Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ review

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Introduction

Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ review
The fastest XTX of them all?

Sapphire is back with the NITRO+ RX 7900 XT,  a high-performance graphics card with a beautiful, minimalist design, excellent cooling, and a 20-phase solid power delivery system spread out over a 14 Layer High TG PCB with 2 Oz Copper. It's a card that has been tweaked pretty sweet, with a 2680 Boost frequency and 420 TBP / 340W TGP it'll be faster than its competition. These massive 3-slot parts are able to boost their clock speed a notch higher relative to the reference design. We've been surprised to see that this product is fitted with triple 8-pin power inputs.  No custom SKU has been released with a USB Type-C port, and the ASUS TUG is no exception. Instead of multiple HDMI ports, gamers will get three DisplayPort ports and a single HDMI. We'll address that in our tweaking segment of the article -- we have the flagship Radeon RX 7900 GPU inside the XTX, which uses the latest rDNA3 GPU architecture and has 24 GB of graphics memory. When tested against the GeForce RTX 4080, the card holds its own. You get a massive 24GB of GDDR6 memory, the same as the RTX 4090 at far lower cost. The clock speed, however, is a bit convoluted, as we will explore in more detail below. Right now, memory capacity is the most crucial metric to highlight. Despite employing 24GB of memory like Nvidia's current flagship, the RTX 4090, AMD's RX 7900 XTX employs slower GDDR6 memory. Memory rates that are faster are generally better. However, this is not always the case. Because of the RX 7900 XTX's huge 384-bit memory bus, the card's memory is not as quick as other options is has more bandwidth thanks to an infinity cache. Two cards are launched for the initial launch: the 7900XT and 7900 XTX. Both are based on the Navi 31 GPU, which has RDNA3 architecture and is based on a new chiplet design. Yeah, chiplets man, and it's a big GPU, alright. The die area of the Navi 31 graphics processor chip is 300 mm2. AMD confirmed that its RDNA 3 graphics processing units (GPUs) have a huge performance boost. AMD will highlight some of the essential parts of the RDNA 3 GPUs, such as:


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Radeon RX 7900 XTXRadeon RX 7900 XT
Architecture 5nm RDNA3 5nm RDNA3
GPU Navi 31 XTX Navi 31 XT
Shader Processors 12288/6144SP 10752/5376SP
Memory 24GB G6 20GB G6
Memory Bus 384-bit 320-bit
Memory Speed 20 Gbps 20 Gbps
Infinity Cache 96 MB 80 MB
Bandwidth 960 GB/s 800 GB/s
TBP 355W 300W
Price $999 $899


The RDNA3 NITRO+ was revisited from the ground up by the firm. The new Nitro+ has a silver shroud and backplate, making it look very contemporary. A closer look at the fresh images reveals that the RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ is only slightly bigger than three slots. Both sides of the card have sizable ARGB LED strips that can be adjusted independently using the Sapphire TRIXX application. Furthermore, an RGB connector is available for individuals who prefer to coordinate their lighting with other devices. Furthermore, like the NITRO and NITRO PURE series, the Sapphire RX 7900 XTX will provide a dual-BIOS switch. The NITRO+ has a unique I/O layout and three 8-pin power connectors. Unlike AMD's MBA cards, this one only has two HDMI 2.1 connectors and two DisplayPort 2.1 ports. It appears to be the first card of its kind to include two DisplayPort connectors. AMD promotes game clock of 2.3GHz for the RX 7900 XTX, which is the speed at which you can anticipate the card to operate at while playing games. However, Sapphire defaults that value towards 2.51 GHz, with 2680 MHz for the boost clock on a 339W TGP.  Admittedly, these are quite minor improvements, but every little bit counts. Nitro+ cards have three 8-pin PCIe power ports rather than two, and the USB Type-C port on the rear has been removed, making them noticeably different from AMD's reference design beyond their obviously larger dimensions. The NITRO branding guarantees high-quality components and sturdy construction, such as a robust die-cast frame into which the aluminium backplate and shroud have been melted for further strength. In order to dissipate heat more efficiently, the new cooling design makes use of three fans to propel more airflow around the edge of the backplate. The card defaults to performance mode which brings 5% sometimes 6% additional performance compared to the reference cards. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX will use standard 8-pin PCIe connectors rather than the divisive 12VHPWR port, and as stated, will require three of them.

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