MSI announced a new series of AMD graphics cards bearing the Polaris architecture. Meet the Mech.
Few hard specifications were provided in the official announcement, but the Mech series will start as two offerings--an RX570 and an RX580. The cards feature a new thermal design with a second-generation version of the company’s patented Torx fan technology called Torx 2.0, which MSI said could generate 22% more air pressure and reduce noise levels. The heatsink has 6mm copper heat pipes that transfer heat from the solid nickel-plated copper baseplate to the aluminum fins, and MSI used a premium thermal compound to further increase the graphics card’s cooling potential.
The cooler’s black shroud matches the matte metal backplate and sports red accent lighting under the cover, and an RGB LED illuminated MSI Dragon logo on the top of the card can be customized to match the rest of your build with a 16.9 billion color spectrum.
MSI isn’t the first company to recently rebrand (or un-brand in some cases) AMD graphics card products, and many of the changes these companies have made are rumored to be the result of Nvidia’s GeForce Partner Program, which purportedly required participants to align gaming brands exclusively with Nvidia, among other supposedly predatory tactics (some sites and sources conjectured these requirements, or the failure to adhere to them, would affect GPU binning and allocation for some OEMs). MSI’s Mech 2 AMD graphics cards come only 11 days after Nvidia abruptly ended the GPP, but it’s possible that the rebranding decision was made while the program was still in effect, and that it was simply too late for MSI to change course once the GPP was dissolved.
Full specifications and pricing for the new MSI Mech 2 series AMD Polaris-based graphics cards are currently unknown, but the company said we’d see them hit the market at the end of July.
