Red devil with obesity: Powercolor RX Vega64 Red Devil in review

1 - Einführung, Unboxing und technischen Daten 2 - Spannungsversorgung und detaillierte Platinenanalyse 3 - Gaming-Performance in WQHD (2560 x 1400 Pixel) 4 - Gaming-Performance in UHD (3840 x 2160 Pixel) 5 - Leistungsaufnahme im Detail 6 - Temperaturen, Taktraten, OC und Wärmebildanalyse 7 - Kühlerdetails und Geräuschentwicklung 8 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit

If we were asked for a somewhat eye-catching RX Vega64 and if the range of such cards were not so limited, then the Red Devil from Powercolor would come to mind spontaneously. Because it not only applies quite strongly visually, but comes on the market with a rather impressive overall appearance. If it's available.

Similar to Sapphire's heavyweight RX Vega64 Nitro+, the Powercolor RX Vega64 Red Devil is a pretty eye-catching card at first glance that likes to make thick jaws. So restraint is not their thing.

With the currently still available Vega64 cards, however, one can no longer distinguish between individual positionings within this chip class due to the really already presusb prices. You can be happy if there is one. Interestingly, availability in Europe is often better than in North America or Asia, for example. The moon prices are left out.

Unboxing, optics and haptics

Weighing 1409 grams, this map is only slightly below Sapphire's monstrous battleship. Powercolor has numbed the dimensions either, and like Asus, it offers a whopping 30.2 cm installation length (outer surface slot panel until the end of the radiator cover), making it a relatively long card. With a height of 12.7 cm (from the top of the motherboard lot to the top of the radiator cover, you are also just as high as Asus at the Strix, but the installation depth increases again with a whopping 5.2 cm and we already guess where the cooler will be placed.

The three fans with a rotor blade diameter of 9 cm each sit in an opening with a diameter of 9.2 cm. A total of 9 rotor blades per fan, with their special shape, provide above all a strong throughput and less for turbulence; produce a little more static pressure. This should be helpful to the cooling concept and the very deep cooler.

The backplate is embossed with the printed Red Devil lettering. The backplate, which is not used for cooling, is purely optical and also stabilizes the not very light card, as well as the radiator that clearly exceeds the rear.

After all, one should plan at least 5 mm for the rear body, which can already lead to problems with some motherboards if heat sinks are sitting too close to the slot or the CPU cooler is extremely large.

You can already see clearly at the bottom of the card that Powercolor also relies on vertically arranged slats and again offers a real 2.5 slot model. This creates a significantly higher cooling surface, which is also gratefully accepted.

The top also clearly shows that Powercolor has remained true to the shape and design of the Red Devil. In addition to the usual dark metal cover on the red ABS shell, there is also the red-lit Red Devil lettering in the middle. In addition, the two 8-pin power supply connectors are positioned at the end of the board, which have been rotated and also moved downwards.

The almost completely closed end of the card shows not conspicuous except for the three 6 mm and an 8 mm heatpipes.

The slot panel has four instead of the five ports of the reference card. Two HDMI 2.0 ports and two DisplayPorts 1.4 are available to the user. However, the DVI-I connection is no longer necessary, for whatever reason.

Important foreword

Unfortunately, we also need to precede a circumstance that has had some impact on our tests and the results. Although the card was marked with a manufacturer's seal, the traces of multiple use and disassembly could be clearly identified. Of course, in the end it is not a witchcraft to remove a screw with the seal by means of a suitable tool losslessly and later to use it again without traces, but as long as cards are tested in rotation, such things cannot be be excluded.

However, the amount of thermal paste used alone would have been easy enough for two or more cards and was downright counterproductive in the administered form. We used a very good paste as substituted, as used by the large radiator OEMs for machine application, but to a much more modest extent than in the pictures.

We have realigned the crooked and sometimes even destroyed thermal pads and partially replaced them with similar products. The reward of our repair was a 4-5 degree lower GPU temperature and significantly lower voltage converter temperatures in the range of two converters. We assume that in the end this represents the state, because a map would have had ex works.

Key technical data

Finally, let's take a first look at the purely technical data. The value displayed as the maximum boost clock, on the other hand, is rather a wishful thinking, which is unlikely to be achieved within the set power limit or at all.

Compared to the relevant reference cards, this looks like this:

Test system and measurement methods

The new test system and the methodology have already been described in great detail in the basic article "How We Test Graphics Cards" (English: "How We Test Graphics Cards") and therefore, for the sake of simplicity, we now only refer to this detailed Description. So if you want to read everything again, you are welcome to do so. However, we have again improved CPU and cooling to largely exclude possible CPU bottlenecks for this fast card.

If you are interested, the summary in table form quickly provides a brief overview: