# Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT Nitro+ Special Edition



## W1zzard (Nov 25, 2019)

Sapphire's RX 5700 XT Nitro+ Special Edition is the fastest air-cooled Radeon RX 5700 XT on the market. It has what no other card has: overclocked memory. Noise levels and thermals of the adjustable RGB fans are impressive. Does it beat the PowerColor Red Devil?

*Show full review*


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## Anymal (Nov 25, 2019)

First GCN was not introduced 2013 as you stated in beginning of the review.


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## nguyen (Nov 25, 2019)

So instead of buying a heater for the winter and a normal 5700XT you could buy this...noice


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## Jism (Nov 25, 2019)

Why is there no threadripper review on this website? 

Apart from that, only if you like silent operation of a card, a 5700XT of AMD itself is already maxed out as far as it can.


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## W1zzard (Nov 25, 2019)

Jism said:


> Why is there no threadripper review on this website?


They told me they don't enough samples


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## Shatun_Bear (Nov 25, 2019)

Hopefully the 3950X review is coming, if not the TR3000 CPUs.


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## notb (Nov 25, 2019)

So it's actually even less sensible than Radeon VII. Amazing.

Clearly, Sapphire wasn't really interested in competing with Nvidia-based competition or making a good all-rounder.
They wanted to make the fastest AMD card available. Because that's enough. Because consumers are so polarized that there's a large enough group that won't tolerate a Green chip.

Sick.


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## Thuban (Nov 25, 2019)

A friend lent me his STRIX 2080 Ti for a week, and this thing has similar power requirements.

Just sad, really. Who is buying this over a regular Pulse?



Anymal said:


> First GCN was not introduced 2013 as you stated in beginning of the review.


Around 2012 I believe. Another question, how many rebrands GCN 1.0 has seen


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## Fluffmeister (Nov 26, 2019)

Damn this thing sucks power, lets hope RDNA2 is a big enough tweak to get power comsuption in check to compete with Nvidia on an older node.


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## kings (Nov 26, 2019)

Needs more power than a 2080Ti, to be just 5% faster than a reference RX 5700XT.

I don't know what Sapphire is trying to achieve with this...


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## joemama (Nov 26, 2019)

That power consumption is crazy, almost enough to replace your heater


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## Xzibit (Nov 26, 2019)

joemama said:


> That power consumption is crazy, almost enough to replace your heater



If you have a latest gen Intel using MCE or try'n to get 5ghz you'll be used to it.


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## Thuban (Nov 26, 2019)

kings said:


> I don't know what Sapphire is trying to achieve with this...


Winter... X-mas soon


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 26, 2019)

$80 extra and 30% more power consumption for 5% more performance?

You can take a $399 variant and get a similar overclock for free. Sure, there's more headroom in the Nitro+ SE but it already uses 285W just at factory clocks!

If you have the extra $480 you could just pick up a 2070 Super instead which is faster, uses far less power, and has hardware raytracing support. Newegg US has a Gigabyte triple-fan factory overclocked 2070S for $468 right now, $448 if you successfully apply the $20 rebate card. Yeah, it's a special offer but that's because the 2070Shas been out for 6 months already and you can always find at least one 2070S model for under MSRP, compared to this SE model that has just arrived and won't likely get discounts until the unsold stock has aged a bit on store shelves.

If you want a Navi card, buy a base-price one and undervolt it as far as you can go. You can expect to shave 20% off the power draw, heat, and fan noise without losing performance based on general forum reports. My own 5700XT is down by 25% power draw and it's only a reference model (actually, I just remembered I'm cheating because I capped the boost clock at 1850Mhz which is the average game clock, but that probably costs me a couple of percent in performance).


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## DeathtoGnomes (Nov 26, 2019)

wonder if watercooling would be a cheaper option...


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## notb (Nov 26, 2019)

Chrispy_ said:


> $80 extra and 30% more power consumption for 5% more performance?


Yeah, because that's totally unheard of among overclockers.


> You can take a $399 variant and get a similar *overclock *for free.
> (...)
> If you want a Navi card, buy a base-price one and *undervolt *it as far as you can go.


Not everyone overclocks or undervolts. Component makers also provide products for people who just want to put it in the case and play.


kings said:


> I don't know what Sapphire is trying to achieve with this...


