AMD RX 7900 XTX Reference Vs Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ [Overclocking | Power | Thermals]

just a couple of months ago the newest gpus from AMD were brought to the market in the form of the 7900 XT and 7900 XTX and while you can buy a 7900 XTX reference based card for its 999 dollar launch price I want to see if spending extra actually warrants extra performance what it means in terms of cooling and basically if paying more is actually worth it but before we get into that here's a quick word from this video sponsor [Music] three pre-installed fans that provide massive airflow and plenty of space for up to nine fans in total along with pwm functionality you can tweak things to strike the balance between Cooling and silence a built-in type c 3.2 Gen 2 Port provides transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second too and it supports dual CPU motherboards with a width of up to 330 millimeters as well as support for vertical mounted gpus and space for two 360 mil radiators it really does have so many cool features if you like what you see check out the link in the description to find out more now in terms of pricing the sapphire Nitro plus does come in quite a bit more expensive when compared to the AMD reference model demanding around 20 or 200 more though I have seen it higher than that depending on availability in some cases pushing the price from 999 up to a little under 1400 which I feel is quite a fair bit extra but that's what we're here to find out can it make up for it in terms of design cooling features and of course performance now before we jump into all the numbers let's talk about the design of each individual card because they are both visually stunning but also very different at the same time apart from having a triple fan set up on both cards that's pretty much where the similarities end the sapphire is the much bigger card coming in at 320 millimeters long compared to just 287 millimeters on the AMD reference card and that also means that Sapphire were able to put in three much larger fans in comparison which should Aid in cooling they both look can feel extremely solid and AMD have clearly stepped up their game since the last generation of reference cards which while they were nice they were clearly not as good in the design or engineering side of things as the latest iteration while Sapphire have gone for a more let's say clean almost apple-esque kind of look which actually works very well along with the unique fan blade design height wise again the AMD reference card comes in smaller at 123 millimeters compared to Sapphires 135 millimeters which may cause some issues depending on your case and how close the side panel actually is there isn't really anything out of the ordinary when looking at high-end cards from any major brand the height also goes in favor to amd's reference card at [Music] the other dimension also goes in favor to amd's reference card at 51 millimeters compared to 71 millimeters on the Sapphire card meaning that it will take up three and a half slots in your case compared to the Dual slot design that's on the reference card being noticeably bigger also means that it comes in quite a bit heavier at 2 220 grams while the AMD card weighs in at just 2065 grams though in terms of build quality they both are exceptional the cards do differ in terms of Power with the MSI including a third eight pin connector to provide 420 watts of power compared to the 355 Watts on the AMD reference card meaning that the clock speeds are also higher with the Nitro plus clocking in at 2510 megahertz on the game clock and 2680 megahertz on the Boost clock a nice jump from the 2269 megahertz game clock and 2499 megahertz boost clock on the MSRP based card talking about the back plates they are both full covers that encapsulate the whole PCB though the AMD card is much more simplistic in design while Sapphire have gone for a let's say more intricate design with a small amount of ventilation holes while AMD really have left no room for the air to escape which could in kind of I don't know testing maybe hurt it in terms of temperatures When comparing the two gpus on the rear i o the connections do have some differences with the AMD card sporting two DisplayPort connectors a single HDMI and a USB type-c port compared to the Dual DisplayPort and dual HDMI ports they're included on the Nitro plus card along with more ventilation on the other two slots of the card due to the weight of both of these cards Sapphire have included a bracket that mounts to the expansion slots on your case to help alleviate any sag along with the back plate and general shroud of the card also assisting there too while amd's card doesn't actually come with anything but being much smaller it's not exactly needed anyway now taking both of the coolers apart reveals the true differences between them with the AMD card incorporating an all-black heatsink which makes contact directly with the GPU core along with copper plates to keep the memory temperatures at Bay compared to the large split heatsink with copper Vapor chamber plate on the Sapphire card which makes contact with both the GPU and the memory there's also a bracket that along with adding stability to the car due