Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC 8GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Price

Currently, the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC is available from Overclockers UK for £249.95 including free next day shipping. To put this into perspective, the reference model which features a pretty sloppy cooling design costs £221.99. The additional £27.96 fee is well worth the investment and the card exudes a much more premium feel. On another note, the budget variants of the GTX 1060 start around the £240 mark, and high-end models can easily fetch between £280-£320. From my research, it’s pretty clear that the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC is aggressively priced and offers ridiculously good value-for-money.

Overview

In recent years, I’ve encountered a large number of attractive PC components as manufacturers try to break the mould and offer something unique. While there’s still an overreliance on the red and black gaming theme, companies appear to be adopting a more thoughtful approach to product design. On the other hand, the recent RGB phase has resulted in a few questionable decisions and bold lighting effects can alienate a section of the market. There’s probably going to be RGB fatigue as consumers grow tired of lighting effects on each item and prefer to purchase components with a more balanced appearance. Furthermore, I’m quite sceptical of the notion that users enjoy wild transitional effects and most people I’ve spoken to stick with a single solid colour.

Even though this may sound a little overdramatic, I personally believe the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC is the most attractive piece of computer hardware ever devised. Of course, aesthetic preference is a subjective matter, but you cannot help but admire the graphics card’s dignified appearance. More specifically, the GPU’s gunmetal shroud looks sublime and the tiny indentations make the product instantly recognisable. The graphics card’s crowning achievement is the backplate which perfectly balances silver and black shades. Additionally, the distinctive pattern and beautiful Nitro logo is stunning and acts as the perfect combination. Often, backplates are fairly bland and opt for a basic matte black finish. Sapphire didn’t adopt this strategy and innovated by unleashing such a spectacular backplate design.

On another note, Sapphire’s RGB implementation is relatively subdued compared to other graphics cards and revolves around the Sapphire logo. This isn’t necessarily a negative aspect and I prefer the more understated lighting system. By default, this is set to a solid blue colour but you can enable a rainbow mode, display different colours depending on fan speeds and even vary the lighting when the PCB temperature changes. Interestingly, Sapphire have given the end-user extra flexibility and it’s possible to cycle through effects via a manual button or through an upcoming update to their overclocking utility. Underneath this RGB button is a BIOS switch which contains a silent profile with reduced clocks and boost mode for those requiring maximum performance.

The company’s latest cooling solution features four nickel-plated heatpipes, a dense aluminium fin array and two 95mm dual ball bearing fans. Once combined, these elements keep the GPU core operating within a 73-77C window which is a significant improvement compared to the reference design. According to my testing, the thermals are 10C cooler on average while utilising a significantly higher boost clock. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to gauge load noise values due to a fan speed bug but I’m fairly confident that the graphics card will remain extremely quiet considering Sapphire’s reputation. Plus the new fan design apparently offers 85% longer lifespan and runs 10% quieter than the previous generation.

When it comes to overclocking, the graphics card is already running near its maximum potential which limits the amount of additional speed you can achieve through manual tweaking. Despite my best efforts, the average boost clock only increased from 1342MHz to 1359.9MHz. On the other hand, this isn’t an issue with Sapphire’s implementation of the RX 480 and you’ll be hard pressed to achieve faster clocks on other models. The memory overclocking headroom was much higher and I managed to reach a final figure of 2126MHz.

In DirectX 11 titles, the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC competes with the GTX 980 rather well although it lingers behind a factory overclocked GTX 1060. To be perfectly clear, I would have liked to include both the GTX 1060 Founders Edition and reference RX 480 but this couldn’t be done for sampling reasons. During the 1080p Far Cry Primal benchmark, the graphics card remained within a frame of the GTX 980. Increasing the resolution to 1440p resulted in identical performance numbers and this showcases how close the GPU is to the GTX 980.

As predicted, the graphics card excels when utilising modern APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan. For example, the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC edged a high-end variant of the GTX 1060 when running Ashes of the Singularity and enjoyed a hefty lead over the GTX 980. Even more impressive, the graphics card destroyed the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X and GTX 980 as well as outclassing the R9 Nano in Hitman. Ideally, I would have provided results for a whole host of GPUs running Doom via the Vulkan and OpenGL APIs. Sadly, I received a code just before the NDA and only had time to test the GTX 980 and the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC. Nevertheless, the data clearly shows that AMD graphics cards experience a massive performance boost when selecting the Vulkan API. In contrast to this, NVIDIA hardware performs either worse shown or experience minimal performance enhancements. This is promising for the future as AMD products should be more competitive if the Vulkan API is widely adopted.

It’s not all positive though since the MSI GTX Gaming X has a substantial lead in Rise of the Tomb Raider despite opting for the DirectX 12 benchmark. Saying that, the improvements especially when analysing the minimum frame rates on AMD hardware, is substantial versus DirectX 11 testing. Overall, the performance is worthy of recognition and while the MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X fares better in DirectX 11 games, the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC has a noticeable lead when playing most games with a modern API. As a result, the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC is probably the better investment since AMD’s architecture has been engineered to effectively use asynchronous compute and features superb DirectX 12 optimisation.

Of course, the overwhelming majority of PC games opt for a DirectX 11 render, but the amount of developers using DirectX 12 is on the rise. Furthermore, Microsoft’s new commitment to bringing PC and Xbox players together with this new API should help matters. Given the potential performance of the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC when paired with Vulkan or DirectX 12, and its good showing in DirectX 11 games, I have no hesitation in recommending it since the product beautifully caters towards the mainstream demographic.

Pros

• 0dB fan mode
• 8GB model provides an affordable VR-compliant GPU
• Beautiful RGB illumination
• Decent memory overclocking
• Dual BIOS
• Exceptional value
• Gorgeous backplate
• Innovative design
• Premium cooling solution
• Sleek and sophisticated aesthetic
• Superb performance
• Thrives when using latest APIs
• Wonderful build quality

Cons

• GTX 1060 is less power hungry

“The Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 OC is exceptionally well-made, looks absolutely stunning and offers impeccable value. Honestly, this is the graphics card the majority of users should be considering due to the wonderful price to performance ratio.”

Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 8GB Graphics Card Review

Thank you Sapphire for providing us with this review sample.