The Card

PowerColor's visual theme for the Red Dragon is almost completely devoid of "red". Rather, the company went for a classy black design with straight lines. On the back you'll find a high-quality metal backplate in a matching color theme. Dimensions of the card are 24.0 x 13.0 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


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

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 one 8-pin and one 6-pin power connector. This input configuration is specified for up to 300 watts of power draw.


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.

PowerColor made good use of that area by positioning their BIOS switch feature here. The second BIOS runs at reduced fan speed for a quieter experience.

Disassembly

PowerColor is using five heatpipes and a copper base on their cooler. This piece of the cooler also provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

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