Sapphire NITRO + RX 6800 XT: Specs | Price | CPU | Profitability| Hashrate

Contents hide

1 Specification: Hashrate

2 Test configuration

3 Below is the configuration of the system used for the tests:

4 Performance

5 Frequencies, consumption, temperatures and noise

6 Overclock

7 Conclusions

7.1 Related posts:

A few weeks have passed since the debut of the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT solution , a card that, although it is nowhere to be found, offers decidedly high performance for 4K gaming in traditional titles without ray tracing, equal to those guaranteed by an equally powerful proposal, the NVIDIA GeForce card. RTX 3080.

In our review, in addition to performance, we have seen how AMD has finally raised the stakes also with regard to the design of its reference solutions , equipping them with a totally metal heatsink characterized by three fans that ensure adequate temperatures and controlled noise.

The task of the custom models of AMD’s partners therefore today is more difficult than ever, because to emerge from a simple bankruptcy project, but to do it compared to a good cooling system is another matter. And this is the theme of the analysis of the Sapphire Nitro + RX 6800 XT card that arrived in the editorial office in these days. Once removed from the box, a clear difference with the reference model immediately emerges : weight and dimensions .

Sapphire’s card is longer (310 x 134.3 x 55.3 mm), but at the same time weighs less (just over 1.2 kg) thanks to the plastic cover. This last point, in particular, allows you to safeguard the PCI Express slot (recently we have seen many manufacturers insert support brackets in the bundle of their proposals). In terms of footprint, the NITRO + takes up around three slots on the motherboard.

The board accompanied by three fans, two 100 mm side and one 90 mm central (which rotates in the opposite direction to the others), as already seen on other products. These fans, according to Sapphire, are ” hybrid “, as they blend the characteristics of axial and blower fans, improving both air flow and air pressure, while at the same time containing noise. Like all cards now on the market, also in this case the fans remain stationary in the absence of load, ie under a certain operating temperature, not generating any type of noise.

The radiator consists of three parts in aluminum, connected to the copper base which is exclusively responsible for cooling the GPU. The heat produced by the graphics chip is ferried into the three-part radiator via six 6mm heatpipes . Sapphire has also installed another radiator, which takes care of cooling the memory chips and power circuitry.

In the back of the board we find a metal backplate that hides K6.5 thermal pads, characterized by various openings and a final part with a window designed to pass hot air towards the top of the case, so that it can be captured and ejected outside the chassis. On the backplate we also find a logo that lights up with RGB LEDs , one of the luminous elements in addition to the classic side part.

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The card has other interesting details: there is a switch that allows you to switch between a Performance and a Silent BIOS . There are actually three positions that the switch can take, as one allows you to switch between Performance and Silent modes via the Trixx software directly from the Windows operating system. Another peculiarity is the presence of an ARGB connector towards the end of the board to synchronize its lighting with that of your motherboard. The model is completed by two 8-pin PCIe connectors for power and video outputs, three DisplayPort 1.4 (one more than the reference model) and one HDMI 2.1 . The NITRO + 6800 XT therefore has no USB C port.

Specification: Hashrate

	Radeon RX 6800 XT reference	Sapphire NITRO + RX 6800 XT
Architecture	RDNA 2	RDNA 2
Productive process	7 nanometers	7 nanometers
Number of transistors	26.8 billion	26.8 billion
Die size	519 mm2	519 mm2
Compute Unit	72	72
Stream processor	4608	4608
Ray Accelerator	72	72
Unit texture	288	288
ROPs	128	128
Game Clock	up to 2015 MHz	BIOS Performance: 2110 MHz Silent BIOS: 2045 MHz
Boost Clock	up to 2250 MHz	BIOS Performance: 2360 MHz Silent BIOS: 2285 MHz
AMD Infinity Cache	128 MB	128 MB
GDDR6 memory	16GB at 16Gbps	16GB at 16Gbps
Memory bus	256 bit	256 bit
Memory bandwidth	up to 512 GB / s	up to 512 GB / s

As for the PCB, Sapphire’s board has one more phase than AMD’s reference design: 13 phases are dedicated to the GPU, another three to memory . As for the specifications , the BIOS Performance pushes the frequencies to 2110 MHz in Game Clock (+95 MHz on the reference specifications) and to 2360 MHz in Boost Clock (+110 MHz on the reference), while the rest of the technical characteristics identical to the RX 6800 XT reference. The Silent BIOS, on the other hand, sets the two frequencies respectively to 2045 MHz and 2285 MHz.

