at a glance
expert evaluation
Strong Points
- Outstanding 4K and 1440p performance
- 24GB memory
- Nitro+ custom coolers are frigid, quiet and gorgeous
- Dual BIOS switches, fans, and ARGB headers
Cons
- Massive 4-slot design
- very high power consumption
- Ray Tracing Lagging GeForce RTX 40-Series GPUs
- $200 steep premium brings Nitro+ closer to RTX 4080 price
our verdict
The Sapphire Nitro+ looks gorgeous, runs in the cold, doesn’t hear, When It’s the fastest XTX we’ve tested (albeit by a small margin) and comes with some useful extras for overclockers. If you’re looking for a 4-digit graphics card that will chew through high refresh rate 4K and 1440p gaming without compromise, and your PC can handle its massive size and power consumption, Nitro+ is highly recommended.
Today’s Best Price: Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X
$2,899.00
A big and good graphics card doesn’t get bigger and better than the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X. This is his first Sapphire GPU with the premium Vapor-X brand in about a decade.
AMD’s reference version of the XTX sticks to a sensible 2.5-slot design, but Sapphire has broken the limit with its highly customized Nitro+.This monster swells into clumps quad slot Adjust the height and add an 8-pin power connector for even better performance.Fastest 7900 XTX tested When It looks great, is cool and runs quietly. This is his one of the most impressive custom graphics cards I’ve ever gotten my hands on.
If your PC can fit this beast and your wallet can accept its $1,200 price tag ($200 more than the reference model), then you’ll love everything about the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X . Let’s dig in.
References: best graphics card for pc games
Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X: Specs, Price, Features
I can’t say too much about the technical side of Nitro+. That’s because it runs on the same awesome Radeon RX 7900 XTX chip as the reference model, paired with a generous 24GB of fast GDDR6 memory. However, Sapphire tweaked it to make it even more powerful.
Brad Chacos/IDG
The Nitro+ 7900 Vapor-X screams with a blistering 2,510 MHz game clock, well above the baseline 2,300 MHz speed. This compares favorably with the similarly premium XFX Speedster Merc 7900 XTX, even if the Sapphire card’s more efficient cooler thwarts a few extra (and really barely noticeable) frames per second. The baseline 7900 XTX is already the second most powerful GPU on the planet, only behind the $1,600 GeForce RTX 4090 in raw power Nitro+ cranks it to 11.
However, doing so requires a more literal force. The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X requires a trio of 8-pin power connectors from the reference version pair and is rated to draw 420 watts of power. The reference XTX consumes 355W. In the real world, that means the Nitro+ 7900 XTX draws more power than his RTX 4090 during gaming sessions.
Brad Chacos/IDG
However, the card contains a 3-way BIOS switch that changes the behavior of the card. In its default position, you can use Sapphire’s Trixx utility to switch between the Nitro+’s dual BIOS options, rather than manually flipping his BIOS switch on the card. However, if you don’t want to install that software, the second position is to stick with the default high-performance BIOS, and the third position is low power mode, which cuts power consumption by 50W at the expense of base speed. His default BIOS runs pretty cool and quiet, so there’s no reason to recommend the low power option unless power consumption is a major concern.
The real draw of the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X is its custom design. There’s so much hardware here, Sapphire tossed his GPU support bracket into the box to keep the graphics card from sagging in the motherboard slots over time!
sapphire
Let’s start with the aesthetics: The Nitro+ 7900 XTX is quite beautiful, with a beautiful clean all-metal design accentuated by raised full-length RGB bars on either side of the heatsink. The bars shine with a striking brilliance and rounded edges add visual cohesion. The default sweeping rainbow pattern fills your case with shimmering light, as sapphire slaps the bars on each side. completely different way Rather than the equally gorgeous XFX Speedster Merc 7900 XTX, which instead went in the non-RGB direction.
But the Nitro+ 7900 XTX’s true secret sauce lies under the hood. Sapphire has perfectly packed this giant cooling technology. Her web page on her Sapphire on Nitro+ has more details, but at a high level, the die-cast aluminum frame houses her three axial fans in a dual-ball bearing design. It has been. It supports Sapphire’s rad Quick Connect feature, making it quick and easy to remove individual fans if servicing is required. Even better, when the GPU isn’t under heavy load, it stops spinning completely. That means the Nitro+ 7900 XTX is completely silent when you’re not gaming or doing other GPU-intensive work.
Chunky and clean.
Brad Chacos/IDG
Another key perk: Sapphire has slapped the Nitro+ with a second HDMI 2.1 port, doubling down on the reference design. Attention VR users! It’s tied together by a pair of DisplayPort 2.1 connections, but Sapphire sidestepped the reference model’s USB-C port to include an extra HDMI. A fan header is also included.