Make the fastest AMD card available. And they did it, right?


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 26, 2019)

notb said:


> Not everyone overclocks or undervolts. Component makers also provide products for people who just want to put it in the case and play.


If that's the criteria these cards are judged by then they are abject failures; Power-hungry, large, heavy, and expensive (more expensive than superior alternatives) with abysmal performance/$ and performance/Watt. If people just want to put it in the case and play then they probably care about absolute performance and performance/$. A 20% price hike is 20% of the budget that could simply be spent on a faster card.


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## INSTG8R (Nov 26, 2019)

Chrispy_ said:


> If that's the criteria these cards are judged by then they are abject failures; Power-hungry, large, heavy, and expensive (more expensive than superior alternatives) with abysmal performance/$ and performance/Watt. If people just want to put it in the case and play then they probably care about absolute performance and performance/$. A 20% price hike is 20% of the budget that could simply be spent on a faster card.


And some of us just care about outright performance and could care less about power consumption. I mean it’s really a few bucks a year “extra” it’s funny how enthusiasts are suddenly ”power misers” and it’s become an “important metric” all of a sudden...


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 26, 2019)

INSTG8R said:


> And some of us just care about outright performance and could care less about power consumption. I mean it’s really a few bucks a year “extra” it’s funny how enthusiasts are suddenly ”power misers” and it’s become an “important metric” all of a sudden...


I don't think you understood my post.

For outright performance, buy a faster card than a 5700XT, period.

Are you saying you would rather pay $480 for this 5700XT than $448 for a factory-overclocked 2070 Super? In TPU's reviews, it performs 10-15% faster and that's *even if you ignore all the other benefits* like RTX, Turing NVEnc, CUDA support, lower power consumption, VRS shading, integer scaling blah blah blah. 

I dislike Nvidia for plenty of reasons but the 5700XT is supposed to be significantly cheaper than the 2070S because it's simply not as good.


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## notb (Nov 26, 2019)

Chrispy_ said:


> If that's the criteria these cards are judged by then they are abject failures; Power-hungry, large, heavy, and expensive (more expensive than superior alternatives) with abysmal performance/$ and performance/Watt.


Correct.
If you haven't noticed, Nvidia has had 70% dGPU market share for a while - even when AMD offered better value with discounted Polaris.


> If people just want to put it in the case and play then they probably care about absolute performance and performance/$. A 20% price hike is 20% of the budget that could simply be spent on a faster card.


But no AMD card is faster - that's the point.
Looking at all options we have today, this card makes very little sense (if any).
But if someone can only choose from AMD cards, a heavily overclocked 5700XT is the best thing he can buy today. That's it.


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 26, 2019)

notb said:


> But if someone can only choose from AMD cards, a heavily overclocked 5700XT is the best thing he can buy today. That's it.


You're not wrong, but I have issues with that statement.

What sort of real-world situation would mean someone can only choose from AMD cards? That's a pretty contrived scenario, especially given that these aren't going to be OEM models where you're limited to a selection - they're going to be available only as add-in upgrades through consumer retail channels.

Outside of personal boycotts and delusions of loyalty in a multi-billion dollar cutthroat duopoly, I can't think of one.


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## INSTG8R (Nov 26, 2019)

Chrispy_ said:


> You're not wrong, but I have issues with that statement.
> 
> What sort of real-world situation would mean someone can only choose from AMD cards? That's a pretty contrived scenario, especially given that these aren't going to be OEM models where you're limited to a selection - they're going to be available only as add-in upgrades through consumer retail channels.
> 
> Outside of personal boycotts and delusions of loyalty in a multi-billion dollar cutthroat duopoly, I can't think of one.


Easy I have Freesync 2 Monitor so from Vega my option right now is a 5700XT if I’m upgrading


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 26, 2019)

INSTG8R said:


> Easy I have Freesync 2 Monitor so from Vega my option right now is a 5700XT if I’m upgrading.


I guess you missed the huge news a while back; Nvidia caved and now support Freesync monitors on any Pascal or newer card.

I bought an RTX card in January to use with my Freesync monitor and it has been glorious.


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## INSTG8R (Nov 26, 2019)

Chrispy_ said:


> I guess you missed the huge news a while back; Nvidia caved and now support Freesync monitors on any Pascal or newer card.
> 
> I bought an RTX card in January to use with my Freesync monitor and it has been glorious.


