# PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil



## W1zzard (Aug 15, 2019)

The PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 XT Red Devil is overclocked out of the box and uses a massive triple-slot, triple-fan cooler that delivers outstanding noise levels. It's actually the quietest Radeon card we ever tested, and quieter than all NVIDIA RTX cards except for one custom-design.

*Show full review*


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## las (Aug 15, 2019)

OC headroom is simply non-existing on 5700 series it seems. I had hoped custom cards would allow for 10-20% perf boost but no... I guess the chip was not really hold back by the reference blower cooler.

Well, atleast you don't need hearing protection.


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## Ferrum Master (Aug 15, 2019)

What we are actually seeing, AMD does max out their silicon to the max.

And yes, it works fine~ same with crap cooling... 

Navi has some console oriented qualities in their blood for real, that we do not appreciate really.


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## Jism (Aug 15, 2019)

Ferrum Master said:


> What we are actually seeing, AMD does max out their silicon to the max.



They've bin doing that since the first gen of Ryzen. Thanks to advanced chip monitoring (i.e the multiple sensors responsible for the GPU Hotspot) they always seem to find the highest possible boost state of the chip while maintaining silicon fitness.

The days of 10% to 20% OC's are gone. You want premium you pay premium.


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## sutyi (Aug 15, 2019)

las said:


> OC headroom is simply non-existing on 5700 series it seems. I had hoped custom cards would allow for 10-20% perf boost but no... I guess the chip was not really hold back by the reference blower cooler.
> 
> Well, atleast you don't need hearing protection.



These days are long gone. The best you can manage (if at all) is a sub <10% perf increase. nVIDIA and RTG are power and/or voltage limiting every GPU that is not the highest end SKU available.

Last nVIDIA series that had some decent OC headroom was Kepler. Maxwell OC performance uplift  was around the 10% mark and ever since Pascal it has been in the single digits.

Their boost algorythms already do 95-98% of the OC, the rest is basically on you giving it a higher power and temperature limit, so these GPUs boost higher.


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## jabbadap (Aug 15, 2019)

Ferrum Master said:


> What we are actually seeing, AMD does max out their silicon to the max.
> 
> And yes, it works fine~ same with crap cooling...
> 
> Navi has some console oriented qualities in their blood for real, that we do not appreciate really.



Well it maxed out what they think is safe to silicon. Chips can go higher, if all the limiters are removed. But that would potentially increase RMA rates in a long run, so I think they are not willing to ease those limits. Well maybe they will tweak that gddr6 slider a bit, but the rest is left to OC community to solve.


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## r.h.p (Aug 15, 2019)

actually the temp decrease in the card  or cards is what I find the most impressive. This new Navi range are kicking my Vega 64 to the curb pal s … lol 
Yet im wondering if 20 FPS is worth the upgrade  because all the things I do my Vega > on fire  is still ok hehe


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## las (Aug 15, 2019)

sutyi said:


> These days are long gone. The best you can manage (if at all) is a sub <10% perf increase. nVIDIA and RTG are power and/or voltage limiting every GPU that is not the highest end SKU available.
> 
> Last nVIDIA series that had some decent OC headroom was Kepler. Maxwell OC performance uplift  was around the 10% mark and ever since Pascal it has been in the single digits.
> 
> Their boost algorythms already do 95-98% of the OC, the rest is basically on you giving it a higher power and temperature limit, so these GPUs boost higher.



Maxwell overclocked well. My Gigabyte 980 Ti G1 gained like 40% performance compared to reference. Running at 1520/2000.

Custom 980 Ti cards performed ~20% better out of the box, compared to ref.
970 and 980 overclocked very well too. 20% headroom or so.

980 Ti was/is probably the best GPU for OC ever made. Nvidia clocked them too low on ref. Limited by blower cooler.

My current 1080 Ti does around 2000-2050 ingame, decent perf uplift.
Simply max out powerlimit and temp target, even without raising gpu clock, performance will increase.


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## Octopuss (Aug 15, 2019)

This might very well be the card I want in my life. I'm not even sure if I will step away from 1080p, so I don't even need high end performance, but what I do need is silence.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Aug 15, 2019)

Well it seems PowerColor managed to use their big  & long 3 slot cooler effectively.  Kinda pricey and fin stack direction not my favourite.

Still short listed along with the Pulse.  Really like Sapphire replaceable fans though...


