PowerColor announced the Red Dragon RX Vega 56 8GB, a version of AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56 with custom cooling and board design.
Due to hugely inflated prices caused by the latest wave of crypto-mining, graphics cards announcements seem to have lost most of their luster. After all, what’s the point of knowing about something else you want but can’t afford? Or, at least, isn’t worth the price of purchasing new. Although graphics cards OEMs like PowerColor might be benefiting the most from this craze, a market that is fueled by ravenous demand makes for un-discerning buyers. This consequently makes it hard for OEMs to build or maintain their brand, a necessary hedge against an uncertain future for cryptocurrencies.
To that end, PowerColor has decided not to release just another dedicated mining card, and instead release a new gaming card: the Red Dragon RX Vega 56 8GB. As a custom implementation of AMD Radeon RX Vega 56, the Red Dragon has the standard 3,584 stream processors, 2,048-bit-wide memory interface, and 8GB of HBM2 memory. PowerColor’s customizations include a custom, triple-fan cooling solution; a taller and wider board that matches the footprint of the cooler; and a set of two HDMI 2.0 and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports for video output.
Beefier cooling for the RX Vega 56 is always welcome, because the reference version, as we noted in our review, is loud. You’ll have to check that the Red Dragon can actually fit in your case before you consider it, however, because at 150mm tall, it’s 45mm taller than the PCI slot. The increased cooling doesn’t necessarily translate into better overclocking, either. The Red Dragon is only clocked at 1,177/1,478MHz (base/boost), which is a negligible increase over the reference version’s clock of 1,156/1,471MHz. Given that the RX Vega series have generally proven to be horrible overclockers anyway, perhaps it’s for the better that PowerColor opted for a six-pin and an eight-pin connector for power, instead of using the reference design’s dual eight-pin connectors.
We don’t know the Red Dragon’s pricing yet, but it should sit below the company’s flagship Devil version of the RX Vega 56. PowerColor’s Red Dragon RX Vega 56 8GB will be available March 28.
