Absolutely Absurd RX 9070 Video Cards: Every 9070 XT & 9070 So Far

[Music] there's a new clown car in clown town and this time all of the AMD partner model gpus are spilling out of it we've done these roundups a few times now for NVIDIA like with the 50 Series and the 40 series where we round up all of the most absurd video card launches but also talk about some of the useful things they're doing in the design process now we're happy to see that the 970 XT is apparently interesting enough to amd's own partners that they too have a clown car full of absurd marketing for video cards yon is soaking its gpus in a perfume that smells like ocean water to match its waifu back blade dual tough balls return with the Asus RX 970 XT fans azrock launched its video discussing vrm electrical design to a backdrop of high BPM metal music and someone really needs to check in on powercolor to see if they're okay over there because they have literal paragraphs rambling on about how quote at its core lies the hellstone leading Gamers through the darkness to Ultimate Victory on their marketing page about uh video cards and power color your hell doesn't scare me I just spent all Thursday trying to buy your gpus at MSRP I'm already in hell in this video we'll walk through the partner models we'll talk about some of the interesting and actually good things they're doing for their design there's actually some pretty cool stuff like for example the move to more user serviceable fans is something we've always been excited about since I took aart in XFX ghost 580 several years ago so there's some cool stuff there's also just like with Nvidia and what we did there a lot of absurdity to talk about so that's where we're going to get it to and separately we'll have something to say about availability pretty soon but let's get into this one first with the clown car from clown town of GPU Partners we brought you this video with store. Gamers access. net head over to the store and grab one of our PC Building anti-static mod mats for your next System Assembly project each featuring a huge 4T X 2T build grounding straps with common ground point two scale DDR diagrams ethernet pinout diagrams screw tracking and more if you're into tabletop gaming and E-Waste repurposing you might like our inductor tabletop gaming dice each kit includes seven sharp edge resin dice with E-Waste inductors embedded within them the kit includes a custom wooden box with latch integrated roll tray and an included Goblin token card we made you can also grab one of our snowflake the cat tabletop gaming dice kits with tiny snowflake Miniatures within the dice Plus a snowflake card that we made finally you might like our project in soldering mats which have been highly popular with the DIY community visit store.

gam x. net to grab any of these items back to the clown car up first we'll start with msi's RX 970 series and here's the exclusive first look oh okay right up front one interesting thing about this launch is the fact that MSI is nowhere to be seen MSI was late to the RX 7000 series and made a statement to Hardware Lux regarding uh brand Focus sounds kind of buzzwordy quote our focus is currently actually more on the RTX cards nevertheless the collaboration with AMD is essential and of the highest relevance for us we see a very positive development here especially in the area of main boards and quote if that's not a backhanded compliment anyway it's probably for the best seen as visiting msi's website results in it scalping its own customers forcing bundles with a $700 power supply and also just breaking when more than six people access it so maybe nothing of value was lost power color starts us off and power color named its top arcs 970 XT and 970 the Red Devil asked me about the time that power color sent an email to us begging us not to show the back blate on one of their past Red Devil gpus because it had the wrong number of points on what was supposed to be a pentagram on the back of the card they've uh the the stuff that never sees the light of day is amazing just for the record power color Penta five there's five of them so just so you don't accidentally offend anyone next time quote the Red Devil emerges as the unparalleled force in gaming pushing performance to its absolute Peak at its core lies the hellstone uh leading Gamers through the darkness to Ultimate Victory introducing hellstone RGB like lighting ah yes that's that's what I'd use the hellstone for if I were to rescue one from the depths of Hell RGB lights forged in the fires of the underworld and inspired by the Cradle of the rarest gems chat gbt I I mean the marketing department continues quote the Red Devil hellstone exudes the beauty of crystals and the raw power of the Abyss its multifaceted gem inspired design transforms light into an enchanting Ambiance the dazzling Crystal draws attention and turns your PC into okay okay what what the are we actually doing here it's got RGB lights in it got it that's really all we needed to know actually what I'd really like to know is is the hellstone or the dark oblisk a higher frequency that's what I want to know let's see how powercolor transitions away from hell hell Stones Devils Darkness the abyss and back to selling