PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX570 AMD
Here we are: the new PowerColor sequel to the RX line has arrived, boasting new physical designs as well as internal modifications to achieve highly scalable efficiency. While most internal hardware features compare similarly to the Red Dragon, such as 4GB 256-bit GDDR5, it does feature some minor internal changes like a 4% increase of boost clock frequency and a decrease by 14% in stream processor count. (The implication is that a boost frequency increase with faster processing translates to fewer needed stream processors.) It’s the L1, L2 and L3 cache argument all over again, but we’re not going to go there; we are, however, going to do a full detailed examination of the Red Devil, so how about we begin?
First and foremost, it’s apparent from the myriad distinct physical manifestations of the card that much focus was applied to physical design. It’s hard to imagine external geometry could have much impact on a card’s performance—I mean it’s just the way it looks, right? Partly. Many objects in our physical realm deal a lot with geometric efficiency, like the airflow around the wing (and, for that matter, entirety) of an airplane; why don’t we fly box-shaped planes like semi trailers?
There’s a huge “gold rush” in geometric manufacturing, from ergonomic design to air flow and heat sink dispersal designs, so it’s not surprising we see fans being affected by this pursuit. Cooler Master worked on geometric manufacturing to improve its fans (number of fans, shape, spacing, etc) as well as new concepts to improve the way heat is extracted from peripherals based on microscopic geometric design (I can’t get over how sick that is). Lenovo studied owls to learn from their biological expertise in silent movement through air and applied it to reduce laptop fan noise.
Let’s take a further look into our Red Devil card and see how these pursuits have been applied.
