[Test] Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+ |Specs | Price

The tests

The test platform

The configuration used during the tests is as follows:

Note that the Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro + has been tested with its default BIOS, namely Performance mode. We will study the behavior of the Quiet BIOS in the frequency and overclocking part in order to see the differences between the two BIOSes in practice.

Consumption / Temperature

The consumption test was performed with a load based only on the graphics card at 100% during a stress test. Note that this value reflects consumption total when the machine is taken, and not the graphics card itself!

As we can see, the Sapphre Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro + is undoubtedly greedy, namely 403 Watts at the socket during a GPU stress test only. However, this remains below the TUF Gaming RTX 3080 from Asus. There is no doubt that you will need a minimum beefy power supply if you want to load both the GPU but also the CPU simultaneously. In the case of an Intel Core i9-10900K installed on a Z490 motherboard with the multicore enhancement activated, the CPU alone can draw more than 220 Watts on 12 V. And if we count the different components of the motherboard, the CPU and the GPU, the 600 Watts are blithely exceeded. However, we are talking about an extreme case that happens rarely, but do not neglect this point.

The cooling system does a great job of keeping the GPU in the nails. With only 67 ° C at full load, there is absolutely no worries about the life of the GPU. But does this have to be paid for in terms of noise pollution? Because as we have just seen, consumption is not negligible, let’s see that right away!

Sound level

The readings were taken with a Voltcraft SL100 approximately 15 cm from the graphics card, facing the fan, in an environment with an ambient noise level of 32.5 dB.

Well no, the card is clearly not noisy! With only 40.8 dB at full load, which is less than the Asus TUF Gaming RTX 3080, the Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro + is a particularly quiet card given its power-hungry GPU. It is in fact the quietest card in our comparison. We don’t say it’s perfectly inaudible of course, because 40.8 dB can be heard even with a closed case, but it’s really discreet and clearly not annoying unless you really are particularly demanding. And in this case, no high-end card with a GPU with a TDP of 300 Watts or more will do anyway.