the video cards they make dual ball bearings that's one hell of a transition did you see what the card is a black and red 69 mm thick triple fan setup with seven heat pipes that we think are 6 mm in diameter the flow through area appears large at first glance but is actually mostly blocked off looking closely you can see the blocked and unblocked portions there's all this writing about hell stones and hell and abyss and really what they're trying to say is black black red and RGB it's got three 8 Pin power connectors and suggests a crazy high minimum power supply requirement of 900 watts power color says that this is based off of a system with a 750x but considering we measured that CPU at 251 Watts fully loaded that's a ton of Headroom still the Red Devil also has a dual Bios mode with OC and Silent settings dual vbios is often underutilized by the companies that offer it but the best way to make use of the switch would be to offer a meaningful power and fan speed drop with silent mode the Special Edition comes with a metal key cap made to look like the GPU itself so that you don't have to open your computer to shove your finger into fans repeatedly it also includes a graphics card remover which when you click on it looks suspiciously like a pry bar that won't cause any problems next is the hellhound in black or spectral white we lik the 7800 XD hellhound for its price previously of the new one power color says get ready quote the hellhound has stood as the steadfast guardian of the gaming realm delivering unshakable reliability and raw power to Gamers everywhere and quote and I don't know what that means the card itself is smaller than the Red Devil with one fewer heat pipe and eight pin power connector but a relatively unrestricted flow through area on the cooler the minimum suggested power supply wattage for the hellhound is strangely 800 watts that's 100 Watts less than the Red Devil recommended power supply we'd have to see the power draw of each to believe there's that much of a Divergence cuz that seems extremely unlikely V bios rarely allows that much of a swin uh except for xoc bioses but we'd like to get one in if so the hellhound like most modern gpus is using a phase change pad for its thermal paste it has a dual V bio switch with OC and Silent modes which should just affect fan speed and it uses a 10 plus1 vrm design the 12 layer PCB should help with some of the management of heat and soak uh Power color is also using opposing rotation for the outer and inner fans with the inner fan being smaller sometimes this helps just depends on the card power colors at last 970 XT is the reaper completing the trifecta of afterlife and death so it's either the most hated unit in Starcraft 2 or the true early 2000s era gamer brand we've always wanted Now power color just needs to ship an XFX style do not disturb I'm gaming door Haner and we're in fortunately We Don't Fear the Reaper because it has a cleaner blackout look along with a true two slot profile at 41 mm thick with back blade it's got a further reduced system power requirement of 750 watts where where are they getting this power it's 150 watts difference now and as far as the marketing they must have run out of free chat GPT credits by the time they got to this one because the reaper doesn't have much of the marketing at all all three of power colors 970 XTS use phase change Tim the evj of AMD is next but but hopefully without the quitting part Sapphire is bringing in its Nitro plus for both the 970 XT and the 970 the Nitro plus has frame defense so that's it seems good it also specializes in stealthiness it brings out Arrow curves and it has what everyone's been waiting for the magnet plate and we still don't know how those work this is one of the most striking new designs that's falling into the love it or hate it category the card is a 66 mm thick triple fan solution and a champagne gold color with a decorative Grill bearing a repeating triangle pattern if power color made this they'd probably call it the Illuminati there's no power connector along the edge it's instead hidden underneath a false secondary back plate that magnetically attaches to the true back blade surprisingly it's a 12vt 2x6 connector that attaches on the end of the PCB leaving the cable to route through the flowthrough area of the cooler exiting towards the motherboard the intention is to hide the cable and let it run directly into a cable grommet in the case but we think this could make it easier to miss issues with cable contact you'd also need to really pay attention to not pull on the power cable too much during Cable Management because this Arrangement could make it possible to overly sideload the connector the tbp of the Nitro plus 97 XT is 330 Watts so it's going to pull far less power than something like a 590 at 575 but we wouldn't be totally shocked to see if one of these turns up with damage from an insertion issue eventually or something due to the limited safety margin but at least at 330 Watts the risk is reduced greatly Sapphire added fuses after the power connector and depending on the amperage rating and how the circuit is designed it's possible that they could be a safeguard against drastically imbalanced draw but fear not because