and 4K gaming without encountering memory capacity issues. Plus, given these will be mid-range (or lower high-end) cards, 4K isn't really a major concern.

Let's hope AMD can create product volume for these future mid-range cards once they arrive. The RX 6800, 6800 XT, and 6900 XT are already super hard to come by. If more SKUs are coming soon, AMD will need to figure out a way to produce these cards in large enough quantities to maintain at least some adequate supply. Considering everything else happening right now, including Ethereum mining, delivering adequate supply on any graphics card seems unlikely.

PowerColor has unveiled its first custom Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card. The Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT uses a proprietary printed circuit board (PCB) design with enhanced power delivery as well as a massive cooling system to maximize overclocking potential. The Limited Edition version of the board will also come with a USB Type-C output. 

The PowerColor AMD Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics card carries AMD's Navi 21 XT graphics processor in its maximum configuration with 5120 stream processors that run at up 2340 MHz (up from 2250 MHz on reference boards), accompanied by 16GB of GDDR6 memory that delivers 512 GB/s of bandwidth. 

Gamers and PC performance enthusiasts expect custom graphics cards to feature a no-compromise PCB design and a beefy cooling system that enables great overclocking potential. But bringing the additional overclocking potential to the 'Biggest Navi' RX 6900 XT is somewhat tricky because AMD's reference PCBs already feature a 14+2-phase voltage regulating module (VRM). Increasing the number of phases may not necessarily result in a tangible VRM performance improvement, but it will certainly lead to a significantly more complex PCB design and higher costs.

With its Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT, Power Color continued to use a VRM with a 14+2-phase VRM, but installed what it claims to be 'the industry's best DrMos as well as high polymer capacitors' to strengthen it and ensure cleaner and more stable power delivery to the GPU. The company also completely re-architected the power circuity in a bid to feed the card with up to 525 Watts of power from a combination of the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and three 8-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors, therefore maximizing its overclocking potential.

To cool down the Radeon RX 6900 XT despite the enhanced power delivery, PowerColor uses the same monstrous triple-slot cooling system with a nickel-plated copper base and three 8-mm and four 6-mm heat pipes it uses for the Red Devil Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT products. To make the board look truly devilish, it also has controllable RGB lighting. In fact, given the similarities between the three Big Navi-based Red Devils, it seems that PowerColor uses the same PCB design and coolers for all of these cards, but obviously flashes different versions of firmware. Meanwhile, only the RX 6900 XT model has three power connectors. 

PowerColor will offer two versions of its Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT: the vanilla AXRX 6900XT 16GBD6-3DHE/OC and the AXRX 6900XT 16GBD6-2DHCE/OC Limited Edition. The default board will feature three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and two HDMI connectors, whereas the LE card will have a USB-C port instead of one DP 1.4 and a bundled Red Devil keycap for mechanical keyboards. 

PowerColor said that sales of its Red Devil Radeon RX 6900 XT graphics cards would start on December 17 but failed to mention the price. Hopefully, it will not be in a devilishly red zone.   

AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 (Big Navi) are two of the best graphics cards that money can buy right now and rank at the top of our GPU benchmarks. However, the custom models are where the real performance is really at. AMD's partners have launched their personalized iterations today, which are available for purchase at different retailers around the country.

It goes without saying that there is a vast offering of Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards on the market now. We've put together a roundup of models whose specifications are available, for those of you who want to know which vendor offers the fastest graphics cards. The graphics cards are ranked them according to their rated clock speeds without taking into consideration their aesthetics, cooling solution or pricing.

It is undoubtedly difficult to find these cards in stock. For your best chance, see our article on how and where to buy a Radeon RX 6800 XT or RX 6800.

Fastest Radeon RX 6800 XT On The Market

The top Radeon RX 6800 XT models come with a 2,110 MHz game clock and 2,350 MHz boost clock. The ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X, Asus Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming, Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT SE and Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT stand out from the crowd.

At $769.99, the Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is the least expensive one out of the four. The special edition of Sapphire's model retails for $829.99, while the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X and Asus Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming cost $829.99 and $899.99, respectively.

Fastest Radeon RX 6800 On The Market

With the Radeon RX 6800, the list of speediest models jumps up to seven, which is good since consumers have more options to choose from. The candidates share the same clock speeds, promising a 1,980 MHz game clock and 2,190 MHz boost clock.

Admittedly, retailers haven't listed the majority of the custom Radeon RX 6800 models. Out of the list of seven models, the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 Phantom Gaming D and the Asus TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6800 seem to be the most affordable at $679.99.

Following PowerColor's official announcement of the Red Devil Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800, VideoCardz has shared renders of what we can expect from the vendor's Red Dragon series.

In regards to hierarchy, PowerColor's Red Dragon-branded graphics cards are a notch below the Red Devil. Therefore, the offerings typically come with a more modest design and a factory overclock. As the renders show, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT features less flamboyant aesthetics. There are zero traces of RGB lighting on the shroud, which will surely appease consumers that loathe having a Christmas tree inside their PCs.

Given Big Navi's considerable power requirements, the Red Dragon series will still lean on a triple-fan cooling solution to remain cool. The small cooling fan in the center is in the company of two larger cooling fans - one on each side. 

For the moment, the Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT's dimensions are unknown, but it looks just as long as the Red Devil iteration. While the latter occupies up to three PCI slots, the Red Dragon seems to adhere to a 2.5-slot design. The difference in thickness owes to the fact that the Red Dragon doesn't come with an aggressive factory overclock compared to the Red Devil, and therefore, it can get away with a smaller cooler.

The Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT also appears to come with a metal backplate and a dual-BIOS switch. In addition to the PCIe slot, the graphics card draws power from two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

The display outputs on the Red Dragon Radeon RX 6800 XT differ from AMD's reference design and the Red Devil. The latter two provide one HDMI 2.1 port, two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, and a single USB Type-C port. On the Red Dragon, PowerColor decided to dispose of the USB Type-C port in favor of another DisplayPort 1.4 output, bringing the total to three.

