AMD Assures Better Coolers for Radeon HD 8000 Cards

AMD has accepted that its coolers on the Radeon HD 7000 series discrete desktop graphics cards weren't particularly good. It has announced that it is working on building better coolers for the Radeon HD 8000 series graphics cards, although it didn't give any indication as to how the coolers would be built or what they would look like.

The new coolers, though, won't be on the same level as the reference cooler found on the GTX Titan or GTX 780. The reason for this is that although these coolers might be very good, they are also very costly to manufacture and only add to the base price of the graphics cards. This is also the reason why many (or most) of the GTX 770 cards do not come with the GTX Titan cooler, even though it is part of the reference card. When AIBs use their own fabricated coolers, the graphics cards often cost less; thus, they can offer the cards for lower, more competitive prices. Some AIBs, of course, will manufacture cards with better coolers than the reference card, but these usually come at a price premium.

The new coolers that we'll be seeing on the Radeon HD 8000 series graphics cards will be better than the reference coolers that we've seen on the Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards, but they won't be as good as the alternate coolers that the AIBs can produce. This is likely because of an effort to keep costs down and give AIBs a reason to give cards their own coolers, yet make the cheaper reference cards more reliable through better cooling. Since this is all speculation, do take it with a pinch of salt.