This card is definitely a flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX homemade card!
After MBA’s AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, various Radeon RX 7900 series self-made cards have appeared one after another, and after we have tested TUF Gaming Radeon RX 7900 XTX, let’s take a look at Nitro+ from AMD’s first-tier partner Sapphire series graphics card.
As Sapphire’s flagship product, the Nitro+ series has always been one of the brand’s signatures; although we like the name Toxic more than Nitro+, it is undeniable that Sapphire has put a lot of effort into Nitro+.
The Radeon RX 7900 series adopts the AMD RDNA 3 architecture, and the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT are launched respectively. In it, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX has a 24GB GDDR6 memory configuration, while the Radeon RX 7900 XT has a 20GB GDDR6 memory configuration.
Based on Sapphire’s settings for the Nitro+ series graphics cards, the TBP (Total Board Power) of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is 420W, and the TBP (Total Board Power) of the Radeon RX 7900 XT is 368W. Return to the Vapor Chamber.
This test received a Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card.
3 The Nitro+ fan design uses the Angular Velocity blade design, which is the most popular fan design nowadays. The main purpose is to increase the air pressure and air flow under the same noise and speed conditions; as mentioned by Sapphire data, this fan can 44% higher wind pressure and 19% better airflow performance than the previous generation fan.
The fan shaft used by the Nitro+ radiator this time is Double Ball Bearing, the size is 95 x 16mm, the maximum speed can reach 3200 RPM, 49.68 CFM and 3.19 mmAq, and the maximum fan noise value can reach 49dBA.
Different from MBA’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX, Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX adopts 3x 8 PIN power supply design. Seeing such 8 PIN design makes people feel a lot more relieved, because you don’t have to worry about the connector fusing due to not plugging it in properly. The problem of destruction occurs. However, it remains to be seen whether the AMD Radeon graphics card will introduce the 12VHPWR design in the future. After all, we have also seen Intel begin to import it on Data Center products.
It was mentioned earlier that the Nitro + Radeon RX 7900 series graphics card radiator is added to the Vapor Chamber. At the same time, we also saw the frame designed by aluminum die-casting, which strengthens the PCB and assists the heat dissipation of the VRM parts.
The I/O configuration part is different from the MBA’s Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards because of the lack of a USB-C output port, but DisplayPort 2.1 is one of the basic configurations. For most users, a monitor with a USB-C port is still not the first choice, so the lack of USB-C is also understandable.
Graphics cards without RGB lighting effects should not be very popular, so the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards have RGB lighting effects on the upper and lower sides.
In addition, there are also ARGB lighting effects on the reinforced back panel.
The test part uses the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X processor, with the Crosshair X670E Hero motherboard and DDR5 6000 MT/s memory; the comparison object is of course the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX MBA card.
| 3DMark | Radeon RX 7900 XTX （MBA） | Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX | |
|---|---|---|---|
| TIme Spy | 25636 | 26258 | 2.369% |
| Graphic score | 28897 | 30198 | 4.308% |
| CPU score | 15638 | 15098 | -3.577% |
| Time Spy Extreme | 13522 | 13979 | 3.269% |
| Graphic score | 14366 | 15009 | 4.284% |
| CPU score | 10148 | 10065 | -0.825% |
| Fire Strike | 51626 | 50651 | -1.925% |
| Graphic score | 76904 | 75412 | -1.978% |
| Physics score | 41545 | 40864 | -1.667% |
| Combo score | 16647 | 16322 | -1.991% |
| Fire Strike Extreme | 35088 | 35672 | 1.637% |
| Graphic score | 39365 | 40796 | 3.508% |
| Physics score | 41376 | 40667 | -1.743% |
| Combo score | 17177 | 16778 | -2.378% |
| Fire Strike Ultra | 19906 | 20574 | 3.247% |
| Graphic score | 20070 | 20828 | 3.639% |
| Physics score | 41663 | 40657 | -2.474% |
| Combo score | 10793 | 11228 | 3.874% |
