14 PCWorld JANUARY 2021NEWS AMD TO KEEP MAKING BIG NAVI CARDS
AMD’s Scott Herkelman confirms that Radeon
RX 6000 reference cards will still be made into
early 2021.prowess, it typically isn’t. In this case, AMD’s
Radeon 6000 cards have received high marks
from the press (go.pcworld.com/hmrk).
Still, some casual headline reader might
assume killing the reference cards so soon
after launch is the same
as Intel’s recent end-of-
life notice (go.pcworld.
com/eolf) for its two-
year-old Core i9-9900K
CPU and other 9th-gen
chips, which Intel has
already replaced.
In the Radeon
6000’s case, AMD
typically makes
reference design
boards to give board
partners something to
sell on the release date.
Board partners may also
crib from AMD’s
design. AMD typicallytiers down its reference designs so as not to
compete with its partners.
In this case, however, AMD’s indefinite
extension of its reference boards is likely to
help people who want to build custom
liquid-cooled GPUs. Aftermarket water blocks
are very low-volume and very expensive to
make, so most companies, such as EK (go.
pcworld.com/ekqn), standardize on the
reference designs for uniformity.
Normally purchasing a reference board to
liquid-cool, even after production ends, isn’t
a problem. But with the insane shortages of
graphics cards, the move by AMD should
give DIY liquid cooler fans a lifeline while they
patiently wait to get a card.Intel has formally given notice that its 9th-generation “Coffee Lake
Refresh” desktop processors will be discontinued.