to its weight also helps keep the vrm temperatures under control as well now speaking of the vrms they are identical on both cards sporting 17 MP 87997 phases which are rated at 70 amps each for the GPU and a further 3 mp8799770 amp stages for the memory in conjunction with the mp2857 and mp2856 controllers respectively so they should be able to perform kind of nion identically though the extra power limit of the Nitro plus card could give it the slight Edge in terms of Headroom when overclocking but with AMD 7000 series graphics cards favoring a small overclock with an undervolt applied I can't see the edge extra power limit really doing too much if anything at all also in terms of cooling while the AMD reference card doesn't have any heat pads or acts as a heatsink in any way the Sapphire card does include some which should Aid in shifting heat away from the rear of the PCB so on paper there really isn't much in it other than the extra power limits and higher clock speed which could make all of the difference and while the sapphire clearly has the bigger and beefier cooler is it because of the extra power and higher clock speeds or does it actually help in any way well to find out we have to start by looking at the stop performance of both cards and how they compare to other cards we've tested recently so kicking things off with Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and straight away we start to see the Sapphire card stretch its legs with a seven percent lead over the AMD card along with eight percent better lows making it the fastest AMD card we've actually tested is cyberpunk the league continues with a six percent uplift over the reference card in the averages and an eight percent lead in those one percent lows again further cementing its place as the faster AMD card only being beaten by the more expensive RTX 4090 in death stranding it's a very similar affair with a four percent leave in the averages though at such a high frame rate in the first place it would be completely unnoticeable though it is nice to see how close the perform was to nvidia's Flagship in this title then in watchdog's Legion again the sapphire comes in with four percent more performance in the averages but in a turn up for the books the AMD reference card fights back in the one percent lows albeit only by three FPS so I guess it's safe to say that the faster and more powerful card did it better by a small margin but at a cost of between 20 to 40 percent in terms of the price premium which for me doesn't warrant the extra cost involved so hopefully the cooling performance can show us something else that's where we booted up f122 and ran it on a loop for an hour on both cards to see how they compare while the AMD reference card came in with a GPU temperature of 67 degrees the sapphire Nitro plus did come in about four percent cooler which equates to around three degrees the memory Junction temperatures saw a bigger difference of around 86 degrees on the Sapphire card while AMD Rose to the low 90s showing that that beefy cooler really does make a difference in terms of clock speeds a Sapphire card did manage to hold a higher level of boost around 2 608 megahertz compared to amd's 2400 megahertz blue speed for a longer period of time though the more expensive car did actually use around 15 more power at just over 400 watts compared to 348 Watts on the reference 7900 XTX also in terms of fan speed the AMD while still remaining fairly quiet at around 1 765 RPM was no match for the Sapphire card which remained much lower around 1557 RPM during this hour-long Loop so there's again a small difference though the Sapphire card was significantly quieter than amd's reference card during our stress test at stock but I'd put that down as two nil in favor of sapphire now so while overclocking is something that's becoming more of a dinar more than ever it is still worth looking at especially with the ability of undervolting these cards to get small boost in performance for Less power and heat it's here where we see another key difference while both cards were able to be overclocked to the same level with a Max boost frequency of 3000 megahertz and memory frequency of 2 700 megahertz with a 115 power limit the AMD reference card had to remain at the same stock voltage while the Sapphire card likely due to its Superior cooler was able to be undevolted by 50 millivolts so with our overclock now running it's time to boot up our game test again to see what these new overclock figures give us in terms of raw performance and kicking things off with Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 again where we see a small two percent in performance on the AMD reference card while The Sapphires are a much larger five percent boost in performance when overclocked this now puts the Nitro plus to the same level of performance as the RTX 4090 iqx3 with the only difference being in the one percent lows in cyberpunk the AMD reference cards are a seven percent boost in performance now putting it one percent higher than the sapphire card's stock performance but with significantly lower one percent lows while the Sapphire card only saw a two percent boost in performance and also saw a dip in the one percent low figures then