AMD's partners have the green light to launch their custom models tomorrow, so we'll likely see both the Red Devil and Red Dragon invade the hardware shelves. We can only hope that the supply is better than the disappointment with the Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 reference edition.

ASRock and PowerColor joined the roster of AMD's graphics card partners in revealing all-new custom-designed coolers for AMD's latest RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT GPUs. ASRock has four brand new custom SKUs, while PowerColor is still keeping most of its designs to itself, but the company wasn't afraid to show a sneak peek of its new Red Devil GPU on Twitter.

The new PowerColor Red Devil looks absolutely monstrous for a graphics card – from the rear/front angle of the image, the cooler looks to be nearly 4 slots wide. Hopefully the card will have monstrous cooling potential to go with that size. 

Aesthetically, the card is very different from the previous Red Devil design on the RX 5700 XT. The new Red Devil lacks any sticks and instead opts to go with six red LED strips that start in the middle of the card and go all the way to the back. Unfortunately, that is all we know about this card, but hopefully we'll get the detailed specs soon.  

ASRock has four new custom designs. The Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X 16G OC, and the Radeon RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming D 16G OC cover the 6800XT side of the equation, while Radeon RX 6800 Phantom Gaming D 16G OC and Radeon RX 6800 Challenger Pro 16G OC fill in the RX 6800 side.

ASRock's flagship RX 6800 XT Taichi offers a triple-fan cooler design and measures 2.8 slots thick. Keep in mind it's also quite tall at 140mm, so case compatibility will be something to look out for. The card features a metal shroud and metal backplate, with RGB lighting up the card in the center fan, sides, and a small area on the backplate. The color theme is very neutral and the design language is simple and striking at the same time. That will make it look good in most cases, especially those with metal finishes.

ASRock's RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming really does deserve the name, with very bright colors and a shrouded design that screams "gamer."

The shroud looks to be all metal, similar to the Taichi, but this time you get four brushed aluminum accents flanking all four sides of the card, and in those accents, you get even more accents with several red lines pointing towards the central RGB fan. The backplate also features a black brushed aluminum design accompanied by red accents with the Phantom Gaming and ASRock logos present. This card really stands out – the dark parts of the shroud are highly contrasted by bright red and bright brushed aluminum accents. If you're looking for something bright and blingy, this is the card for you.

The RX 6800 variant of this card is very similar to its bigger brother, with only slight differences to the design that are barely noticeable. The biggest change you'll find with the RX 6800 Phantom Gaming is the PCB and the rear backplate that don't extend all the way to the end of the card. Compare that to the RX 6800 XT Phantom Gaming, which does. Ironically the RX 6800's cooler could possibly do its job better than the RX 6800 XT model, simply because the heatsink has all that extra space open in the rear for air to escape.

Finally, we have ASRock's more budget-oriented option, the RX 6800 Challenger Pro. Compared to the other three designs, this one is the most humble, which allows it to blend in well with other computer components.

The shroud features a metal finish along with silver accents, but the silver is rather dark, so it blends well with the dark nature of the metal shroud. For RGB, all you get is a single dash of it in the top where the ASRock and Challenger Pro logos are located. For cooling, you get a triple fan design and a 2.7 slot thick cooler. Similar to the Phantom Gaming, the PCB and backplate doesn't extend all the way to the edge of the cooler. While it does look a little plain (like the Phantom Gaming), you will benefit from having a more efficient cooler that can push air out the rear of the card.

ASRrock's options for the RX 6800/RX 6800 XT look very pleasing. The metal shrouds are a nice touch, giving the cards a more premium look than other designs. ASRock recently posted the cards to its website but hasn't revealed pricing or availability.

Coming on the heels of AMD's unveiling of its Big Navi-based Radeon RX 6800/6900 family are announcements of graphics cards by its partners. PowerColor, one of AMD's most loyal allies, this week teased its upcoming Red Devil add-in-board (AIBs) powered by the new Navi 21 GPU. 

PowerColor's Red Devil graphics cards typically use a custom printed circuit board (PCB) with enhanced voltage regulating module (VRM) to improve power delivery as well as a custom high-end cooling system to enable higher clocks along with a strong overclocking potential.

This seems to be the case with the upcoming PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 6800 XT video card that the company teased on its Twitter page. The manufacturer did not demonstrate the card itself, but showcased its sketches that reveal a big (presumably a triple-wide) graphics board with a massive cooler featuring three fans, and a backplate. Obviously, it makes sense to expect PowerColor's Red Devil RX 6800 XT to feature higher clocks when compared to AMD's reference design. 

AMD intends to start sales of Radeon RX 6800 (3840 stream processors, 1815/2105 MHz, 16 GB GDDR6) and 6800 XT (4608 SPs, 2015/2250 MHz, 16 GB GDDR6) graphics cards on November 18 and then follow with the top-of-the-range Radeon RX 6900 XT (5120 SPs, 2015/2250 MHz, 16 GB GDDR6) boards on December 8. 

Given AMD's launch schedule, it makes sense to expect PowerColor to launch its Red Devil variant of the Radeon RX 6800 XT first and then make something even more extreme featuring the Radeon RX 6900 XT variant of the Navi 21 GPU.

Keycaps are a great way to add some personality. Whether you want your best gaming keyboard's RGB to shine more brightly or want to add a splash of your favorite colors, swapping out your keyboard's original keycaps helps you boast your brand. Now, what if the brand you want to boast about is AMD? 

zFrontier, a popular gathering place for mechanical keyboard lovers in China, held a giveaway a couple of weeks ago, where an AMD and PowerColor-themed keycap set was part of the spoils. It's a shame that keycaps aren't available for purchase, since they would surely make any die-hard AMD enthusiast jump with joy.