| Port Royal | 15522 | 16147 | 3.871% |
| Ray Tracing | 48.84 | 51.47 | 5.110% |
| Speed Way | 5769 | 5957 | 3.156% |
| PCIE bandwidth | 26.42 | 26.13 | -1.110% |
| 4K Gaming | Radeon RX 7900 XTX （MBA） | Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin Creed Wax | 102 | 111 | 8.108% |
| Borderlands 3 : bad ass | 105.33 | 109.1 | 3.456% |
| Cyberpunk2077 | 68.08 | 71.57 | 4.876% |
| Cyberpunk2077（RT + FSR） | 56.39 | 59.09 | 4.569% |
| Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 | 112 | 116 | 3.448% |
| Metro Exodus | 100.08 | 103.61 | 3.407% |
| Metro Exodus（RT_high） | 58.26 | 60.34 | 3.447% |
| F1 22（RT_Ultra_high） | 55 | 57 | 3.509% |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 117 | 121 | 3.306% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider（Highest） | 129 | 133 | 3.008% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider（RT） | 77 | 81 | 4.938% |
| 2K Gaming | Radeon RX 7900 XTX （MBA） | Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin Creed Wax | 167 | 170 | 1.765% |
| Borderlands 3 : bad ass | 201.5 | 198.73 | -1.394% |
| Cyberpunk2077 | 133.86 | 138.22 | 3.154% |
| Cyberpunk2077（RT + FSR） | 92.51 | 94.43 | 2.033% |
| Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 | 203 | 214 | 5.140% |
| Metro Exodus | 152.49 | 158.23 | 3.628% |
| Metro Exodus（RT_high） | 105.99 | 110.11 | 3.742% |
| F1 22（RT_Ultra_high） | 104 | 107 | 2.804% |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 202 | 206 | 1.942% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider（Highest） | 233 | 240 | 2.917% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider（RT） | 142 | 149 | 4.698% |
| 1080p Gaming | Radeon RX 7900 XTX （MBA） | Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin Creed Wax | 209 | 210 | 0.476% |
| Borderlands 3 : bad ass | 243.88 | 245.74 | 0.757% |
| Cyberpunk2077 | 182.56 | 180.34 | -1.231% |
| Cyberpunk2077（RT + FSR） | 114.82 | 117.82 | 2.546% |
| Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 | 273 | 283 | 3.534% |
| Metro Exodus | 181.32 | 185.53 | 2.269% |
| Metro Exodus（RT_high） | 140.85 | 144.53 | 2.546% |
| F1 22（RT_Ultra_high） | 146 | 151 | 3.311% |
| Horizon Zero Dawn | 225 | 224 | -0.446% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider（Highest） | 271 | 279 | 2.867% |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider（RT） | 196 | 203 | 3.448% |
Let’s take a look at how the Nitro+ radiator imported into the Vapor Chamber actually performs.
Although the fan speed of the Nitro+ radiator can reach a maximum speed of 3200 RPM, in fact, under full load (average TBP 404W), the average fan speed is 1400 RPM, and the average temperatures of the GPU and GPU Hot Spot are 59 and 73 degrees respectively. Of course, the recent temperature is low, so the temperature of the graphics card will also be low. However, with Nitro+’s heat dissipation capability, generally speaking, the average temperature of the GPU should be around 62 degrees.
Although the TBP (Total Board Power) of Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX is set at 420W, it is rarely achieved in practice. According to our test conditions, the average is 404W.
RGB lighting effects can be set through Sapphire’s TriXX software, the default is Rainbow mode, but compared to other lights, Sapphire’s default lighting effects are a bit less, maybe more lights can be provided through firmware updates in the future After all, the Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX lights up and down this time, which is quite playable.
This time, the performance of the Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card based on the RDNA 3 architecture is very interesting to compete with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 based on the Ada Lovelace architecture. After deducting the performance of Ray Tracing and DLSS, AMD’s performance under the same game settings is obviously better than NVIDIA. If the driver can continue to perform stably, then the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX should perform better.
Going back to Sapphire’s flagship Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX, as AMD’s flagship AIB partner, the performance of this card must be included as one of the options in the purchase of Radeon RX 7900 XTX series graphics cards, although Taiwan Sapphire only provides a 3-year warranty.
