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AMD Lands Another Exclusive Radeon GPU Brand: Meet MSI MECH

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In the wake of Nvidia's abrupt cancellation of the GeForce Partner Program, it looks like AMD is getting another new, seemingly exclusive brand for its Polaris-based GPUs. This follows the unveiling of the ASUS AREZ lineup and the debut of AsRock's Phantom Gaming series of Radeon-exclusive graphics cards.

Board partners still aren't talking about the GeForce Partner Program or the ripples it has caused even after its cancellation, but the existence of the MSI MECH and ASUS AREZ (why does everything have to be all-caps lately?) Radeon cards seem to be part of the aftermath.

MSI

It was widely speculated that MSI and ASUS had both devoted their top-tier GPU brands -- Gaming and Republic of Gamers, respectively -- to Nvidia GeForce. The wheels were probably already in motion to make these branding shifts when Nvidia cancelled its program less than two weeks ago, likely due to pushback from larger OEMs like HP and Dell who didn't want to play ball.

So that's the brief backstory. Let's look at what we know about the MSI MECH lineup.

The Radeon RX MECH series will debut in July in the form of RX 570 and RX 580 cards. MSI says they'll feature new thermal and completely custom PCB designs, allowing gamers to achieve "higher core and memory speeds" for improved performance. These will definitely be overclocked out of the box, though MSI hasn't shown the clocks yet.

On the cooling side, the MECH series will sport MSI's Torx 2.0 fan, which MSI claims will generate 22% more air pressure for better cooling performance while further reducing noise levels. A large heatsink connects to 6mm copper heat pipes, and a nickel-plated copper baseplate with Premium Thermal Compound X should keep the cards cool and enable ideal heat transfer.

Visually, MSI is applying some premium touches such as the iconic MSI dragon on the top of the shroud which boasts a 16.7 million color RGB LED, and a matte black metal backplate.

That's the only info we're getting right now, but I'd expect to hear more details and see some of the MSI Radeon RX MECH series cards in the wild at Computex next month.

In the meantime, let me know if you think this is a win for AMD. Though they've seemingly had two or three leading GPU gaming brands stripped away from the Radeon side of the fence, another way of looking at things is they've also gained three exclusive new ones in the last 2 months. Very interesting times indeed.

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