JTKeycaps, commonly known as JTK, manufactured the keycaps. The standard height keycaps are made from ABS plastic. 43 studio, which designed the keycaps, offered them in the standard black and red theme or a black, grey and red theme.

Since it was a PowerColor-sponsored giveaway, the keycaps arrived with a fair bit of marketing. In addition to the AMD and Radeon logos, you'll also see the Red Devil mascots from PowerColor.

There are a number of capable keycap makers in the keyboard world. It would be cool if one of them got in touch with AMD to get the chipmaker's blessing to cook something up. Custom keycaps provide a cheap way to really spice up a boring keyboard, and what better way to do so than using some from your favorite brand.

Graphics card manufacturers have been releasing new firmwares that upgrade the Radeon RX 5600 XT's memory speed from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps. Finally, AMD has officially started promoting the upgrade to existing Radeon RX 5600 XT owners.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT was originally scheduled to debut with 12 Gbps memory. Just a few days before launch day, AMD mysteriously pushed out an updated firmware to its partners that raises the graphics card's TBP (typical board power) and memory speed. Nvidia was also slashing the GeForce RTX 2060's prices at that time, so AMD's move was believed to offset Nvidia's price cuts.

Various manufacturers have resorted to launching updated Radeon RX 5600 XT models that already have their memory running at 14 Gbps right out of the box. But if luck has it that you picked up or own one of the previous 12 Gbps models, you can manually upgrade the graphics card's firmware to enable the faster memory.

A new PowerColor graphics card has quietly hit pre-order. As spotted by German tech publication ComputerBase, the PowerColor Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX graphics card packs the Navi 10 silicon in a tight package.

The new Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX, which sports the AXRX 5600XT ITX 6GBD6-2DH part number, features a dual-slot design. The graphics card's dimensions are currently unknown. The Radeon RX 5700 ITX, which is exclusive to the Japanese market, checks in at 175 x 110 x 40mm. Since the RX 5600 XT model looks like a very close copy of the RX 5700 variant, it might even share the same measurements.

Like the standard AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT, PowerColor's offering features 2,304 Stream Processors (SPs) and 6GB of GDDR6 memory across a 192-bit memory interface. For reference, the vanilla Radeon RX 5600 XT has a 1,130 MHz base clock, 1,375 MHz game clock, 1,560 MHz boost clock and 12 Gbps memory. According to the specifications table from a listing on Scan Computers International Ltd, the Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX comes with a 1,560 MHz core clock and 1,620 MHz boost clock. It seemingly leverages 14 Gbps memory as well. However, we don't have official word on specs from PowerColor yet. 

The Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX doesn't have a lot of requirements. Preferably, you would want to insert the graphics card into a PCIe 4.0 slot, but don't fret if you don't have one, as it should work just fine in a PCIe 3.0 slot as well. The Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX only has one 8-pin PCIe power connector, so even a decent 500W can feed the little guy.

There are three display outputs available, meaning the graphics card can drive up to three displays concurrently. It supplies two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and a single HDMI 2.0b port, allowing you can enjoy resolutions up to 4096 x 2160 pixels.

Scan Computers International Ltd has the Radeon RX 5600 XT ITX listed for £299.99, which is about $370.84. If we subtract the 20% VAT, the graphics card could cost around $309.03. The UK retailer lists April 30, 2020 as the delivery date, so we can expect an official announcement around that time. 

According to a report by Japanese publication Hermitage Akihabara, PowerColor has launched the Radeon RX 5700 ITX. Lamentably, the graphics card is exclusive to the Japanese market.

The PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 ITX, identified with the AXRX 5700 ITX 8GBD6-2DH part number, features a dual-slot design and measures 175 x 110 x 40mm. The graphics card is equipped with a matte black cooler and a single cooling fan. As per the description, there's an aluminum heatsink with four 6mm heatpipes under the graphics card's shroud.

Due to its compact size, the Radeon RX 5700 ITX adheres to AMD's reference Radeon RX 5700 specifications. The 2,304 Stream Processors (SPs) check in with a 1,465 MHz base clock, 1,625 MHz game clock and 1,725 MHz boost clock. The 8GB of GDDR6 memory remains at 1,750 MHz (14,000 MHz effective) across a 256-bit memory bus to deliver a memory bandwidth up to 448 GB/s.

What's fascinating is that the Radeon RX 5700 ITX relies on a single 8-pin PCIe power connector despite running at the same clocks as a vanilla Radeon RX 5700, which utilizes a combination of a 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Nonetheless, PowerColor recommends a 600W power supply as a minimum for the little graphics card. Display outputs include one HDMI 2.0 port and two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs.

The Radeon RX 5700 ITX will go on sale tomorrow at Aiuto for 44,364 yen, which translates to roughly $406. We've reached out to PowerColor to see if the Radeon RX 5700 IT will make it to this side of the world.

We don’t normally know PowerColor for making graphics cards with water cooling blocks built onto them, but today it announced the Liquid Devil 5700 XT, which it claims that it is the fastest RX 5700 XT graphics card out there.

The graphics card itself features a relatively short board design, but manages to pack in a 10-phase VRM circuitry nevertheless. 

Meanwhile, the liquid block is made by EKWB, so we're confident in its ability to  cool the essential components, including GPU, VRM circuitry and memory. Naturally, RGB support is included from the EKWB water block too.

PowerColor also claims that its GPUs are binned, meaning the company has selected selected the best-overclocking chips for these cards. 

