Sapphire R9 285 2GB ITX Compact OC Edition Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing (accurate at the time of writing)

In the USA Sapphire’s R9 285 ITX Compact OC Edition is selling for $259.99 at Amazon while in the UK it can be had at Overclockers for £199.99 and is part of the Radeon Gold Award program which entitles you to 3 free games. Sapphire provide a 2 year warranty with this product.

Summary 

Sapphire are the first AMD partner we’ve seen who’ve taken advantage of the improved power and thermal efficiency of the Tonga GPU and what a great job they’ve done. Out of the box performance is a little slower than their full sized OC variant but that’s not surprising because this GPU is clocked a little slower. We’ve shown in our testing that it still overclocks well despite its size, although this isn’t the card to go for if you want the best overclocking. Noise and temperatures are also very good for its size – it runs only marginally louder and hotter than its larger counter-part. This is impressive in itself since this card has just a single fan. To top the deal off the Saphire R9 285 looks the part, it has a great aesthetic and it looks incredibly sleek. The combination of fully fledged R9 285 performance, good overclocking potential, excellent cooling and noise performance with sleek aesthetics make this a fantastic product. The larger-than-usual accessory package also adds a bit of extra value, especially if you can manage to get this card with the Radeon Gold award scheme which is in itself worth a lot to most gamers.

What isn’t there to like? Well here in the UK it’s more expensive than the “normal” R9 285s from Sapphire with the Dual-X coolers, that’s more expensive than the stock and OC models. In the USA that’s reversed, I’d like to see the UK prices made a bit cheaper. Secondly, the end mounted power supply connector seems a weird choice, I think top mounting would be preferred because it allows the card to be shorter. With a power connector the card overhangs a mini-ITX board by 1.5cm, it measures at 18.5cm while mini-ITX measures at 17cm – this is worth considering for REALLY compact builds.

(Please note that until Midnight GMT on October 6th 2014 you can enter our competition for a chance to win this graphics card. See more details here.)

Pros

• Great cooling and noise for its size
• Not too much of a premium over “normal” R9 285s
• Looks sleek
• Overclocked and has overclocking headroom
• Part of Radeon Rewards program

Cons

• End mounted power connector
• UK pricing much higher than U.S

“Sapphire’s R9 285 ITX Compact Edition revitalizes a fairly stale mini-ITX graphics card market. There’s now more performance on offer that takes the fight to compact GTX 760 and R9 270X models that have dominated up until now.”

Thank you to Sapphire for providing this review sample.