moving on to death stranding which already displayed very good performance on both cards and as such the overclock on the AMD reference card only saw a single frame better performance in the averages though again saw a significant dip in the one percent lows while the Sapphire card managed to eke out another three percent more performance when overclocked putting it level with the RTX 4090 but with 11 better performance in the one percent lows then finally in Watchdogs Legion the AMD card again sorry dropping the lows while the average performance was boosted by a modest three percent while the sapphire carts saw the same three percent boost in the averages though the one set lows also increased by just under four percent to see what effect this extra performance through overclocking actually means for cooling performance we again booted up f122 and ran it on a loop for an hour on both cards and here we saw some interesting results because while the AMD reference card did increase in temperature by about seven percent the Sapphire card came in with the same GPU temperature as it did at stock at 64 degrees showing that the cooler really is doing a great job the memory Junction temperature increased for both cards with both the AMD and Sapphire cards now seeing temperatures are four percent warmer overall during our stress test with AMD now at 96 degrees while Sapphire was still quite a bit lower at 90 degrees the interesting thing that I did notice was that while the AMD card's clock speed increase to 2987 megahertz which is a whopping 24 increase while the Nitro plus card only increased by seven percent though boost is still a bit of a Fickle thing to look at as it doesn't mean that it will stay at that level through a long gaming session and will go up and down based on temperatures and of course power speaking of Power with the overclock applied the amd's card power increased by 14 now up to 398 Watts from 348 Watts while the Sapphire card also used 14 more power from 404 Watts narrow up to 464 Watts putting it now 16 more power hungry than the reference card this also resulted in a four percent increase in fan speed for the AMD card now hovering around 1 850 RPM while the Sapphire card saw a slightly lesser Jump by three percent now sitting at a still very low 1616 RPM so I'd like to think this video has given you something to think about when looking at the 7900 XTX and what choices you have when looking at buying either a reference card or something that is guess highly considered the best 7900 XTX custom aib card on the market I mean yes it will cost you more money but you do get more for that money and in all honesty there are some things I simply can't ignore with the AMD reference card like the louder fans the overall performance overclock ability and of course the temperatures including that memory Junction temperature that was getting very very close to the dreaded 100 degree marker when overclocked whether the Sapphire card is worth more for all those benefits really is subjective and while personally I'd be happy to pay a little more for it prices are still just a bit too much kind of all over the place and 200 over is one thing but in some cases paying another 400 over a reference card kind of the value for money Prospect just I don't know falls off a cliff so for that extra money you do get a more premium card with a far superior cooler and something that should last a test of time along with looking absolutely fantastic inside your system too I mean don't get me wrong the AMD reference card is a fantastic looking GPU and it does harness the potential of the rdna3 architecture perfectly the sapphire does have some drawbacks though including being extremely large which you know could cause some issues with compatibility inside your case along with much larger power draw though at that price point the only other option really is to go with something from Nvidia and that's going to have its own kind of fair share of power issues anyway whatever choice you make I don't think you're going to be disappointed is you're still getting a great product no matter what you go with but you may just have to pay a little over what maybe I don't know I think is reasonable but again that aspect really does come down to the subjective nature of the person fronting the bill for now that about wraps things up hopefully you enjoyed this video and love these little kind of head-to-head type kind of videos that really drills down into the aspects that separates one card from another if you did enjoy this video then the liking the sub to the channel would be amazing also if you love what we do and you want to help support us by joining the super cool patreon Club then the link for that is down below where you'll get access to a ton of cool features including behind the scenes content access to a super special area on Discord patreon meetups at the e-technics offices and much much more that aside thanks for tuning in I'll see you in the next one see you later guys bye

Channel: eTeknix

Views: 26,363

Keywords: technology, tech, computers, eteknix, eTeknix, reviews, review, unboxings, unboxing, pc gaming

Id: -yUp-vl9cFE

Length: 15min 6sec (906 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023