Freesync 2 is a different animal than normal FreeSync it’s  the equivalent of Gsync Ultimate. I’m not losing features because NV has random support that “may” work. Most of the latest titles literally have a FreeSync 2 preset that I take advantage of.


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## Chrispy_ (Nov 26, 2019)

INSTG8R said:


> Freesync 2 is a different animal than normal FreeSync it’s  the equivalent of Gsync Ultimate. I’m not losing features because NV has random support that “may” work. Most of the latest titles literally have a FreeSync 2 preset that I take advantage of.


You mean like my Freesync HDR600 display that works perfectly with no missing features on my RTX card?

I'm honestly not sure if it's Freesync 2 or not (it's an import from Korea using an LG HDR panel) but it does VRR with LFC and whether I enable or disable HDR or not doesn't seem to affect VRR.

I have to admit, I've not seen a Freesync 2 preset but then again, I'm not playing any 2019 AAA titles at the moment.


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## notb (Nov 26, 2019)

Chrispy_ said:


> You're not wrong, but I have issues with that statement.
> 
> What sort of real-world situation would mean someone can only choose from AMD cards?


Fanboys / Nvidia haters.


> Outside of personal boycotts and delusions of loyalty in a multi-billion dollar cutthroat duopoly, I can't think of one.


You'd be amazed how many people like that exist.
And how small the market for such cards is.

Lets do some fun estimation:
Lets say that:
- ~50 mln PC graphics cards are sold yearly (so without workstation/server stuff)
- 5700XT will be sold for a year.
- it's share among GPUs will be equal to the current figure in Steam Survey (0.16%)
- half of 5700XT sold will be expensive high-end, high-OC models that make no sense (compared to Nvidia's alternatives)

We get 40000 as a (very) rough estimator of how many high-spending, Nvidia-hating gamers we need to sell that many cards. Globally.
EASILY.


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## Anymal (Nov 26, 2019)

Thuban said:


> Around 2012 I believe. Another question, how many rebrands GCN 1.0 has seen


It was commercialy introduced with release of 7970 card in the end of 2011. GCN ended with Vega VII in 2019. Wizzard keeps writing around 2013, only he knows why.


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## Thuban (Nov 26, 2019)

Anymal said:


> It was commercialy introduced with release of 7970 card in the end of 2011. GCN ended with Vega VII in 2019. Wizzard keeps writing around 2013, only he knows why.


Thanks for pointing that out.

A bit off topic. Now GCN has aged *pretty well*... 390x 8gb beating 980 ti 6gb @ 1440 medium settings. Nearly on par with GTX 1070 8GB. Looks like, Nvidia is only great for ~3 years and then performance tanks. Next-gen consoles powered by AMD hardware is likely to further cement the difference. Let's hope AMD can improve with power efficiency on their next big card. Lately, they have been struggling with that. And yeah, I'd put a ban hammer on inefficient, high-power small-return card designs like the one featured in the article. Sometimes, you must make bold moves like that. Too much freedom is never a good thing.

P.S. Still a good time to buy some AMD stock.


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## kings (Nov 26, 2019)

Thuban said:


> A bit off topic. Now GCN has aged *pretty well*... 390x 8gb beating 980 ti 6gb @ 1440 medium settings. Nearly on par with GTX 1070 8GB. Looks like, Nvidia is only great for ~3 years and then performance tanks. Next-gen consoles powered by AMD hardware is likely to further cement the difference. Let's hope AMD can improve with power efficiency on their next big card. Lately, they have been struggling with that. And yeah, I'd put a ban hammer on inefficient, high-power small-return card designs like the one featured in the article. Sometimes, you must make bold moves like that. Too much freedom is never a good thing.



Cherry picking goes both ways.

Look at Anno 1800 for example, with 980Ti almost on the same level of Vega 64, GTX 970 faster than RX 580 and GTX 1060 faster than RX 590.

Some titles favor one brand more than another, it has always been that way. Taking a specific case and applying it generally doesn´t make much sense.









						Anno 1800: PC graphics performance benchmark review
					

We take a look at Anno 1800 (2019) in our usual in-depth ways. That would be tested on the PC gaming wise relative towards graphics card performance with the latest AMD/NVIDIA graphics card drivers.... Article - Guide - Review




					www.guru3d.com
				






notb said:


> Make the fastest AMD card available. And they did it, right?