What this translates into is an RX 5700 XT that comes overclocked from the factory with a boost clock of up to 2,070 MHz. Oddly, the memory clock has been left untouched at 14 GHz; although, that's likely to keep the card within its power limits to make space for the hefty GPU overclock. For comparison, the reference AMD Radeon 5700 XT has a boost clock of up to 1,905 MHz, thermals permitting. We’ll accept PowerColor’s claim that it’s the fastest 5700 XT in the world: the next-fastest card we’ve seen is Sapphire’s Special Edition 5700XT Nitro+, which comes clocked in at up to 2,035 MHz.

Not surprisingly, this performance bump and water block come with a notable price tag. The card is set to cost $599 when it hits U.S. shelves (PowerColor didn't share a release date). For comparison, you can score an air-cooled RX 5700 XT for about $400, and adding a water block will cost you roughly another $200 to reach the same combination. However, if you go that route, you won’t have a seamless warranty, nor that great promised overclock from a binned chip.

Alphacool has announced three new water blocks designed to fit aftermarket 5500 and 5700 XT GPUs from MSI (Gaming X), Sapphire (Nitro+) and Powercolor (Red Devil/Red Dragon). The Alphacool Aurora Plexi GPX Eisblock full cover blocks are constructed from Nickel-plated copper with a plexi top, feature integrated digital RGB lighting and, according to the vendor, a significant increase in performance.

On the performance front, Alphacool said they moved the cooler closer to the individual components by reducing the thermal pads' thickness to 1mm. The second step was to reduce the thickness of the nickel-plated copper block from 7mm to 5.5mm allowing for a quicker transfer of heat to the water. Alphacool goes on to say that all the critical components, including the voltage transformers and memory, are now cooled more effectively by the water, with water flow inside the cooler also said to be optimized.

Other improvements include an improved nickel plating process that's supposed to increase acid resistance. This additional resistance means the nickel "should reduce flaking." In addition to the better nickel plating, the Eisblock Aurora GPZ uses new (and patented) stop fittings that sit flush with the surface. The Alphacool logo is now in the top corner and fully illuminated.

Each block has a total of four G1/4" fittings, which is standard for PC watercooling. The RGB LEDs are connected through a 3-pin 5V digital RGB connection. 

Compatibility

Compatibility for each of the blocks are as follows (as always, confirm compatibility before purchasing!):

Alphacool Ice Block Aurora Plexi GPX-A 5700xt Sapphire Nitro+

• Sapphire Nitro + Radeon RX 5700 XT 8G, 8GB GDDR6, 2x HDMI, 2x DP, full retail (11293-03-40G)

Alphacool Ice Block Aurora Plexi GPX-A 5700xt Powercolor Red Devil

• PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (AXRX 5700XT 8GBD6-3DHE / OC)
• PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 Red Dragon, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (AXRX 5700 8GBD6-3DHR / OC)
• PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Dragon, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (AXRX 5700 XT 8GBD6-3DHR / OC)
• PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil Limited Edition, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (AXRX 5700XT 8GBD6-3DHEP / OC)
• PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 Red Devil, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (AXRX 5700 8GBD6-3DHE / OC)

Alphacool Ice Block Aurora Plexi GPX-A 5700xt MSI Gaming X

• MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming X, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (V381-032R)
• MSI Radeon RX 5700 Gaming X, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP (V381-031R)

The Eisblock Aurora GPX is supposed to more strongly emphasize its RGB lighting compared to its predecessors. These blocks contain addressable digital RGB LEDs embedded directly into the block and running along its perimeter. The angles and beveled edges are meant to improve light diffusion in the water.

Pricing for all blocks is listed at €109.94 including VAT. Availability is listed on the site as "probably deliverable within 4-5 weeks."

Image Credit: Alphacool

Rejoice AMD aficionados; the long sought-after Radeon VII, AMD's 7nm gaming graphics card, is back in stock after a long absence from the shelves. For a limited time, you can buy PowerColor's take on the Radeon VII for $680, which is $20 off of its original $700 price tag. Purchase is limited to one graphics card per customer, and the sale ends in two days, assuming supply doesn't deplete by then.

• Buy the PowerColor Radeon VII for $680. 

The discounted Radeon VII might come inside a PowerColor box, but rest assured that you'll still get the specs of AMD's reference card. The Radeon VII features AMD's latest Vega 20 GPU microarchitecture, which is the first produced under the 7nm manufacturing node. 

The Radeon VII is not only a capable great graphics card for high-end gaming but also for professional work. There are 3,840 Stream Processors (SPs) onboard, which operate at speeds up to 1,800MHz. Not to mention the card also has 16GB of HBM2 running at 1,000MHz (2,000MHz effective) across a 4,096-bit bus. This lets the Radeon VII pump out a memory bandiwdth of 1 TB/s. What more can you ask for?

In terms of size, the Radeon VII has a 26.7 x 12.1 x 4 cm footprint. The graphics card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, so a 750W power supply is highly recommended. The Radeon VII is great for multi-tasking, as it can accommodate up to four displays, thanks to the combination of three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and HDMI 2.0b port.

AMD knows that investing over $600 on a graphics card can be a considerable hit to anyone's budget. So, to help get you started gaming without hurting that budget more, the deal comes with a three-game bundle worth around $150 with every Radeon VII purchase. The bundle provides redeemable download codes for a trio of AAA titles, your choice between Tom Clancy's The Division 2, Resident Evil 2 and Devil May Cry 5.

Should You Buy This Graphics Card?

As always, we recommend you read our review before investing in hardware. Here's our review of the AMD Radeon VII. You may also want to see our face-off between reference cards and third-party graphic cards. 

For help picking the best graphics card for you, there's our graphics card buying guide, the  AMD and Nvidia GPU hierarchy and our breakdown of the best graphics cards we've tested. 

