Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X 24 GB in review – A lot helps a lot, even with cooling

For the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X 24 GB, Sapphire opens the very big cutlery box. Compared to the MBA card (made by AMD), the Vapor-Chamber works perfectly and does exactly what is expected of it. Even in the most outlandish living and installation situations. Together with a significantly higher power limit, the clock rate is also very high. Nibbling at the 3 GHz mark under full load is kind of nice. Well, I don’t want to spoil too much, but this interpretation of a thick card even makes you forget the efficiency from time to time. Of course, there is always a bit of crowbar involved. But so be it…

Of course, there is, as usual, the comprehensive teardown, an extensive board and cooler analysis with some reverse engineering, as well as the analysis of the power consumption and the load peaks including a suitable power supply recommendation. For more details, I recommend my launch article on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900XT.

The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X 24 GB

AMD’s Navi 31 GPU has 58 billion transistors and offers up to 61 TFLOPs of single-precision computing performance without OC. This GPU also features a 5.3 TB/s chiplet interconnect. With TSMC’s 5nm node, Navi 31 GPU has transistor density increased to 165% compared to Navi 2X. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers 96 CUs with a 2.27 GHz clock (Boost up to 2.5 GHz) and has a board power of ample 400 watts (Torture up to around 450 watts). As for memory, this XTX model also features 24 GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 20 Gbps. This SKU has a 384-bit memory bus and offers a memory bandwidth of 959.2 GB/s.

The new Nitro design language is well done and Sapphire now relies on a really thick, dual-shell frame which in turn carries the actual fin heatsink including vapor chambers. More about this in the teardown, because this is new for Sapphire. The usual mounting frames for the RAM and VRM cooling (sandwich) have been dispensed with and everything now looks like a single unit. And it doesn’t only look like metal, but it is made of metal and therefore feels really valuable. The card is 31.5 cm long and 13.5 cm high. The thickness is not bad at all and it ends up being a 3.5 slot design weighing almost 2 kilos.

On the top, we primarily see the three 8-pin sockets for the external power supply. Of course, we don’t have to discuss AMD’s bending radii for the power supply connections, everything is still really oldschool, even if three massive cables are already quite fat. The Radeon lettering is in a large LED light area, which really fuels the ARGB fireworks at the top and bottom. It almost has the charm of a real reading lamp and was given the sonorous name “Pantheon+” by Sapphire. Now of course you can argue why Pantheon in particular, but it could refer to the temple located in Rome for all the Roman gods, which has an architecturally groundbreaking dome, or it could refer to mythology and the set of gods and goddesses worshipped in a particular religious or cultural belief system. Just pick something or leave the lamps off. Depending on your taste.

If you turn the card, which weighs 1940 grams, backwards, you’ll see a massive backplate with the obligatory light-up bells and whistles. The Sapphire logo is just as present as an ARGB header for external integration. Sapphire also integrates software BIOS switching again (top right). The BIOS switch has three positions (seen from the slot bezel to the card end): Standard BIOS, second BIOS (center) and software-controlled. With Sapphire’s TRIXX software, you can then switch the BIOS selection without having to open the case or crawl under the desk.

Sapphire doesn’t give this second BIOS its own name, but actually you don’t need it. It lets the card run at slightly lower clock rates and the lower clock rates then lead to a small decrease in temperatures, fan speed and noise levels. But this is rather marginal and at least not a “real” silent BIOS. Just another option, or so.

With the two familiar DisplayPort 2.1 ports, as well as two HDMI 2.1 jacks, we end the navel-gazing. However, the USB Type C port is omitted and the board also lacks the appropriate power supply.

Overview of the RDNA3 cards – technical data

The RDNA3 cards are quite different and not only on the outside. However, the card from Sapphire trumps the reference also in clock and power and is therefore a real fun card. Inflated OC candidates are always a bit faster in total, of course, but they are also considerably thirstier. We will see later that this will also be the case here, because even Sapphire cannot reinvent good old physics. But you just have to live with that. I’ll come back to this later.

Once again the tabular comparison:

 

Test setup

By popular request, I again use a closed system, which takes the form of a PC specially assembled for igor’sLAB by MIFCOM (exemplary product link, no affiliate) offers a really practical basis. The case used is really good, has enough internal volume and also an excellent airflow. The used AiO compact water cooling in the form of the Silen Loop II from Be Quiet fits visually to the overall concept and the RGB accents of RAM and motherboard can either be set to plain white or turned off completely in case of doubt. If it should get too colorful again.

The PC was assembled nicely by MIFCOM (I’m always like that with the cables) and can be purchased in this configuration (see below) in the same way or modified at the dealer. It was simply important to me here to use a commercially available solution and not my extremely chilled lab hardware in the climate oasis. There is enough space between the side panel (glass) and the graphics card and the storage space of the XL case was not even close to being used. Thus, even all other RTX 4080 (and RTX 4090) with the unspeakable adapter still have enough room to breathe. So that should fit, since the Radeon cards do not have a problem with sprawling bend radii. I also only need two fans in the front.

However, the measurement of the detailed power consumption and other, more in-depth things is done in the lab on two tracks using high-resolution oscilloscope technology (there are also various follow-ups!) and the self-created, MCU-based measurement setup for motherboards and graphics cards (pictures below) or NVIDIA’s PCAT. Of course I use a redundant system for this, with the same components, because such measurements in the case are rather difficult.

The audio measurements are done outside in my chamber (room within a room).

I have also summarized the individual components of the test system in a table: