Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+ in the test – It also goes quietly, quickly and quite thirsty

1 - Einführung und technische Details 2 - Teardown: Platine, Spannunsversorgung, Kühler 3 - Gaming Performance 4 - Leistungsaufnahme beim Gaming und Effizienzanalyse 5 - Leistungsaufnahme, Spannungen und Normeinhaltung 6 - Lastspitzen und Netzteil-Empfehlung 7 - Taktraten und Temperaturen 8 - Lüfter und Geräuschemission ('Lautsärke') 9 - Übersicht, Zusammenfassung und Fazit

Fan control and curves

Cooling only works with a good airflow and that’s why I took a look at the fan curves. For this purpose, I set the (lower and usual) edge temperature and the fan speeds of the Radeon RX 6800 XT against each other. A second look into the system then showed that the hotspot temperature here hit exactly the preset tjunction value in the BIOS and the fans therefore suddenly started to run as if there was no tomorrow. After that everything levels out again slowly and it even becomes quieter.

This could certainly have been solved more gently, but it is also the extreme case. In most normal games you won’t get that high at all, so that in the end it will almost always end up at around 1220 rpm, which you will hardly ever notice as really annoying. And the abundant 340 watts? They don’t itch the radiator.

In BIOS 2 it becomes completely quiet and you end up in the sleeping car compartment of the first class. At very good values, it levels out between 1000 and 1050 rpm. It’s almost not audible anymore, despite the slightly more than 320 watts.

Noise emission “Volume”

If you now measure the whole thing in normal operation and without stress, the 36.8 dB(A) of the Radeon RX 6800XT is a real milestone, but the Nitro+ tops it all with 33 dB(A) at over 340 watts. But the disadvantage is that you can now also hear the buzzing of the reels again. Well, you can’t have everything and the good Mr. Lorentz and his power named after him are unfortunately acoustically a little bit in the way.

For the BIOS 2 version, I had to improvise a bit on the graphical output, because a Windows update in the meantime had completely paralyzed Smaart 7 and the config files for the emergency and the license are unfortunately in my external chamber and thus in a building that is currently quarantined. But the microphone is still the same and I have the correction files of the last calibration on the server. I now measure 3.4 dB(A), which is also still extremely good in the range around 320 watts, especially since the cooler only weighs 1232 grams. Alternatively, measurements were taken at night in my noise-free video studio, which also has excellent sound insulation.

As an interim conclusion, it can be said that Sapphire has created a cooler that not only cools well, but also does not want to be caught in the act acoustically.