We predicted that AMD’s Radeon RX 580 would see lots of deals over the holiday shopping season, and that prediction continues to ring true. Newegg is now offering a PowerColor-made 8GB RX 580 for $159.99 after applying a $40 coupon code (EMCERPT94) and a $20 mail-in rebate. Just don’t forget to apply that code, or you won’t be getting much of a deal on this card.

• PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 580 AXRX 580 8GB for $159.99 after $20 rebate and EMCERPT94 coupon code

For those on a budget, the PowerColor 8GB Red Dragon Radeon RX 580 excellent card for 1080p gaming and is even capable of powering a VR rig. We’ve seen some 4GB RX 580s at lower prices, but the extra video memory in this model makes it better able to handle gaming above 1080p, as well as high-resolution textures, as well as future AAA titles that prefer more memory.

More Holiday Deals Coverage

• Best Hardware Deals Overall
• Best GPU Deals
• Best SSD Deals
• Best CPU Deals
• Best Gaming Laptop Deals
• Best Gaming Monitor Deals
• How to Find the Best Hardware Deals

While not officially announced yet, leaks for AMD's Radeon RX 590 GPU have been hitting the web for weeks. Today, PowerColor became the first graphics card manufacturer to officially and publicly launch its custom-made Radeon RX 590 graphics card. The PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5 is based on AMD's Polaris 30 graphics processor, which is produced under the 12nm FinFET node.

The Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5 complies to the previously leaked specifications for the Radeon RX 590. It sports 2,304 stream processors and 8GB of GDDR5 memory clocking in at 8,000MHz on a 256-bit memory bus. PowerColor's iteration features a boost clock up to 1,576MHz, equivalent to a 17 percent clock speed increase over a stock Radeon RX 580. Consumers can switch between a Performance or Silent profile via the graphics card's BIOS switch located on its side.

Measuring 10 x 6.2 x 2.2 inches (255 x 157 x 57mm), the Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5 sports the thick black and red Red Devil cooler. According to PowerColor, a 6+1 phase power delivery subsystem is hidden beneath the graphics card's cooler. There is also mention of a Platinum Power Kit featuring DrMOS power modules for improved power efficiency and overall reliability.

The Red Devil cooler itself employs five nickel-plated heat pipes for heat dissipation. Four of the heat pipes are 8mm thick, and the other heat pipe is 6mm thick. PowerColor has equipped the Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5 with a pair of ball bearing fans, which is reportedly 20 percent more efficient with four times the longevity. PowerColor's Mute Fan technology only spins up the fans when the GPU temperature exceeds 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). The graphics card is equipped with a black, 1.5mm-thick metal back plate as well. The Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5 depends on an 8-pin and a 6-pin PCIe power connector for power input. There are three DisplayPort outputs, one HDMI port and a DVI-D port. 

The Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5 comes with a "Raise the Game Fully Loaded" game bundle that's worth $180 if purchased from a selected eTailer. The list of unreleased AAA titles include Resident Evil 2 (2019), Devil May Cry 5 and The Division 2. PowerColor didn't reveal the pricing for the Red Devil Radeon RX 590 8GB GDDR5. However, the Radeon RX 590 is expected to launch November 15, so we won't have to wait long to find out.

AMD hasn't officially announced the Radeon RX 590 graphics card yet. However, the cat has been out of the bag for a while now. Today, Newegg Canada listed the the Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition on its marketplace.

First, a quick refresher. The Radeon RX 590 is rumored to be based around a revised Polaris 30 silicon, which is basically a die-shrink from the Polaris 20 silicon employed in the Radeon RX 580. According to an October 29 tweet by Andreas Schilling, an editor at HardwareLuxx, the Radeon RX 590 will come out of the 12nm FinFET oven.

Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition Specs

According to the Newegg posting, Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition measures 260 x 135 x 43mm. The graphics card features a 2.2-slot design and employs the distinctive blue Dual-X cooler. Its cooling system reportedly consists of a combination of two 8mm and two 6mm heat pipes that transfer heat away from the internal components to the heat sink, whereby a pair of 95mm dual-ball bearing fans provide it with active cooling. Newegg's listing says the fans only spin up when the GPU temperature hits 54 degrees Celsius (129.2 degrees Fahrenheit). An eight-layer PCB with a 6-phase power delivery subsystem is said to be hidden underneath the large blue cooler. The graphics card reportedly carries Sapphire's Black Diamond 4th Chokes, which, according to the manufacturer, are 10 percent cooler and 25 percent more power efficient than conventional chokes. Power to the graphics card runs through a 6-pin and a 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the specs say. 

As expected, it looks like the Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition is equipped with 2,304 stream processors, 36 compute units and 8GB of GDDR5 memory across a 256-bit memory interface. The graphics card comes equipped two performance profiles, which users can choose via the switch on the side of the graphics card, the posting says, adding that the Nitro Boost profile cranks the graphics card's boost clock up to 1,560MHz and the memory clock to 8,400MHz. The silent profile, on the other hand, should maintain the boost clock at 1,545MHz and the memory clock at 8,000MHz. 

There is reportedly a total of five display outputs on the graphics card: two DisplayPort outputs, two HDMI ports and a DVI-D port. The Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition also features dual UEFI BIOS.

Pricing

The Sapphire Radeon RX 590 Nitro+ Special Edition is listed by a third-party seller for 600 CAD (~$450 / £349). With the rebate applied, the price goes down to 500 CAD (~$378 / £291). Nevertheless, the pricing should be taken with a pinch of salt as the Newegg posting could just be a placeholder.

Features & Specifications

If you asked us to point you in the direction of a well-equipped Radeon RX Vega 64 card, and if there was more differentiation between the boards that do exist today, we could definitely recommend checking out PowerColor's Red Devil RX Vega 64 8GB HBM2. Like Sapphire's Radeon RX Vega 64 Nitro+, the PowerColor card is particularly eye-catching. And it lights up, if you're a proponent of drawing attention to flagship-class graphics hardware in a windowed case.

