Pricing looks good on PowerColor’s Red Devil and Dragon Radeon RX 5700 cards
PowerColor unveiled five custom Radeon RX 5700 series graphics cards starting at $359.
PowerColor is blitzing the custom Navi graphics card scene with five new models under its Red Devil and Red Dragon branding, with relatively attractive pricing. The least expensive of the bunch is the RX 5700 Red Dragon—it carries a $359 MSRP, which is just $10 above reference.
On paper, it looks worth every additional penny. For one, it sports a beefier cooler. Gone is the blower-style shroud found on AMD's reference design, replaced with a cooler featuring a pair of 100mm axial fans and five heatpipes. It also runs a little faster out of the box, with a boost clock of 1,750MHz (up from 1,725MHz).
The Red Devil variant costs $389 ($40 more than a reference card) and kicks things up a notch with a "state-of-the-art" PCB with a 10-phase PWM and high-polymer capacitors, with the promise of "better overclocking and stability." Dual BIOSes are part of the package as well.
Out of the box, the Red Devil variant has a 1,610MHz base clock and 1,750MHz boost clock, up from 1,465MHz and 1,725MHz, respectively. So in short, that extra $10-$30 nets you a mild factory overclock, higher end components, and a presumably better cooling solution. That latter bit is the most attractive selling point, given that AMD says it's "expected and within spec" for a Navi card to hit 110C.
Here's how the full Red Devil/Dragon lineup looks:
- PowerColor RX 5700 XT Red Devil Limited Edition—$449 (+$50 over reference)
- PowerColor RX 5700 XT Red Devil—$439 (+$40 over reference)
- PowerColor RX 5700 Red Devil—$389 (+$40 over reference)
- PowerColor RX 5700 XT Red Dragon—$409 (+$10 over reference)
- PowerColor RX 5700 Red Dragon—$359 ($10 over reference)
As for the Limited Edition card, it carries a $20 premium over the regular 5700 XT Red Devil, which gets you an RGB mouse pad and, less interestingly, a "premium retail box."
Overall, these are good price points compared to reference—MSRPs for stock RX 5700 XT and 5700 cards are $399 and $349, respectively.
The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
That said, PowerColor previously said its custom RX 5700 XT cards will start at $399, the same as reference. Presumably that means more models are still to come, outside of the Red Devil and Dragon series.
As for retail availability, the only one I see in stock right now is the Radeon RX 5700 Red Devil for $389.99 on Newegg. There's also a listing for the Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil for $449.99, though it's not yet in stock.
Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).
Nvidia says its surprisingly high $3.3B gaming revenue is expected to drop but 'not to worry' because next year will be fine *wink* RTX 50-series *wink*
AMD rumoured to be ditching future RDNA 5 graphics architecture in favour of 'unified' UDNA tech in a possible effort to bring AI smarts to gaming ASAP