If you haven't checked out our review of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab), now is a good time to do so. In short, the 7900 XTX is very competitive with Nvidia's RTX 4080 (opens in new tab) in rasterized games, but runs hot and is a bit limited by AMD's desire to keep reference cards to a tight power budget.

The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X (open in new tab) is now available. An expensive proposition at $1,199 (open in new tab) | £1,299 (open in new tab) | $2,099 AUD (open in new tab), but at the time of writing, cheaper than the high-end RTX 4080's asking price As the value advantage promoted by AMD dries up, Sapphire Nitro+ will need to impress to justify its asking price, meaning you can get a lot of cards for that price.

The Vapor-X-branded Nitro+ is Sapphire's flagship model, but there is no denying the possibility of a higher clocked Toxic model in the future as the underlying technology matures.

Once you take a look, it is clear that by making the RDNA 3 Navi 31 a big, beautiful design that allows the full power of the silicon to be unleashed, any semblance of conservatism that the reference card embodies is thrown out the window.

Like the reference RX 7900 XTX, the heart of the Sapphire Nitro+ is a fully enabled Navi 31 package with all seven chiplets fully unlocked. Up to 96 graphics compute die (GCD) compute units are enabled. This leaves 6,144 stream processors, 96 ray accelerators, and 192 AI processors; all six memory controller dies (MCDs) are also enabled.

The card has 24GB of 20Gbps GDDR6 memory on a 384-bit memory interface, providing a total memory bandwidth of 960GB/s.

However, this is the only thing that the Sapphire-flavored RX 7900 XTX shares with the reference card. The boost clock is 2,680 MHz and the TDP is a whopping 420 watts. This is 180 MHz or 65 watts higher than the reference 7900 XTX. It also has three 8-pin power connectors. A card that consumes this much power naturally requires a high-performance cooler with temperature control. Sapphire provides just that. The cooler is effectively a quad-slot behemoth. But is it enough to tame the beast?

The Nitro+ features Sapphire's stunning 3.5-slot Pantheon cooling solution. Its matte gray finish is minimalist but looks and feels beautiful, with Vapor-X vapor chambers, noise-reducing wave fins, a die-cast aluminum front plate for VRM cooling, and a larger heat dissipation area compared to the reference model, among many other features. This is a cooler that will likely compete with any product on Nvidia's side.

The card has a full-cover back plate with additional padding to cool the PCB components and a full-length light bar along both sides of the card, one of the most spectacular RGB implementations I have ever seen, which really adds a premium touch! . Overall, this card looks and feels like a wonderfully designed card.

Video output consists of dual DP 2.1 and dual HDMI 2.1 ports, and Sapphire has removed the reference card's USB Type-C connection.

The card has dual BIOS and a third position for user-defined settings controlled via Sapphire's Trixx software. Additionally, the card includes an ARGB output to synchronize the card's lighting with the rest of the system; there is also a 4-pin fan header that can be used to run adjacent fans based on GPU temperature.

The Sapphire Pantheon cooler really deserves another mention. It is difficult to compare coolers with different architectures and TDPs, but compared to reference coolers, the Sapphire is miles better in both noise level and temperature.

The PCB is a 17+3 phase design with 70A power stages for both GPU and memory. If needed, it can provide over 1000W of power to the poor graphics card silicon.

The battle between the RTX 4080 and the RX 7900 XTX will remain relevant for a long time, as both cards are still in the early stages of their life cycle. So how will the two face off?

For such a power-hungry GPU, the highest temperature I saw was a shockingly low 60°C. Moreover, the cooler did not even have to run hard to remain effectively silent at all times. Sapphire did well. To be fair, an MSI Suprim or Asus Strix cooler would also do a great job; the RTX 4080 is not a very demanding chip, but it certainly is.

I was unable to run my set of benchmarks before returning the reference RX 7900 XTX, but the temperature results I did get indicate that the Sapphire is 8°C lower than the reference model and the noise level is much lower.

It is truly amazing how good today's high-end GPU coolers are; a 450W TDP is well within their capabilities, though, given their size, they should be. [But as has been the case for the past three generations, it depends on the games you play and what value you place on certain features. You probably know what I mean. [While it is good to see the RX 7000 series catching up to the RTX 30 series, the RTX 40 cards are still far superior in ray tracing. However, if you value the DLSS frame generation capabilities of RT and Nvidia's RTX 40 cards, you should opt for the RTX 40 cards; look out for AMD's competing technology, FSR 3.0 (opens in new tab), sometime in 2023. Time will tell if it can deliver the voodoo we expect.

Returning to Sapphire, we see that some rasterized games are not too far off from the mighty RTX 4090 (opens in new tab), such as Far Cry 6 and Warhammer III, other titles that do not use ray tracing, Nitro+ has a not-too-small lead over the RTX 4080. (opens in new tab)

Overall, the status quo for high-end GPUs has not changed; Nvidia has the fastest and most expensive cards with the RTX 4090 as well as the 3090/Ti, plus the pricey but fundamentally superior 4080. AMD's challenger offers better value (although Sapphire is certainly an expensive option) while the RX 7900 cards are very competitive in non-late race games, just as the 6800/6900 series were.

Will future drivers be able to get more out of the 7900's chiplet architecture; AMD is certainly learning where the hardware and software bottlenecks are, and it will be interesting to see where the chiplet journey takes them.

Sapphire has done a great job with the tongue-twistingly named Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X. The Navi 31 GPU has been unleashed, and it's a great example of how to make the most out of a GPU. It's faster, cooler, quieter, and better looking than the reference card. Depending on the price in your country, the price premium that Sapphire is demanding is well worth it.

They also look great. These dual RGB lightbars look stunning against the dark tones of the tempered glass case, and the seemingly unorthodox placement of the lightbar at the rear of the card facing the motherboard adds a beautiful glow to the entire black motherboard.

But it's not all glitz and glamour: the PCB is more than capable of handling the demanding Navi 31 chiplet GPU, and the cooler does an excellent job, achieving both cooling and quieting goals.

Its biggest weakness is its high power consumption: at 420W, it is considerably higher than the 355W of the reference RX 7900 XTX. But that means overclockers are free to push their cards without the power and cooling constraints of reference cards.

And that's what Sapphire is all about: the RX 7900 XTX unleashed. It may not be the RTX 4090 slayer that the market welcomes, but if you are an AMD fan and value raster performance above all else, the Sapphire Nitro+ is a worthy candidate. It is the fastest AMD card I have ever held in my hands.