the Nitro plus is engineered good good that's good and it even has cooling spelled out as just one massive word it's like the opposite to the tryhard approach power color took just one gigantic word to describe what it does instead of writing paragraphs of Dante's Inferno GPU Edition we like the Simplicity of knowing backplate engineered argb output cooling sort of like some kind of tech haou Sapphire is using honey well PTM 7950 phase change Tim as well has quick swap fans which are actually genuinely cool we really like this design approach it's easier to do self-repair and at least six composite heat Pipes make up the cooling system next up from Sapphire is the pure also available in XT and non-xt versions it's got an all-white shroud and is a similar size to the Nitro plus but it has two standard eight pin power connectors in the usual location there's an RGB header in the flowthrough area on the end of the PCB which allows for controlling the cards RGB lights via motherboard header like the others it uses a PTM 7950 phase change Tim but the heat sink appears to have fewer heat pipes than the Nitro plus Sapphire also equipped the pure with fuses seemingly using one per eight pin connector the final Sapphire designs bear the pulse branding which are the models we used in our reviews and then there's yes yes's done a lot of cool things over the years they put cat shrouds on their video cards they they made that case and if you're wondering where all the GPU Supply went well yesen put video cards in the ocean yes really said it all with this video video they've apparently been doing these for a while too we just we never noticed it's a new channel to subscribe to it's part of their decision to add perfumes and scents to video cards off the line and in this instance for some reason they've decided they want the GPU to smell like the ocean that's because this GPU came from Atlantis that's right nothing says electronics and metal like brackish Port water we'll just talk about the gpus which we're pretty sure aren't ocean waterproof but whatever the Sakura Atlantis is you just saw there with its baby blue and baby pink shroud they say with quote colorful shell appearance end quote that's supposed to shift the colors as you look at it from different angles If This Were Need for Speed underground too it' be the pearlescent paint job it's unfortunate that it's just on the shroud of the card since in most cases the Shroud will be facing down you could vertical mount it but then you wouldn't be able to appreciate the back plates uh we're sure the choice of back blate or pearlescence will be chosen WI L by the well adjusted G gamers in our audience large portions of the two fans are blocked unfortunately which will definitely affect performance but it looks interesting the pcbs and pcie brackets are both white on these with a white PCB in particular showing an attention for detail that we appreciate the color matching here to the credit's actually pretty good this is something that yes's done well with Asus is bringing its tough design and it's tough Balls to the RX 970 XT and that's good because if you buy anything anything from Asus you'd better hope it's tough enough to not get any tiny blemishes that would invalidate your warranty asus's page says the toughest quote built to last which again is good because you won't get any after Sal support Asus says it has buffed cooling I guess it's better than nerfed and the company says the tough will back you with quote an arsenal of rugged reinforcements to cover your six sure whatever maybe we can Venture into Power Keller's vision of hell with asus's self Grand in military themed video card with quote military grade components and once again shout out to our service member viewers who've told us exactly what military grade apparently means the tough is roughly three slots thick and Visually extremely similar to the Nvidia 50 Series tough cards with the gunmetal gray color but with three 8 Pin power connectors it features a dual V bio switch and a moderately sized flowthrough area just like the Nvidia cards it also has dual tough balls you never want just one tough ball that's bad news you got to go into battle with at least two the prime is the only other 970 XT model that Asus has shown at the time of writing it seems like it might be based on the same PCB as the tough as it appears to have the same layout and dual bio switch but with a black Slimmer 2 and a half slot cooler unfortunately marketing phoned it in and made this one boring for us a few puns about being Primal or primed and they've met their quota of retroactively trying to make the name have an origin it does however have an advanced technology where its fans produce no noise Asus calls it zero DB technology a yes zero DB technology also known as off gigabyte is up next and gigabyte is bringing even less fire for amd's gpus and Asus with just three total models across the entire lineup but they actually look all right so it's not a total phone in however we're concerned about the message gigabyte ascending with its uh ready to play high Banner slapped across the top of the product pages maybe all those years of distracted Counter-Strike Source teammates I had at 3:00 a. m.

