Always stay cool: Sapphire RX Vega64 Nitro+ in review

Sapphire took its time, which certainly did not harm the whole project. While some competitors have already scattered PVT samples, i.e. the small series, among the media before the start of the actual mass production, S... Board layout Sapphire differs significantly from AMD's reference design when designing the board. This even makes sense in many places, as the cooling has been optimized and is in the foreground. Due to the elimination of the external spokes... Important preliminary remark In some games we were able to register the phenomenon that the nominally faster Sapphire RX Vega64 Nitro+ fell behind the reference card of the RX Vega. However, that this is not a measurement error or even ... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) Breathe in sapphires, because the much cooler card now (as expected) not only has the reference card fully under control, but also scores above all with the frame times and thus also the minimum frame rates. You... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) Although Destiny 2 is actually a DirectX-11-based game, which should be more the GeForce cards, AMD's Vega cards can stand up to their GeForce competitors. The Sapphire RX V... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) Now the picture returns, because the Sapphire card is slightly slowed down (obviously by the driver), which makes it just behind the reference card. But you don't have the GeForce cards... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) Doom and Volcano are not anything that could shake the RX Vega64. Here, the Sapphire RX Vega64 Nitro+ is again, as expected, in front of the nominally weaker reference card, although not quite as clear as... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) Even if the RX Vega64 has to be sorted just behind Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080, the hierarchy within the AMD guild remains consistent. The Sapphire card is in front of the reference model, if only breathless... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) All three interesting cards are in fact equal, with the Sapphire card surprisingly pulling the shortest in this trio. Driver optimizations shouldn't really come into play here ... Results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 Pixel) If one had to name a prime example of the advantage of a board partner card, then this game, at least in WQHD, would probably be a really good candidate. Despite DirectX11, you have the GeForce GTX 10...results in WQHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) All relevant cards are very close together, with the Sapphire RX Vega64 Nitro+ leading the upper-middle-class trio as expected. However, the lead is very close. Results in U... Power consumption at different loads The power consumption in the gaming loop is at the measured approx. 327 watts well above the 300 watt mark and thus also above what was measured in the reference model. For this there is the more constant leis... Overclocking Due to the good cooler, the limits of this map are well above what the reference map can do and even comes close in places to the water-cooled conversions. But more than what we have achieved is hardly anything more ... Cooling system and backplate Of course, the generated waste heat is directly related to the recorded power, for which the cooling solution is responsible for optimum dissipation. This cooling system, which is therefore almost monumental, is designed by a rie... Summary Since we have not been able to definitively clarify the question of the drivers and some of the performance disadvantages of the board partner cards compared to the reference at this point, we leave this point out of un...