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## Dave65 (Aug 15, 2019)

Looks great IMO!


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## ZeroFM (Aug 15, 2019)

las said:


> Maxwell overclocked well. My Gigabyte 980 Ti G1 gained like 40% performance compared to reference. Running at 1520/2000.
> 
> Custom 980 Ti cards performed ~20% better out of the box, compared to ref.
> 970 and 980 overclocked very well too. 20% headroom or so.
> ...


Yap oc days is GONE . 980ti oc gain 30%+ , 1080ti oc is only ~10% . 2080ti 11% , 2080/70/60 under 10% ...


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## dj-electric (Aug 15, 2019)

If you really insist, you can imagine you get your hardware with far worse clock optimizations like in the past, so you could overclock it yourself to gain more performance.


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## HTC (Aug 15, 2019)

Has anyone tried this card (or any other 5700XT AIB card) with those soft power play tables yet?

How does it fair VS reference?


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## 3125b (Aug 15, 2019)

To gain a satisfactory amount of performance every generation, the manufacturers needed to optimize their chips better, now we are pretty much at the end of that.

Powercolor did a good job here, very good cooler, take note Asus.


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## B-Real (Aug 15, 2019)

Will there be a cheaper Powercolor model? As Powercolor said a $400 price tag, while the non-mousepad version of this costs $440. Anyway, the cards looks cool and great.


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## Khonjel (Aug 15, 2019)

B-Real said:


> Will there be a cheaper Powercolor model? As Powercolor said a $400 price tag, while the non-mousepad version of this costs $440. Anyway, the cards looks cool and great.



2 fan Red Dragon has been spotted. Looks like MSI Evoke/Sapphire past Nitro brick.

Seriously I'm not hating on brick coolers but if I ever buy a case with those vertical gpu brackets, MSI's lambo looking Gaming X/Z would be at the top of my list. Not their trio though. The only 3 fan cooler I like is EVGA's 1080 ti FTW3. Sad that nobody else seems to copy it.


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## demian_vi (Aug 15, 2019)

B-Real said:


> Will there be a cheaper Powercolor model? As Powercolor said a $400 price tag, while the non-mousepad version of this costs $440. Anyway, the cards looks cool and great.



Powercolor released info on Red Dragon and a regular model today









						PowerColor launches full line up for the RX 5700 (XT)
					

Powercolor announced a full line up for the RX 5700 series, from top to bottom. The PowerColor RX 5700 XT Red Devil comes at 439$ / 459€  with a limited edition for 10$ more at 449$ / 449&a...




					www.guru3d.com


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## Footman (Aug 15, 2019)

Interesting stuff. I have seen wildly fluctuating clocks on my reference 5700XT from 1200-2050mhz during BFV. This is with the fans at 100% as I wanted to avoid throttling. Temps at load were around 70C, so I am hoping that throttling is not the issue here. I have plans to watercool.

Question: Does anyone know if AMD partners will be releasing a version of the 5700XT based on reference pcb with custom heat sinks? If so who? 

Thanks,


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## Mistral (Aug 15, 2019)

Bloody solid cooler, but I think I like the Assus pcb a bit better. Not that we know the price on that one yet...


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## John Naylor (Aug 15, 2019)

las said:


> OC headroom is simply non-existing on 5700 series it seems. I had hoped custom cards would allow for 10-20% perf boost but no... I guess the chip was not really hold back by the reference blower cooler.
> 
> Well, atleast you don't need hearing protection.



PC is the 1st one to  almost match the MSI  2070 Z with respect to noise.... just 1 dbA short which is very commendable.

The headroom thing has been AMDs "modus operandi" since the 290x ... they very aggressivly clock their cards "in the box" ... however that does result in a somewhat higher return rate as some silicon won't be able to hit the mark,



			https://tpucdn.com/review/powercolor-radeon-rx-5700-xt-red-devil/images/relative-performance_2560-1440.png
		


It has a 100% to 96% lead of the reference 2070.



			https://tpucdn.com/review/powercolor-radeon-rx-5700-xt-red-devil/images/overclocked-performance.png
		


100% x (117.0 / 115.3) = 101.47



			https://tpucdn.com/review/msi-geforce-rtx-2070-gaming-z/images/overclocked-performance.png
		


96% x (144.5 / 128.3) = 108.12

108.12 / 101.47 =  6.6% performance advantage advantage

MSI 2070 Performance / Price Ratio= 100 x 108.12 / $459.99 = 23.50
PowerColor 5700 XT Performance / Price Ratio= 100 x 101.47 / $449.99 = 22.55

Would appear that PC has a competitive alternative here with the 5700 XT ... but I thing $450 is a bit too much.   i can see the card taking sales away from nVidia options at about $429.99


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## illli (Aug 15, 2019)

Looks good, but their warranty sucks and I've read nothing but complaints about their awful warranty/RMA service.  Its the same reason I'll never buy a zotac card


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## danbert2000 (Aug 15, 2019)

At this point it's pretty clear there is no real performance difference between any of the 5700 XTs. This might explain why AMD put out such a crappy blower fan on their reference model. If the board partners can't distinguish themselves with factory overclocks, they need something else. So it's all about coolers, temperature, and noise levels.

I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. The headache of multiple chip revisions per product in the first RTX card releases meant that you could end up buying a card that had a subpar chip that boosted less than normal. At least if you get a Navi card you can be assured that you're getting the same level of performance as everyone else. Of course people that enjoy tweaking their hardware for performance are going to be upset, but that's not really going to affect the majority of users anyway.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Aug 15, 2019)

With so little variances & leftover headroom, AMD's chip design & binning look really, really impressive.


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## Dwarden (Aug 16, 2019)

i really like those new reviews of 5700 XT AIB cards
yet there is one small complaint i have
it's about the `Temperatures & Fan Noise`

it's missing information about the ambient temperatures (room , case)
please put it there and also such information shall be in in the 'test setup' page

imho that bit would be very helpful


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## Zubasa (Aug 16, 2019)

yakk said:


> With so little variances & leftover headroom, AMD's chip design & binning look really, really impressive.


Yeah depends on what you are after, for people who likes to tweak their own hardware. It maybe disapointing.
But for most people tight binning also means everyone are getting practically the same experience, there is no "wrong" card to buy.

It is rather frustrating to get a dud.
For example my Zotac 2080 ti pretty much tops out at around 1995~2025 Stable on the core and has Micron GDDR6 that is rather disappointing too.
On 5700XT so far every core is within tight tolerance and all the AIB cards have Micron GDDR6, so with all the same ICs it truly is down to silicon lottery.
Unlike me where you pay $1300 and hope you get Samsung GDDR6. With some 2080ti that can do like 2150Mhz core, combine that with Samsung GDDR6 that can do +1400 the performance difference is noticeable.
Yes I am talking about cards of the exact same SKU having rather large variance.


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## springs113 (Aug 16, 2019)

yakk said:


> With so little variances & leftover headroom, AMD's chip design & binning look really, really impressive.


Could that be good or bad though?


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## looks (Aug 16, 2019)

unreal, the asus strix was the worst cooler out of all these 5700xt cards, who would of guessed.


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## nguyen (Aug 16, 2019)

Zubasa said:


> Yeah depends on what you are after, for people who likes to tweak their own hardware. It maybe disapointing.
> But for most people tight binning also means everyone are getting practically the same experience, there is no "wrong" card to buy.
> 
> It is rather frustrating to get a dud.
> ...



Lol yeah I bought the Asus 2080 Ti Turbo just to slap a waterblock on it, turned out it was a non-A chip with 280W power limit. Now with Palit 310W PL bios I'm happy running the chip at 1995mhz/ 983mV (freq is stable across all games), +500mhz Vram, which still is 15% faster than stock 2080 Ti anyways. The last 5% OC is only fun for benching purposes, nothing you would notice in games.


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## Zubasa (Aug 16, 2019)

nguyen said:


> Lol yeah I bought the Asus 2080 Ti Turbo just to slap a waterblock on it, turned out it was a non-A chip with 280W power limit. Now with Palit 310W PL bios I'm happy running the chip at 1995mhz/ 983mV (freq is stable across all games), +500mhz Vram, which still is 15% faster than stock 2080 Ti anyways. The last 5% OC is only fun for benching purposes, nothing you would notice in games.


The issue is, compare my card to my friend's MSI 2080 ti that is also water-cooled, it is around 7~8% difference over my OC where you start to notice a difference in games.
Whats worst, this Zotac is also an A variant TU102 , which makes it one of the worst dud I have come across.
This card is barely stable at 2025, some games doesn't like it. In DX12 games this card sometimes crashes at 1995Mhz @1.068V.
So it is not just bad OC, but bad OC that require high voltage and as a result makes things even worse.