were using gigabyte Hardware gigabyte's Readiness for being high is seen in all of its efforts they really committed to it for example the aoris RX 970 XT Elite is a triple hawk fan wielding thermal gel Laden GPU with 38 pins quote shuttling through the aoris universe the iconic light slices through the visual field while extreme speed leaves after images that culminate in a true one-of aind symbol first of all once again I don't know what any of that means secondly we were unaware that there's an entire gigabyte aor universe and frankly we want to learn more quote the design focuses on extensive after images effects to convey an intense sents of extreme speed on the front cover with the visuals converging into the fans paired with a matte surface texture the overall appearance is imbued with a mysterious yet Dynamic aura look we made fun of power color seemingly using chat GPT but but we think gigabyte should start coming back to Earth we think the light effects behind the fans are surprisingly tasteful but the cooler flow through area looks needlessly restricted the gaming OC model is more subdued featuring a dark gray shroud with angled Corners gigabyte really wants you to think it looks like armor actually they say quote the gaming series draws the concepts from Mech Warriors blending the futuristic armor with mechanical Aesthetics to deliver exceptional protection and Powerful durability okay quote unique textures cover the curved surface paired with the layering of opiant so I don't know what that that must be French or something that give the gaming design a strong armor like identity quote like armor the exterior features a multi-layered structure combined with varied surface material finishes and featuring a power armor design with sliding side plate but gigabyte is responsible in its advertising it says quote this animation is for ill ative purposes only actual product appearance may vary ASRock is up next starting with the 970 XT taii it's three slots or 61 mm thick and Visually in line with recent ASRock taii gpus with the gear Motif and translucent fans the most interesting thing about it is the choice of a 12volt 2x6 power connector mounted in the traditional location along the top edge of the PCB unlike sapphires Nitro plus it's again an interesting decision we think that like with sapphires this connector is guaranteed to have a very high high visibility failure at some point even on AMD although they should be fewer in quantity than cards running at 575 Watts it's it's still going to happen uh eight pins fail too it's just these are going to be really visible it doesn't seem worth the association if it's not necessary which it isn't for this power draw but whatever the cooler has eight heat pipes a generous flow through cutout in the back blade and even has cutouts along the outside edge to allow some air to more easily Escape there as well it's also got a hardware LED switch to outright disable the RGB LEDs and a dual V bio switch asrock's marketing is thin they say the back plate is stylish and no one can argue with those golden gears they claim the heat sink fins are air deflecting which is technically true and that's the best kind of true the metal frame is reinforced maybe giving the defense frame some competition its heat pipes even work out a rock says they're Ultra fit ASRock says its fans spin for cooling stop for silence which again is technically true if a bit literal they also say quote the fan spins when the temperature goes high for the optimal Cooling and stops when the temperature goes low for the complete silence the ASRock says more interestingly azrock notes it's welding the heat pipe to the fins seemingly everywhere which actually does help with thermals most high-end heat sinks do this it's not new but some of the cheaper ones we've looked at over the years use pressfit instead and that does hurt performance azrock also has quote nanothermal paste that's good it's better than micro Pico or gigap paste beyond all of this we think the LED switch is one of the more useful features dual V bios is nice for the redundancy as well the steel Legend is next available on both standard and dark colorways they both drop the cogs and gears in favor of geometric patterns use standard eight pin power connectors and have slightly slim down coolers the airflow cutouts remain which is a positive and the a pin is also a positive the steel Legend is a three- fan cooler ASRock says quote the fancy Outlook makes the graphic card more legendary and visual it also helps to enhance Co in with the premium thermal pads equipped backside end quote legendary visual aside we're happier to hear that azrock put thermal pads between the PCB and the back plate this should be mandatory in a training video of making a video card with a metal back plate just to not waste the surface area ASRock also has a challenger model for only the 970 NXT which is a typical looking triple fan card with a black shroud and RGB accents combined these give us quote more decoration more Beauty end quote seems like a yes in marketing line we'll see how they duke it out Acer is going back to the discreet GPU market for another round with its Nitro design and no not that one we're left somewhat uh nonplused as to why Acer doesn't want to differentiate its Nitro brand more from the sapphire incumbent Nitro plus brand but hey that plus makes all the difference in a court regardless of the name it looks like this one cooler design is shared across both the Acer 970 and the 970 XT for both the standard and the OC variants of each it's another triple fan design with a dark gray and silver aluminum shroud and a flowthrough area with a very large hexagonal mesh if you call that maybe it's more like a grate or something Acer says you can quote fuel your inner passions and quote ignit your inner gamer Ford power goes up to 340 watts on the 970 xtv bios for the higher end of the cards allowing more Headroom than the default power budget of about 300 to 310 Watts typically that might help with overclocking Acer even brags about its Frost blade 4. 