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.

Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

  • WithoutWeakness
    I'm all for better reference coolers. AMD cards have notoriously been much louder than Nvidia cards since Nvidia redesigned their fan for the 600 and 700 series. As long as AMD can make faster cards with quieter coolers I don't care much what the aesthetics look like. My 2 reference 6970's are pretty much black boxes with some red stripes on top and I think they look fine. I only wish they were a bit quieter under load. Even a custom fan curve doesn't help much once I'm in a demanding game and both cards are pegged at 100%.
    Reply
  • vmem
    so it is official that AMD is actually making desktop HD8000 series, and the rumors that they're skipping ahead to HD9000 is false?
    Reply
  • bison88
    The question is, so when we will see this mysterious HD 8000 Series card? Its been over a year in a half. Nvidia has dropped both 600/700 Series in that time, and the last we heard was end of 2013 or Q1 2014.
    Reply
  • sarinaide
    I have a headset or 5.1 surround sound, I can't hear my Graphics card over the sounds of havoc in the battlefields :D this is probably the most pointless aspect of Graphics cards to me but whatever makes your boat float.
    Reply
  • steven785
    What does AIB mean?
    Reply
  • sarinaide
    10950838 said:
    What does AIB mean?

    Add In Board. Basically refers to manufacturers ie: ASUS, MSI, Zotac, PNY, XFX, Gigabyte, Club3D, HIS, Sapphire etc, each manufacturer uses there own PCB designs and thermal cooling solutions and then you get manufacturer exclusivity ie:

    Nvidia: EVGA, Galaxy, PNY, Zotac, KFA2
    AMD: Club3D, Sapphire, HIS.

    Reply
  • John Hadley
    The *most* important thing about any video card to me is how loud the cooler is. This is more important than performance even. I sit next to my computer all day and I don't want it to sound like a 747.
    Reply
  • Ranth
    Steven... Google is your friend, AIB is 'Add in board' add 'partners' and it make a little more sense. http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDPartnersAIBOESystemBuilder.aspx
    Reply
  • tlg
    If you spend $400 on a GPU with stock cooling instead of spending £420-450 for a card with a good custom cooler you are just dump, sorry. High end GPU with stock coolers are for those that will buy a waterblock to fit on that card.
    Reply
  • JamesSneed
    10950615 said:
    The question is, so when we will see this mysterious HD 8000 Series card? Its been over a year in a half. Nvidia has dropped both 600/700 Series in that time, and the last we heard was end of 2013 or Q1 2014.

    Nothing official yet but all the rumors are pointing to Q3 this year.
    Reply