It's a fairly safe bet to say that there isn't going to be much new hardware from AMD Graphics in the next few months. The next iteration of GPUs, codenamed Volcanic Islands, are due either very late this year or at the start of 2014, according to the reports we've been hearing in Computex, Taipei, this week.
That said, AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners have still showcased new hardware at the show. For example, Sapphire has toying around with an HD 7990 Atomic card that's due for release next month.
PowerColor is also going down the ultra-high-end route by also showing a watercooled HD 7990 called the LCS. It uses largely the same PCB as on the air-cooled Devil 13 released in limited quantities last year.
The firm believes these kinds of cards work best when sold as a part of an open cooling system, where the user installs the supplied PCB and waterblock - made via EK here - into their machine via either 3/8in or 1/2in high-flow barbs - both are bundled in the package.
PowerColor is playing a waiting game to see what kinds of speeds Sapphire is able to pull out of its card before committing to specifications. Marketing manager Andre Santos gave us a run-through of the monster card and also a triple-fan HD 7870 that takes design cues from the Devil line.
What do you think? Is Sapphire or PowerColor's going about watercooling the right way?