What I like about Navi, is so far it is VERY consistent apart from driver issues.


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## nguyen (Aug 16, 2019)

Zubasa said:


> The issue is, compare my card to my friend's MSI 2080 ti that is also water-cooled, it is around 7~8% difference over my OC where you start to notice a difference in games.
> Whats worst, this Zotac is also an A variant TU102 , which makes it one of the worst dud I have come across.
> This card is barely stable at 2025, some games doesn't like it. In DX12 games this card sometimes crashes at 1995Mhz @1.068V.
> So it is not just bad OC, but bad OC that require high voltage and as a result makes things even worse.
> ...



Really ? I thought no OC headroom should be a minus , at least you were able to OC your 2080Ti > 10%. There is no guarantee that AiB is not sending cherry picked 5700 XT to reviewer anyways.

Anyways try undervolting your 2080Ti, It is the same on my sample that voltage above 1v cause instability even on water. I couldn't even reach 2040mhz/1.05v stable but 1995mhz/ 983mv is fine, max temp i got is 44C.


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## Zubasa (Aug 16, 2019)

nguyen said:


> Really ? I thought no OC headroom should be a minus , at least you were able to OC your 2080Ti > 10%. There is no guarantee that AiB is not sending cherry picked 5700 XT to reviewer anyways.
> 
> Anyways try undervolting your 2080Ti, It is the same on my sample that voltage above 1v cause instability even on water. I couldn't even reach 2040mhz/1.05v stable but 1995mhz/ 983mv is fine, max temp i got is 44C.


So I the end after what you did, you are still slower than some 2080ti out of the box.
There is nothing you can do to INCREASE performance to MATCH other people who pay just the same money as you did.

One way to put it is they got lucky / cherry picked samples.
But on the other hand, if there are so many "golden sample'" GPUs out there, the duds should have never left the factory.
The reason why there is such a difference in silicon quality is because nVidia was making a huge chip and the best way to increase yield is allow for huge variance.


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## nguyen (Aug 16, 2019)

Nah after OC my 2080Ti is a little faster than stock 2080 Ti Lightning and that card is 1600usd (15.7k timespy graphic vs lightning 15.5k). Perhaps 5% slower than oced 2080Ti lightning and that's it. To get the last 5% perf you have to spend 20% more power and it's just not worth it beside benching.

Anyways 5700XT just might have the same variance. Remember that all these AiB have higher power limit than ref 5700XT for practically the same performance (worse efficiency) and AMD has locked the core to 2150mhz/ 1.2vcore.


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## Deleted member 158293 (Aug 16, 2019)

springs113 said:


> Could that be good or bad though?



Depends on your view, from a manufacturer's perspective it shows maybe they had to use up all the "Extra" margins built into their design (not horrible, but at limit of original design spec).  Also demonstrates a good handle from foundry manufacturing on meeting design specs with consistent production.  From an enthusiast perspective it makes for little to no tinkering possible to get to leftover "Extra" performance leftover from a performance margin design since there's none left.


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## kapone32 (Aug 16, 2019)

Footman said:


> Interesting stuff. I have seen wildly fluctuating clocks on my reference 5700XT from 1200-2050mhz during BFV. This is with the fans at 100% as I wanted to avoid throttling. Temps at load were around 70C, so I am hoping that throttling is not the issue here. I have plans to watercool.
> 
> Question: Does anyone know if AMD partners will be releasing a version of the 5700XT based on reference pcb with custom heat sinks? If so who?
> 
> Thanks,



If the past is anything to go by maybe or maybe not. In terms of Water cooling it would be a great idea. There are a few videos of 5700XT water blocks from EK and Byiski (i think) and it looks like the temps stay in the high 40s under load and the clock is a solid line around 2085 MHZ. If they supported crossfire I would have got one already.


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## Aquinus (Aug 17, 2019)

Really had to search the bottom of the barrel for cons if we're considering lack of hardware raytracing support a con, huh?


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## argon (Aug 19, 2019)

why no more 2080TI stats ?