Unfortunately, today's market makes it almost impossible to distinguish between one Radeon RX Vega 64 or another. You may find a handful of models in stock (an improvement compared to a few weeks ago), but they still start just under $800 and reach as high as $900. While PowerColor does land toward the bottom of that range, you're still paying a $200+ premium over many GeForce GTX 1080 models. Right out of the gate, PowerColor is fighting an uphill battle against less expensive and sometimes faster competition.

Unboxing, Look, & Feel

Weighing in at 1409 grams, this card lands just below Sapphire's monstrous flagship, which proved to be a an exhibition of sorts and is no longer available. PowerColor's solution is real though, and it's a massive beast just like Asus' ROG Strix Radeon RX Vega 64 8GB OC Edition. Similar to that card, the Red Devil measures 30.2cm long. A height of 12.7cm from the motherboard slot's top edge to the top of the fan shroud also matches what you get from Asus. But a depth of 5.2cm is notably wider. Hopefully that translates to even better cooling performance.

Three 90mm fans are mounted in 92mm openings. With their special shape, a total of nine blades per fan provide powerful throughput and less turbulence, generating a bit more static pressure. This should prove complementary to the deep thermal solution.

The backplate is characterized by a printed Red Devil logo. That plate doesn't help with cooling at all; it's primarily meant to look good and give the heavy card some rigidity.

Plan for an extra 5mm of clearance (at least) behind the Red Devil RX Vega 64. This may cause problems on some motherboards, particularly if the heat sink/backplate intrude on an occupied expansion slot or large CPU cooler.

As we can see from the bottom, PowerColor employs vertically-oriented fins. At the expense of occupying a third slot with its 2.5-slot design, the company does provide a lot more surface area for cooling.

The top side shows that PowerColor stays true to itself in the Red Devil's design. In addition to a familiar dark metal cover on the red ABS shell, there is an illuminated Red Devil logo in the middle. A pair of eight-pin power connectors are position at the end of the board. They're rotated 180 degrees and recessed as well.

Apart from three 6mm heat pipes and a single 8mm pipe, the almost completely closed back of the card reveals nothing conspicuous.

The rear bracket plays host to four display outputs. A pair of HDMI 2.0 interfaces is ideal for anyone with a VR HMD, while two DisplayPort 1.4 connectors make multi-monitor configurations easy. DVI is noticeably missing.

Unfortunately, we also have to bring up an issue that affected our test results. While our press sample was sealed by the manufacturer, it became clear that this card had been used and dismantled before landing in our lab. The amount of thermal paste we found on the GPU package would have been sufficient for two or more cards, and was nearly counterproductive the way it arrived. We fixed this by cleaning the card and applying much better stuff in moderation.

We realigned the heat pads, and even repaired the partially destroyed ones with similar replacements. In turn, we were rewarded with a four to five degree lower GPU temperature and significantly cooler VRM readings. Hopefully, that gets us close to PowerColor's stock performance, fresh from the factory.

Although PowerColor's official documentation claims a 1607 MHz boost clock, GPU-Z reports 1630 MHz. That specification is mostly wishful thinking though, given the Red Devil's power limit.

In comparison to the relevant reference cards the data looks as follows:

Test System & Measurement Methods

We introduced our new test system and methodology in How We Test Graphics Cards. If you'd like more detail about our general approach, check that piece out. We've upgraded the CPU and the cooling system since then to make sure that nothing's holding back graphics cards as fast as this one.

The hardware used in our lab includes:

Specifications

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Board & Power Supply

Board Layout

PowerColor's layout may seem a little different from AMD's reference PCB at first glance. However, the most important areas carry over almost 1:1. The second BIOS, lighting connector, and switches cause the board to be extended upwards a bit.

This implementation employs six power phases with doubling, resulting in 12 voltage converters for the VDDC and one phase for the memory (MVDD), just like AMD. In terms of components, PowerColor mostly mimics the AMD design.

The sources of other auxiliary voltages are also visible in our layout diagram.

Aside from the densely populated area opposite the GPU package, we also find the PWM controller, phase doublers, and SMD capacitors on the board's back side.

PowerColor employs a pair of eight-pin connectors to complement the PCIe slot's power delivery. Since our measurements show the motherboard slot only feeding this card 23-26W, those two connectors handle the rest.

GPU Power Supply (VDDC)

As with AMD's reference design, the focus is on International Rectifier's IR35217, a dual-output multi-phase controller that provides six phases for the GPU and an additional phase for the memory. But again, there are 12 regulator circuits, not just six. This is a result of doubling, allowing the load from each phase to be distributed between two regulator circuits.

A total of six International Rectifier IR3598 multipliers on the back of the board are used to double the controller's phase count. Our infrared thermal measurements make it easy to see how the PWM controller shifts load back and forth between individual phases at idle to maximize efficiency, but also avoid overloading any one specific circuit.

Voltage conversion of the 12 circuits is performed by an International Rectifier IRF6811 on the high side and an IRF6894 on the low side, which also contains the required Schottky diode.

For the resonant filters in the VDDC, PowerColor relies on 190nH encapsulated ferrite coils, similar to AMD's reference card. The capping of extreme spikes on both external 12V supply connections is achieved through generous 560nH coils.

Memory Power Supply (MVDD)

As mentioned, the memory's power is controlled by International Rectifier's IR35217 as well. One phase is fully sufficient for this card, as its HBM2 is less demanding. A CHL815 gate driver is placed on the board's back, while a NTMFD4C85N dual N-channel MOSFET on the front is used for voltage regulation. The co-packaged solution includes both high and low sides.

It’s interesting that PowerColor uses SMD capacitors instead of can caps. Their somewhat lower capacity is compensated for by simply running two of them in parallel on the back of the board. It does make sense to spread the hot-spots and make the thermal solution's job a little easier. Waste heat is kept to a minimum, as is the cost associated with cooling.

