As the expectation builds for AMD's official reveal of the RDNA 2 powered RX 6000 Series graphics cards, the company is gradually releasing pieces of information to increase the hype. Following its reveal of a design render for the RX 6000 Series, the first real world image has appeared of a triple fan card, believed to be a prototype design for the high-end RX 6900.
The image comes courtesy of YouTuber JayzTwoCents, who shared and analyzed the image along with a previously unseen render of a twin fan design, likely to be used with the lower priced cards in the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series. The triple fan design features an LED Radeon logo in red, along with a red trim, and a large open area alongside the heat sink, for the fans to vent out the hot air. The fans and surround also include apparent reflective chrome and silver parts.
The render of the twin fan card shows a design that is fairly similar, with what appears to be a lighter shade of silver colour across the middle, the same red Radeon logo, and the red trim across the long open heat sink area. Both card designs feature an R on each fan, as part of the not so subtle branding that JayzTwoCents stated was not to his taste.
Although the new triple fan picture is believed to be of a prototype, it clearly matches the design render revealed by AMD, which is likely to be for the flagship RX 6900 card.  The RX 6900 is expected to be competing with the Nvidia RTX 3080 rather than Nvidia's flagship RTX 3090, as AMD is focusing on bringing 4K resolution performance to a wider market with its high-end cards. The lower priced cards with the dual fan design are expected to use a different variant of the Navi 2X chip, potentially the Navi 22 rather than the flagship GPU known as Big Navi. The lower priced cards are also rumored to lack ray tracing support, though this is yet to be confirmed.
While the overt branding is not to everyone's taste, the design of the RX 6000 Series is certainly distinct from Nvidia's competing RTX 30 Series, but does bear a number of similarities to the previous RTX 20 Series. Ultimately though, what will matter most to gamers is how powerful, how efficient, and perhaps most importantly, how good value AMD's new cards are.
If it can do for graphics hardware with the RX 6000 Series what it did for CPUs with Ryzen, then AMD has good reason to feel confident for the future.
AMD Radeon RX 6900 is expected to launch in late October.