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## Space Lynx (Aug 28, 2019)

@Durvelle27 how come wizzard during his testing is able to game long enough to get benches without crashes, yet lot of 5700 XT owners can barely game without crashes? i don't understand what variable is changing


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## Durvelle27 (Aug 28, 2019)

lynx29 said:


> @Durvelle27 how come wizzard during his testing is able to game long enough to get benches without crashes, yet lot of 5700 XT owners can barely game without crashes? i don't understand what variable is changing


@W1zzard would have to chime in as I don’t know honestly


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## John Naylor (Aug 28, 2019)

Have to look at this historically to understand the design concept differences between AMD and nVidia ... for a while there competition was tight ... then came the 7xx series,   AMD needed a comeback, they couldn't do it in the design, so thay marketed their way into appearing to compete.  nVidia knew the situation going in ... few pundits notices the things were "off" in the 700 series when they were finally released.  The 780 upon release matched up with the leaked 770 specs. and so on.  Some speculated that nVidia took the original 770 design and make that the 780 at retail.   The original 780 design was placed on the shelf to gather dust.

When the AMD 2xx series came out, nVidia execs were grinning ear to ear.  They sat quiet until a week before the release with hundreds of articles showing "leaked" specs and bencmarks beating the 780..... Then Vidia dropped the bomb a week before announcing the 780.  All that money spent on the ad campaign for 2xx was deflated as the 780 Ti was now on top.   But.... then came the in depth looks.  It turned out the the 2xx series was runing > 95C ... suggesting that overclocking would be very limited... it was.  Turned out that the 780 OCd was significantly faster than the 290x OC'd and that left nVidia w/ the two top tiers .

Since then, we've seen green cards OC as much as 32% .... usually minimum in the mid teens (15%).   So why doen't nVidia just put higher clocks "in the box".  Remeber the silicon lottery ... I had an EVGA card way back when that I made 20 support calls, had 5 RMAs and never ran at advertised speeds.  When you allow for  significant OC, it's pretty much a given that only a teeny % of them will fail to meet the advertised speeds.  Therefore RMA rates are small.   Staring with the 290 and each generation since, AMD had had to go with higher clocks in the box because with corresponding OC headroom ... they appear to compete.  With every generation of cards since.... we see hand picked games performing better then nVidi acard in the proce range .... and why not.  If reviewers are going o publish only out of box speeds, then the "overclocked in the box" alternative will do much better.the 480 / 580 appeared to compete with the 1060 ... but not when both cards overclocked.... the 5700 XT was supposed to compete with the 2080, but it doesn't catch 2070- with both cards overclocked.  

With each new generation, we take Wiz's test results, component descriptions (which GPU, whiuch VRNM, which memory, etc and apply the OCs to both cards so as to provide "apples to apples" comparisons.    I undestand the strategy ... I just hate having to do all the math to see the performance that once can expect in the manner most will use their card


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## mintpyramid (Sep 17, 2019)

John Naylor said:


> With each new generation, we take Wiz's test results, component descriptions (which GPU, whiuch VRNM, which memory, etc and apply the OCs to both cards so as to provide "apples to apples" comparisons.    I undestand the strategy ...* I just hate having to do all the math to see the performance that once can expect in the manner most will use their card*



You really believe 'most' consumers are doing all this work with their video card? Enthusiasts are a niche and realistically a shrinking one. Even individuals who CAN put in that level of effort to tweak CPU/GPU don't have nearly the time and energy to devote.

That's a pretty loaded marketing esque statement for someone pretending to be 'analytical'.



jabbadap said:


> Well it maxed out what they think is safe to silicon. Chips can go higher, if all the limiters are removed. But that would potentially increase RMA rates in a long run, so I think they are not willing to ease those limits. Well maybe they will tweak that gddr6 slider a bit, but the rest is left to OC community to solve.



TBH I think it's a power issue not necessarily a 'capabilities' issue. If you look at the collected Nitro + reviews they're all pulling 20-40 more watts than the Red Devil. Any sort of VRM performance gains have a significant power cost at this point for these cards. Presumably the silicon may be able to hit higher limits but the performance per watt would be unethical.



illli said:


> Looks good, but their warranty sucks and I've read nothing but complaints about their awful warranty/RMA service.  Its the same reason I'll never buy a zotac card



What's bad about their warranty? Website says it's a classic 'brand new, no alterations' 2 year warranty. It's the same warranty as the Sapphire Nitro +. You aren't getting warranty replacements if you remove their fan and then put it back on after you melt their card for running it 10% over spec for a year and a half. EDIT: Powercolor's parent company mostly works in enterprise, I have no doubts an appropriately submitted RMA will be successful. You just aren't ripping anyone off, they likely have an engineer review each RMA.


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