At 220nH, the coils are a bit larger this time around. The ones corresponding to the "partial voltage" converters, which operate at a much lower frequency, are even larger at 820nH. They don’t have to deal with the same amounts of power, though.

Additional Voltage Converters

Creating the VDDCI isn’t a very difficult task. But it's an important one since this regulates the transition between the internal GPU and memory signal levels. It’s essentially the I/O bus voltage between the GPU and memory. A constant source for 0.9V is generated as well, along with a 1.8V source (TTL, GPU GPIO). These three voltage converters are equipped almost identically, relying on an MPS MPQ8633 synchronous step-down converter.

Underneath the GPU, there’s an Anpec APL5620 low drop-out linear regulator, which provides the very low voltage for the phase locked loop (PLL) area.

PowerColor places a switch up top to control its dual-BIOS functionality. The second chip is placed right next to that switch in the PCB's extended upper area.

ON Semiconductor's MC74HC238A demultiplexer drives the LED bar that shows the power supply’s load. It’s a fun gimmick, but does get annoying in a dark room at night due to its brightness. Fortunately, there's another switch you can use to turn the lights off entirely.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Gaming Benchmarks At 2560x1440

We benchmark the Red Devil RX Vega 64 with its standard BIOS; the overclocked firmware yields a completely insignificant performance increase through an almost senseless jump in power consumption. A bit of tweaking on Radeon RX Vega 64 does not change the card's competitive position against Nvidia's line-up. Where it does help, the difference isn't large enough to justify a louder and hotter card. Stick with PowerColor's default BIOS; it offers the best compromise of all.

Because we're guessing that most folks with a Radeon RX Vega 64 plan to game at 2560x1440, that's where we start our benchmarks.

PowerColor's Red Devil RX Vega 64 has a slight clock rate advantage over AMD's reference Radeon RX Vega 64, yielding a relatively minor lead in every benchmark.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Gaming Benchmarks At 3840x2160

The story doesn't change much at 4K. PowerColor's version of the Vega 64 is consistently a little faster than AMD's implementation, while the Radeon RX Vega 64 trades blows with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 more generally. Neither model is really suitable for max-quality gaming at 3840x2160, though. As a result, we dial back the detail settings to maintain playable frame rates.

The real advantages of PowerColor's card will have to be found elsewhere, hopefully in the cooling or noise sections. After all, those two aspects are where the reference board takes the most criticism.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Power Consumption

Power Consumption at Different Loads

We measured about 283W during our gaming loop using the driver's Balanced power profile. That's about 3W more than AMD's reference model using its default BIOS. We're willing to accept the higher power consumption since PowerColor's performance is also better. Recent BIOS modifications, including an updated power table, seem to be working well. A 282W measurement in our stress test is also acceptable.

PowerColor's overclocked mode dials in a higher power limit, but doesn't affect the maximum clock rate by default. Even then, though, it exceeds the 320W mark. Worse, performance doesn't improve all that much. As a result, we decided not to get any more aggressive with our overclocking. Rather, we stuck with the driver's Balanced power profile for testing.

The corresponding voltages for our gaming workload and stress test at PowerColor's stock settings are plotted in the following graph:

Load On The Motherboard Slot

At a peak of 2.4A through our stress test, PowerColor's Red Devil RX Vega 64 falls significantly below the 5.5A ceiling defined by the PCI-SIG for a motherboard's 12V rail. A mere 2.3A during the gaming loop is even more conservative. Overall, balancing is well-implemented, and the motherboard slot hardly ever experiences serious loads.

Power Consumption In Detail

The graphs below plot detailed power consumption and current readings in order to illustrate our findings.

Naturally, peaks in power consumption are highest during gaming. But spikes of up to 360W are still acceptable, since they're far too brief to cause a problem.

The same goes for the corresponding current measurements:

In the BIOS' OC mode, we see power consumption explode compared to PowerColor's Standard configuration.

Of course, this applies to our current measurements, too.

During our stress test, the short-term peaks are significantly less pronounced (even if the power consumption is slightly higher than during gaming workloads).

Again, our current readings follow the graph rather closely and show no abnormalities.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Temperatures, Clock Rates & Overclocking

Overclocking & Undervolting

Conventional overclocking through a higher power limit and more aggressive clock rate is a dead-end. Brute force just isn't the answer. Because PowerColor had to follow AMD's guidelines, this implementation is already running at its limit. Sure, you could dial in higher fan speeds to cool things down, creating more noise in the process, but who really wants that? As we explained in AMD RX Vega 64: The Tom's Hardware Liquid Cooled Edition, even with higher frequencies and brutal power adjustments, it is almost impossible to get Radeon RX Vega running much faster. Instead, undervolting can achieve far better results.

First and foremost, the use of a suitable utility like OverdriveNTool works wonders. As always, though, your results will also depend on the quality of your GPU. We can't generalize; you'll have to compare your improvements to ours.

Temperatures & Frequencies

We’re using the GPU temperature value exclusively because that's what our test sample’s telemetry reports. Of course, the hot-spot temperature is a lot higher. Why? You can read all about in Does Undervolting Improve Radeon RX Vega 64's Efficiency? On PowerColor's Red Devil RX Vega 64, those readings are up to 14°C higher.

The following table shows a comparison of start and end values for temperatures and GPU (boost) frequencies. Just keep in mind that these clock rates can be considerably higher in games with significantly lower loads. For example, Wolfenstein 2's indoor environments might push the card to 1.63 GHz, only to knock it way down once you step outside.

Temperature vs. Frequency

To better illustrate our findings, we plotted temperatures and frequencies during our sample's 15-minute warm-up phase. It's particularly interesting that there's such a small thermal difference between open and closed cases.