Of course, the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X supports all of AMD’s great Radeon Software features such as FSR, Radeon Anti-Lag and Smart Access Memory. But enough chatter. Let’s go benchmark!
our test system
We test the graphics card on an AMD Ryzen 5900X PC used exclusively for GPU benchmarking. Most modern gaming PCs released in the last four years support features that boost performance either natively or via motherboard firmware updates, so they now have PCIe Resizable BARs (also known as Smart Access Memory on Ryzen systems). is active). Nvidia also recommends turning on the optional “Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling” option in Windows to help the RTX 40 series perform at their best, so we’ve adjusted that as well. Most of the hardware was provided by the manufacturer, but I purchased the storage myself.
What you’re really looking for here is the performance of the Nitro+ as a custom XTX model, so the $1,200 Sapphire Nitro+ versus the $1,000 reference Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XFX with the equally premium $1,100 Speed Mercster custom card We’ve also included other GPUs worth considering if you’re looking for great 4K and 1440p gaming.
Tested different games across different engines, genres, vendor sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 9, 11, DX12, and Vulkan) to see the full range of performance possibilities try to express Each game is tested using in-game benchmarks, sanity checked by Nvidia’s FrameView tool, and free of VSync, frame rate caps, real-time ray tracing or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G unless otherwise stated. – Sync is disabled along with other vendor specific technologies such as FidelityFX tools and Nvidia Reflex. We’ve also enabled Temporal Antialiasing (TAA) to push these cards to their limits. Run each benchmark at least three times and list the average results for each test.
Rather than roll out a full test suite for this review, we will stick to a simpler lineup representing different APIs (DX9, DX11, DX12, Vulkan) to demonstrate Nitro+ performance in different scenarios. bottom. For a broader and deeper look at the GPU’s general performance, be sure to check out our first Radeon RX 7900 XTX review. It matches the ray tracing performance of the RTX 30-series, but lags far behind the RTX 40-series in ray tracing (it also doesn’t have DLSS. It’s a 3-frame generation rival.)
Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X: Gaming Performance Benchmarks
Brad Chacos/IDG
Brad Chacos/IDG
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Brad Chacos/IDG
Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X: Power and Thermals
loop to test power consumption F1 22 After doing all the other benchmarking (to warm up the GPU), I benchmarked at 4K for about 20 minutes and hit the highest on the Watts Up Pro meter, which measures the power consumption of the entire test system. The first part of the race, where all competing cars are on screen at the same time, tends to be the most demanding part.
This is not a worst case test. This is a GPU-bound game that runs at the GPU-bound resolution and measures performance when the graphics card is heavily drained. If you are playing a game that is also CPU intensive, the overall system power consumption can be high. Consider yourself warned.
Brad Chacos/IDG
The Sapphire Nitro+ pushes AMD’s already power-hungry Radeon 7900 XTX to new heights, but to do so it requires an even higher peak power consumption than the behemoth RTX 4090. XTX for its efficiency.
Test for heat by holding GPU-Z open. F1 22 Finally, pay attention to the maximum maximum temperature.
Brad Chacos/IDG
The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX’s awesome Vapor-X cooler works great here.Technically it runs slightly warmer than the XFX Speedster Merc, but both work perfectly frigid A result that overclockers will appreciate, the Nitro+’s gentler fan curve actually sounds even quieter than the already borderline-quiet Merc. Both of these come at a cost in terms of price, power consumption and size, but are excellent custom designs that far outperform the smaller 7900 XTX reference model.
Should I buy the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X?
If you’re mostly sticking with traditional gaming and want a burner burner for a graphics card that’s hundreds of dollars cheaper than the RTX 4080, AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX is an excellent choice. If you’re looking to buy a high-end, impeccably engineered, custom version of the XTX, Sapphire’s Nitro+ is worth considering. It’s blisteringly fast, cool, quiet, and just plain awesome.
It’s not for everyone. Nitro+ never Large scale It draws more power than the RTX 4090, but what you’d expect from a flagship like this is a big, badass custom card. If that bothers you, consider the smaller 2.5-slot, 2x 8-pin design of the reference XTX instead. Prices may also pause.Sapphire’s $200 premium feels worthy of a custom design this Nice, but expensive even compared to the GeForce RTX 4080’s (extremely high) starting price. Nitro+ is faster and unless you spend $1,400 or close to $1,500 you won’t get an RTX 4080 that resembles Nitro+’s great quality, but you’ll get ray tracing performance and DLSS 3 frame generation in the design of the card and overall quality of life, you might—Might be so—Choose a ‘cheaper’ 4080 than the awesome baller Nitro+. (I wouldn’t.)
Brad Chacos/IDG
Staying in AMD land and opting for the high-end 7900 XTX, the biggest difference between the $1,200 Nitro+ and the $1,100 XFX Speedster Merc 7900 XTX is aesthetics and street price. Both are face-meltingly fast, charming, and surprisingly quiet and cool. While I personally prefer the Nitro+’s futuristic industrial look and twinkling dual-sided RGB bars, the Merc has a completely different look. Go where your eyes (and your wallet) lead.
in short? The Sapphire Nitro+ looks gorgeous, but is extremely quiet in the cold. When It’s the fastest XTX we’ve tested (by a little). If you’re looking for a 4-figure graphics card that’s actually worth the money (cough Different from RTX4080 cough), this option is highly recommended. It’s the best Radeon offer.
