Not content to let Asus have all the fun with X shaped products, graphics card manufacturer XFX is prepping two new Vega graphics cards that feature a cut-out backplate and cooler shroud that resembles a stretched-out X. XFX has, so far, only released a few pictures of the card but they do show off most of the card including the top edge, cooler, and backplate.

XFX has opted for a short PCB that extends slightly past the first cooling fan. The card is a dual slot design with a large heatsink and two large red fans and a bit less than half of the cooler extends past the PCB as a result. Cooling is not an issue thanks to liberal use of heat pipes (I think there are five main copper heat pipes), but the cooler hanging so far past the PCB has resulted in the two 8-pin PCI-E power connectors ending up in the middle of the cooler (the middle of the X shape) which is not ideal for cable management (still waiting for someone to put the PCI-E power connectors on the back edge closest to the motherboard!) but with a bit of modding maybe it would be possible to hid the wires under the shroud and route them around the card as one of the photos it looks like there is a bit of a gap between the heatsink and the shroud/backplate heh).

The design is sure to be divisive with some people loving it and other hating it, but XFX has put quite a bit of work into it. The red fans are surrounded by a stylized black shroud with a carbon fiber texture while the top edge holds the red XFX logo. The backplate specifically looks great with a black and grey design with red accent that features numerous cutouts for extra ventilation.

Display outputs are standard with three DisplayPort and one HDMI out.

TechPowerUp along with Videocardz are reporting that the card will come in both RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 variants. Unfortunately, while XFX has gone all out in the custom cooling and backplate, they are not pushing any of the clockspeeds past factory settings with the RX Vega 56 Double Edition clocking in at 1156 MHz base and 1471 MHz boost on the GPU and 1600 MHz on the 8GB of HBM2 memory. The XFX RX Vega 64 Double Edition is also stock clocked at 1247 MHz base, 1546 MHz boost, and 1890 MHz memory. It is not all bad news though, because with such a beefy cooler, enthusiasts should be able to overclock the chips themselves at least a bit (depending on how lucky they are in the silicon lottery) but it does mean that XFX isn’t guaranteeing anything. Also, overclocking might be more top-end overclock limited on the Vega 64 version versus other custom cards due to it only including two 8-pin power connectors (which does make me wonder what they have done as far as the VRMs versus reference if anything).

XFX has not yet revealed pricing or availability for their custom RX Vega cards.

What are your thoughts on the X design? 

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