Thursday, February 23rd 2017
AMD Radeon Vega Power Connectors Pictured
At its first reveal of the Radeon Vega graphics card on the sidelines of the 2017 International CES show, AMD was careful to conceal the power-connectors of its graphics card prototype (using tissue paper), even though teaser images of the card were splattered all over the web. From this week's reveal of a Radeon Vega graphics card running on an AMD Ryzen 7-1800X powered machine, the veil is off the power connector layout. Apparently, AMD's reference design Radeon Vega 10 graphics card is air-cooled, and it draws power from a combination of 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe power connectors.
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 (reference) makes do with a single 8-pin connector, although most custom-design GTX 1080 cards feature 6-pin + 8-pin layouts. The GP102-powered TITAN X Pascal reference, too, draws power from 6+8 pin connectors. It's interesting to note here, that the power connectors feature a string of LEDs near their contact points on the PCB. The Radeon R9 Fury X, too has something like this, although the LEDs are used to alert users of faulty power input, or power draw. In the image below, we see that LEDs over only one connector are lit up. Could this indicate that AMD is making sure users are aware that the card isn't drawing power from both connectors all the time?
Source:
ComputerBase
NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 1080 (reference) makes do with a single 8-pin connector, although most custom-design GTX 1080 cards feature 6-pin + 8-pin layouts. The GP102-powered TITAN X Pascal reference, too, draws power from 6+8 pin connectors. It's interesting to note here, that the power connectors feature a string of LEDs near their contact points on the PCB. The Radeon R9 Fury X, too has something like this, although the LEDs are used to alert users of faulty power input, or power draw. In the image below, we see that LEDs over only one connector are lit up. Could this indicate that AMD is making sure users are aware that the card isn't drawing power from both connectors all the time?
27 Comments on AMD Radeon Vega Power Connectors Pictured
I'm actually glad their aiming high to get everything out of the 14nm process they reasonably can. RX 480 aiming low (150w) had me concerned for a while.
I think your theory about the LEDs is right. It would only have to draw from both under heavy load situations. We know AMD was playing with power a lot on early versions of the Vega card. Makes sense that they would leave some of those toys in the reference design.
I am excited to see these cards in action, I hope the extra time is worth the wait.
Enjoy :)
Although, I might like the idea of a LED's that indicates your into the 6-pin power, kinda' a Turbo Boost indicator. Heck, no light at idle, blue at low draw, green at heavy draw, red during max. Playing moderate draw games it goes blue-green (back and forth) depending the power level. The industry is all in RGB lighting and AMD did Ryzen cooler so this would be right in line.
Then again SAPPHIRE will undoubtedly release a Toxic Version. Hopefully as powerful as their 6970 and 7970 TOXIC's were...
although it's not that it means it will use up all that power constantly
Understanding what we read isn't the same as reading. Figure that out ;)