AMD Says No Blower Cards for Next-Gen GPUs

Do you know what blows? Most of AMD‘s graphics cards! Their blower design cards are bloody awful for a consumer card. It’s that tiny spinning fan at the back pushing heat out the rear of the GPU. Now, it’s an OK design, it works well enough to use. However, it’s typically hotter running than open-air coolers and a heck of a lot louder. Albeit, it’s often also a lot cheaper too, so there is some give and take here.

After AMD’s Financial Analyst Day webcast, Scott Herkelman, Vice President and General Manager for Radeon confirmed the news via reddit.

“There will be no blower reference fans for gamers on next gen. So you are correct ;)” – reddit

Now, what we don’t know is exactly which cards. We know next-gen refers to their next big launch, could that be big NAVI or just the whole next range of cards? We don’t know. I also doubt it means all future AMD cards, the low-cost blower cards may always have a place in some markets.

Furthermore, their partner brands could still make a blower design card if they wanted to. Albeit, it would be a custom card, not a reference card. Basically, you won’t see a reference blower card from AMD.

From the teaser image, it looks like the new AMD cards are going to copy what Nvidia did with their founder’s edition cards. Honestly, I think that’s a brilliant idea and it’s about damn time. Bring it on AMD, let’s see what you can really do!