XFX's custom Radeon Navi RX 5700 series prototype has been pictured

[WYP]

Is this XFX's custom Navi design? Another design change?



Read more about XFX's custom Radeon Navi GPU prototype.

 

[grec]

Looks like a sad robots face.

 

[g0ggles1994]

Looks like a sad robots face.

 

[demonking]

The idea is simple. If a design works, why change it? XFX didn't get this memo

perhaps you should look at the last XFX review on this site? It got slammed due to its cooler design. Looked cheap and was not the best at cooling either if I remember correctly.

You might feel we're being overly harsh, after all the XFX Fatboy performed just as well as the Red Devil. For two reasons we're less willing to overlook such things. Firstly just because the card is affordable doesn't mean you should have to tolerate the looks of an unbranded Chinese clone of a card. Secondly the XFX 290X Dual Dissipation and XFX R9 Fury Triple Dissipation cards looked so amazing we know that XFX can bring looks and cooler performance to the party. It's just too warm, and too finicky with the overclocking for a basic user to overcome the aesthetic limitations. Fortunately for XFX the underlying 4th Generation GCN GPU is good enough that if you can tolerate such weaknesses that it might be worth spending your hard earned money on, we however would probably avoid this one considering there are better looking options on all levels for the same price like the Powercolor.

Kind of hypocritical

 

[WYP]

perhaps you should look at the last XFX review on this site? It got slammed due to its cooler design. Looked cheap and was not the best at cooling either if I remember correctly.


Kind of hypocritical

I see your point. The RX 590 Fatboy was a strange beast. There are merits to making a bespoke cooler design for every graphics card, but XFX goes crazy and gets very mixed results because of it.

Another thing that's worth noting is that the Fatboy uses a different cooler design than the RX 580. They kept the shroud the same, but the cooler is very different underneath. The Fatboy isn't bad because they reused the same cooler.

I said if a design works why change it. XFX's design clearly didn't work in the case of the Fatboy.

What I'm getting at is that you don't know what to expect from XFX with each generation. At least with the likes of ASUS you know what their coolers will look like and offer on a basic level, with XFX its a roll of the dice. There are benefits to creating a solid cooler design and reusing it. Iterative refinements with each generation can make for some solid products.

 

[AlienALX]

I quite like that. Then again I said the same about the Fatboy and then later I saw all of it.