Sapphire 7900 XTX Nitro+ Review

A Closer Look

So let’s start with the design. It’s a big step up from the previous generation, but still incorporates some of the same characteristics that made the Nitro+ range of cards famous. If anything though, Sapphire has removed some of the gamer aesthetics, while making the card look more premium at the same time, and it works.

It’s large, though not the longest 7900 XTX we’ve had in at 320mm long, but is very tall at 135mm high including the PCI-Express slot and is also fairly thick at 71mm which makes it 3 and a half slots thick, hence me calling it the chungus.

It’s also the heaviest 7900 XTX I’ve had in my hands at 2220 grams, which is 85 grams more than the XFX model we looked at recently and 155 grams more than the reference AMD card but just from an initial look, that weight is evenly distributed across the card and adds to the stability of the card. For those in fear of GPU sag, Sapphire has included a bracket that mounts to the expansion slots on your case to help prop the card up.

The main shroud of the card has taken the word simplicity and cranked it up to 11 with a curved gun metal design that wraps around each end of the card with the triple dual-bearing fans with the same angled fan blades that were featured on the 6950 XT Nitro+ though thankfully they’ve dialled down the RGB on the fans by completely ditching it as I wasn’t a massive advocate on it with the last generation.

Instead, Sapphire has added two light bars onto the side of the GPU meaning that it illuminates both the motherboard and side of your case if used horizontally, while in vertical mounting, it would glow on the vertical GPU mount, along with blasting up inside your case.

Without the RGB, the card almost looks like something similar to what Apple would make with its clean, simplistic design, though as a fan of all things RGB, I’m liking what’s been done here, as it’s a massive step up from Sapphire cards of old.

One cool feature with the fans is that Sapphire allows you to remove these fans and replace them if they ever cause any issues.

The top of the card along with the large RGB strip also has the first view of what the cooler is made up of, including a moulded internal front plate which makes up a support bar that merges into part of the cooling shroud and gives extra stability to the PCB along with acting as a heatsink for the VRM’s and memory that we’ll take a look at shortly.

It’s also along the top where you’ll find a BIOS switch which allows you to choose between the OC BIOS, the secondary BIOS or to use the Sapphire TriXX software to be able to switch the BIOS on the fly.

The OC BIOS is geared for a whopping 420 Watts, which is the most we’ve seen on any 7900 XTX so far and this is why we see some pretty hefty clock speeds of 2510MHz on the game clock and 2680MHz on the boost clock, which is identical to the XFX Merc 310 we looked at recently, though that had much less total board power.

To achieve the power delivery in a stable way, the card comes with three 8-pin PCI-Express connectors. None of that 12VHPWR nonsense here!

Sapphire has also upped their backplate game, with an all-aluminium backplate that is added for support as well as acting as a heatsink to help dissipate heat as well. It’s not as clean looking as the front of the card with various perforation holes, though I’m sure it’s for a reason, along with a small area where the backplate ends, and meets with the shroud of the card to help air pass through. There’s also the smallest amount of RGB here with the Sapphire logo that lights up.

Also down this end is where we will find space for an ARGB passthrough connector, of which a cable does come included to sync the rest of your system with your card, as well as a fan connector, which is mislabelled but is still a nice feature to have nonetheless.

On the rear I/O, things get changed up a bit from what we’ve seen on other AIB cards, as well as the reference model from AMD with two HDMI 2.1 ports and two DisplayPort 1.4a ports.