Frequencies in the gaming loop are about 100 MHz higher than what we measured from AMD's reference card. This average increase of 11% only improves gaming performance by 6-8%, which isn't particularly impressive.

The results of our stress test look similar:

IR Image Analysis Of The Board's Back

To round out this section, we take a look at board temperatures across several different load levels. To keep the test setup as practical as possible, we removed the backplate for IR measurements (since it doesn't help with cooling anyway). Comparative before/after tests show no difference in temperature or cooling performance.

Gaming

This card has no problem in our Witcher 3 gaming loop. Measurements of 68°C behind the GPU package and 66°C at the voltage converters are actually cool compared to some of the Radeon RX Vega cards we've tested. Does the situation change at all in a closed case?

Not really, no. In a closed case, we measure one degree higher at the voltage converters, while the area behind AMD's GPU rises two degrees. This is enabled by faster-spinning fans, since PowerColor sets a fairly aggressive temperature target. We'll be paying close attention to what that does to noise output.

Stress Test

The stress test reflects slightly lower power consumption than our gaming benchmark. However, certain components (like the voltage converters) still get a little warmer. This is ultimately the result of a more constant load, which can be difficult to keep up with.

Again, the temperatures only rise one to two degrees moving from an open bench table to a closed case. Of course, the fan speeds needed to make this possible increase as well.

In the end, PowerColor's cooler proves itself to be incredibly effective. All of our thermal readings land within a very comfortable range.

Heating Up & Cooling Down

The last two pictures show where the heating starts and where the circuit board is cooled most effectively.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Cooling & Noise

Cooling Solution & Backplate

By removing the cooler's shroud, we get a better look at its two shells: an outer one made of light metal and the inner one of red ABS. The fans are mounted to the plastic cover, but not acoustically decoupled.

Although PowerColor coats the inside of its backplate in black so that thermal energy can be absorbed more easily, there are also no large surfaces to cover sensitive areas of the board and hinder passive ventilation.

All of the real cooling happens up front, so there's nothing more to say about the Red Devil's back side.

In addition to the sink for some of the voltage converters, two 8mm and three 6mm pipes made of nickel-plated composite material are responsible for transporting thermal energy from the GPU to different parts of the finned cooler.

The GPU heat sink has a rather rough surface, yet performs its task at least as well as the polished plate on Asus' ROG Strix Radeon RX Vega 64.

Fan Curves & Noise

Despite PowerColor's claims to the contrary, our measurements show that there is no semi-passive fan mode. Like AMD, the company keeps its fans spinning continuously. A 33 to 34% PWM reading translates to 1100 to 1200 RPM with the GPU idling between 25-38°C. There doesn't seem to be an extra controller chip on the board that'd stop the fan below a certain threshold.

After a period of intensive cooling during the warm-up phase, PowerColor's fans slow down quite a bit as temperatures stabilize. It's also obvious that the card is acutely sensitive to operating in a closed case versus an open bench table. In order to keep thermals as constant as possible, the fans always spin quite a bit faster inside of a chassis, even after the temperature target is reached. 

Little changes during our stress test. While the cooler and its three fans work well, they also have to move a lot more air over the sink in our closed case.

This card does have enough cooling headroom to dial the fans down a bit. You can even raise the temperature target to 70°C, allowing the volume-optimized thermal solution to operate more quietly.

The 34.2 dB(A) we measured in an open test bench is undoubtedly what other reviewers find so praiseworthy. However, if the fans are set to the speeds observed in a closed case, we blow right past 38 dB(A). Here's what that looks like in the form of a high-resolution frequency spectrum analysis:

With PowerColor's Red Devil RX Vega 64 installed, you'll want to pay close attention to airflow inside of your chassis. It's easier to exhaust waste heat with quiet case fans than to optimize the graphics card for a different target temperature. Or you could do both and win twice. At least that way you can keep noise output under 35 dB(A).

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content

Conclusion

With our review of PowerColor's Red Devil RX Vega 64 8GB HBM2 complete, it looks like we've tested every Radeon RX Vega 64 card available. There just aren't that many custom designs out there.

PowerColor modified AMD's reference card for its own purposes, adding a great cooler that lives up to the Red Devil reputation. Even if the company tuned this model for cooling performance and not acoustics, the outcome isn't obtrusive. If you want, you can bias the thermal solution to less noise by bumping its temperature target to 70°C or 75°C. You'll have to test this out of course. But if your board is louder than you'd like, it's at least good to know there are remedies.

The Red Devil RX Vega 64's performance is typical of other Radeon RX Vega 64 boards. It's also subject to the same voltage, power, and temperature limits. In other words, there isn't much room for overclocking unless you're willing to overwrite the BIOS with manual optimizations. PowerColor's OC mode is mostly theoretical in nature, just like AMD's own implementation. You might gain a bit of performance, but it comes at the expense of much noise, heat, and excess power consumption. The same disappointing news applies to all Radeon RX Vega-based cards equally.

In the end, PowerColor sends a heavyweight into battle that doesn't become overwhelmed, even under taxing workloads. Its performance is good. The noise is tolerable, even if there are quieter options. Fortunately, you're able to fiddle with software-based settings to make the Red Devil quieter, so long as a slightly higher operating temperature doesn't bother you.

Ultimately, PowerColor's solution hovers around the middle range of Radeon RX Vega 64 pricing, all without asking much in the way of compromise. In that context, this card is a solid choice. But even though it's generally faster than GeForce GTX 1080, Nvidia's closest competitor is currently available at a $200+ savings. We have a hard time recommending any Radeon RX Vega 64 with such a chasm between boards best suited to 2560x1440 gaming.

MORE: Best Graphics Cards

MORE: Desktop GPU Performance Hierarchy Table

MORE: All Graphics Content