The Card

MSI's Evoke looks great because of its champagne-gold-metallic color theme and straight lines. This lets it achieve clean visuals which somehow resemble that of NVIDIA's Titan RTX. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate that is integrated nicely with the front cooler design. Dimensions of the card are 23.5 x 13.0 cm.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a and an HDMI 2.0b.

AMD took the opportunity to update the display controllers handling these outputs by leveraging DSC 1.2a (display stream compression), which unlocks very high resolution and refresh-rate combinations over a single cable. Among the single-cable display modes supported are 8K 60 Hz (which took two DP 1.3 cables until now), 4K 240 Hz, and 1080p as high as 360 Hz. On top of these, the outputs support HDR and 30 bpc color-depth for better color accuracy in creative applications.


The board uses a 6-pin and an 8-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 300 watts of power draw.

Plugging in and out of the power cables is just as easy as on any other graphics card; the angle of the shot is slightly misleading—there is enough space.


AMD's Navi generation of GPUs no longer supports CrossFire. DirectX 12 does include its own set of multi-GPU capabilities, but implementation requires game developers to put serious development time into a feature only a tiny fraction of their customers might ever use.

Disassembly

MSI is using five heatpipes on their thermal solution. This piece of the cooler also handles heat generated by the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. Note how it wraps around slightly to connect with the front cooler, achieving a more seamless look.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.