Test configuration

The tests were conducted at resolutions of 1920×1080 pixels, 2560×1440 pixels and 3840×2160 pixels, always trying to use very high quality settings to shift the load as much as possible on the GPU. Below are the video cards included in this comparison:

AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT (reference)
Sapphire NITRO + RX 6800 XT (custom)
AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (reference)
AMD Radeon RX 6800 (reference)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Ti (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super (Founders Edition)
Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (Founders Edition)
AMD Radeon VII (reference board)
AMD Radeon RX 5700XT (reference board)
AMD Radeon RX 5700 (reference board)
AMD Radeon RX 5600XT (Sapphire Pulse)

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Below is the configuration of the system used for the tests:

Operating system: Italian Windows 10 Pro
Processor: Intel Core i9-10900K
Power supply: CoolerMaster Silent Pro Gold 1200 Watt
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero WiFi
Memory: G.Skill Trident-Z 2 x 8 GB DDR4-4000 (17-17-17-37)
SSD: Crucial P1 M.2 2280 1TB

Performance

We have carried out a limited selection of tests that we carry out when a new design is launched, on the other hand it is not necessary to do many of them to verify the performance differences between a reference 6800 XT and Sapphire’s NITRO + model. The tests of the custom card were carried out with the BIOS Performance and we also included two tests with only ray tracing active, more than anything else to show the difference between the AMD and Nvidia cards in that aspect (and Nvidia, we remember it , can rely on DLSS).

Despite the higher frequencies of the Sapphire proposal (+ 4.7% on the Game Clock – + 4.9% on the boost clock), the difference in performance with the reference version is very limited , in the order of 1-2% .

Frequencies, consumption, temperatures and noise

Let’s move on to the most interesting analysis, namely the comparison in terms of clock, consumption, temperatures and noise between the Sapphire NITRO + RX 6800 XT and the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT. We ran six consecutive sessions of the Metro Exodus benchmark in 4K with Ultra details, in order to load the cards just enough to put a strain on the cooling system.

In terms of clock rates, Sapphire’s card steadily climbs above 2300 MHz, which the reference version doesn’t and neither does the Silent BIOS setting . If we take the entire test session, therefore also the periods of low frequency and decline between the loading of one session and the other, the average tells us that the custom card touches 2050 MHz, against the 1990 MHz of the reference one: therefore dance about sixty megahertz, and for this reason we do not see significant differences in performance.

Sapphire NITRO + RX 6800 XT

If we move on to the temperature , a very interesting topic since the cooling system is an important element to consider when buying a custom solution, we see that Sapphire’s proposal keeps the GPU at around 70/71 C , while the reference card pushes at 78/79 C (Sapphire’s Silent BIOS stops 2C below peak, but the temperature is more fluctuating). Nothing to worry about in all the cases analyzed, but Sapphire’s proposal comes out very well because it combines everything with a contained noise, even with the BIOS on Performance.

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To conclude, consumption : the higher power limit of the GPU on the Sapphire card leads to an average of 255 watts throughout the test session with the Performance BIOS, while the Silent one stops at just over 232W. The GPU on the reference proposal touches about 228W.

Overclock

Overclocking is not an exact science, and the capabilities of one sample may differ from those of another, even with the same design. The only certainty is that from the AMD control panel for now you can not raise the memory frequency beyond 2150 MHz . As for the GPU, the chip on our card managed to manage a minimum frequency of 2450 MHz and a maximum of 2600 MHz with the power limit at “full scale” and intervening to partially modify the fan profile. A nice leap that returns a further improvement in performance and demonstrates the “malleability” of the RDNA 2 architecture at high frequencies. The problem is that the GPU consumption rises to 290W, but clearly those who overclock do not pay attention to this parameter.

Conclusions

Let’s take stock of this Sapphire NITRO + proposal. The Radeon RX 6800 XT solution proved to be a card capable of good performance in 4K or 1440p paired with high refresh rate monitors, at the level of the GeForce RTX 3080 . This is true for traditional rendering, while in ray tracing AMD still has to work to reach the levels of Nvidia (which among other things can count on DLSS). Sapphire’s proposal offers performance in line with AMD’s reference proposal – the higher clock doesn’t seem to have much of an impact.

As for the design of the board, not only do we like the aesthetics (n tacky n anonymous), but we also appreciated the much lower weight than the reference proposal . The dual BIOS function is useful for those who are fussy about silence, even if we must say that in Performance mode we have not identified any problems from this point of view. The Silent BIOS tries to reduce the noise slightly, and indeed in our test it “cuts” around 200 RPM compared to the Performance profile, but in terms of noise the difference is not so marked.

The cooler then does its job admirably , keeping the card cool enough without making a fuss. The price is clearly a ” mole ” of this proposal, at least for the moment: the card that cannot be found and the few that appear are sold at off-market prices. Sapphire has communicated a price list for Italy of 989 euros, an increase of 320 euros on the price communicated by AMD for the reference 6800 XT: this is a value that we understand, being the Sapphire flagship proposal, but which represents a very, too high surcharge. A problem that, however, fades into the background in front of the persistent absence of the new Radeon RX 6000 in stores and at the prices that have been circulating in recent weeks.