0 fans that couple with quote o sorry it's not funny it's very serious oxygen free heat pipes that's good it's uh it sure suck if heat pipes had oxygen in them seen as they are literally vacuum sealed and welded shut in fact I'm not sure we've ever encountered an oxygen rich heat pipe but we'll let you know when we do anyway acter says its GPU also has 2 and a times longer lifespan capacitors but it never says what it's two and a half times longer than is it 2 and a half times longer than the lifespan of GPU Supply launch that wouldn't be very long Acer also claims that it's quote faster with pcie 5. 0 end quote which is technically true again but also totally irrelevant we were not able to find a difference in testing in the very least we're glad to see Acer sticking with discrete gpus its designs have shown promise like the Acer bifrost for Intel that we reviewed some marketing memes aside Maybe there's something to these XFX is launching a confusing Meer of 17 different cards between the 970 and 970 XT the lineup essentially boils down to three main cooler designs Mercury the high-end Swift the lowend and the middle as Quicksilver which we assume they'll sell at skate shops or something the Mercury line has standard models in black or white with a prominent RGB strip across the top Edge we were unable to tell the difference between the two black OC gaming Edition with RGB cards but they're listed with two different part numbers maybe it's regional market distinction there's also a magnetic air version of these but it actually means that they have magnetically attached fans that could be swapped without tools which is great to see XFX did this with its old ghost models years ago and we loved it on those cards makes replacement extremely easy the user can do it without needing to send it in it was actually awesome they just send the fan out in an envelope the magnets can apparently support up to a kilogram but this version of The Fan will have red colored outer rings to distinguish them lastly for the Mercury class there's a version with an all black shroud and a white only LED strip in place of RGB the middle end quick silver class is entirely devoid of RGB but will be available in both standard and magnetic air versions either black or white the main gimmic with these is a set of removable so-called magnetic winds that can be customized seems like XFX is making alternate colors of these available at some point in the future likely as DLC the Swift class rounds out the lowend with simple all black and all white versions of both the 970 and 970 XD no trick with these no magnetic air they're just graphics cards so now we've unloaded two clown cars of clown cards and all that's left to do is to see who's the ring leader of this Circus the first was all the board partners of Nvidia and their absurd marketing and gpus and now AMD has risen to a level of popularity with this generation that it too has Partners doing absurd things with their video cards so uh we want get some of these in there's some genuinely interesting engineering going on in some of these but personally the thing I'm most excited about always is just the repairability of some of these devices so uh years and years ago when XFX made the RX 580 ghost I think it was I think that was the model that I'm thinking of at some point I took it apart in a video for something and it really impressed me how easy those fans were to replace and for whatever reason they just they didn't really appear that much on cards it was a single screw it popped up you can pull it out it's pin the pad and if you had a defect you emailed their support and they sent you a fan they didn't ask you to send the whole video card in they just sent a fan and they were like do you feel comfortable using a screwdriver replace it yourself here you go it's super easy so seeing that approach to I think it was two cards in this Roundup that I can remember uh that's pretty cool it's it's like a super helpful feature that hopefully you never have to use most people won't but it's just nice to have that kind of thing and uh really add some quality of life but then some of the other choices we question like going with 12vt high power at all when it's really not necessary for these cards that's it for this one a lot of stuff coming up as always it's been a crazy couple weeks a lot of fun though working on this stuff I wish the launches went smoother but at least they're just starting to smooth out a little bit there's a CPU coming up maybe that'll kind of go smoothly we'll see check back in subscribe for more go to store.

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