If that is the goal, then yes. Given that Sapphire is stuck with AMD, that's probably the best they can aim, given that limitation.


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## Mouth of Sauron (Nov 26, 2019)

Great review and that cooling solution rules!

But one thing bothers me for years - why the hell is Civ6 on the games list? Game is treated as a garbage by series fans (me included), has no graphic to be amazed by and generally what the hell is turn-based strategy looking for among the other titles. Yes, I don't play most or any of those others too - but I understand why they are there. What has Civ6 to offer? Some, ultimately unneeded world animations between turns? IF they find those slow, real players just turn them off, completely. What I'm trying to say is that nobody will invest in GPU to make Civ6 running in more FPS...


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## Assimilator (Nov 26, 2019)

$30 for blingy fans, and yet there are people stupid enough to buy this. Sapphire sure knows its target market.

@W1zzard I don't get why you list 7nm as a plus, it's not about the node size it's what you do with it - as NVIDIA can attest.


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## fancucker (Nov 26, 2019)

Greater power consumption than a 2080 ti, with lower performance than a 2070 Super, and on a new node! A slam dunk from AMD


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## AlienIsGOD (Nov 26, 2019)

notb said:


> Fanboys / Nvidia haters.


So because I beta test I'm a fanboy? Lol. Some ppl just like AMD such as myself. I've had a gtx 680 in the past and it was a fine card, but my wallet prefers AMD these days.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 27, 2019)

AlienIsGOD said:


> I also noted I'm a vanguard member hence needing AMD cards. It has nothing to do with as you put it "superiority". Going by your thinking AMD shouldn't even be in business. You can't sit here and say nobody should buy AMD. People will choose what they want with their own reasoning, not because some blow hard is convinced nvidia is superior in ANY situation. You kind of look foolish boasting about nvidia and calling ppl fanbois or irrational. Chill the fuck out



Just put him on ignore, he trolls and flame baits every AMD related topic.


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## Ahhzz (Nov 27, 2019)

There's a lot of unnecessary responses in this thread. Those who can, clean up your own posts before another mod comes in with points for those left. 
Keep it on topic, don't post personal attacks at those with different opinions, and re-read the guidelines if needed. Answer of last resort to the question "What do I do??!!" : Don't be a Dick.


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## AlienIsGOD (Nov 27, 2019)

Ahhzz said:


> There's a lot of unnecessary responses in this thread. Those who can, clean up your own posts before another mod comes in with points for those left.
> Keep it on topic, don't post personal attacks at those with different opinions, and re-read the guidelines if needed. Answer of last resort to the question "What do I do??!!" : Don't be a Dick.


Sorry, I do treat others as they treat me so... I don't take to being called names and such by a troll poster who does nothing but crap in AMD threads


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## Ravenas (Nov 27, 2019)

W1zzard said:


> They told me they don't enough samples



What about the 3950x?


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## Anymal (Nov 27, 2019)

Mr. H from guru3d should help.


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## Obnaa (Dec 2, 2019)

"It looks like Sapphire has definitely been binning the best GPUs for their Special Edition."

"It looks like" and "definitely" are contradictory. Has Sapphire stated this?


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## HenrySomeone (Dec 9, 2019)

What a power-hog!  And an expensive one at that as well! Just goes to show - you can't polish a turd, or at best, only so far...


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## W1zzard (Dec 9, 2019)

Soon


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## AAtte (Jan 1, 2020)

What was the power consumption with the silent bios?


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## Camper7 (Jan 6, 2020)

Why put this on conclusion: No hardware-accelerated raytracing
No AMD board has it. Are the tester an Nvidia fanboy?


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## Anymal (Jan 8, 2020)

No, but RT is a feature and future, nvidia is on board since 2018. As in good old days cons for gpus without 2d or without T&L or in 2003 9700 with dx9 support and none of geforces had it.


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## Struck3r (Feb 13, 2020)

Just got this card for 380 euros on discount. Its just great. Don't really mind the consumption, its quiet, its good looking, and its fast. Had no problems with drivers, and as far as Iam concerned, its a well worthy upgrade over my former 1070 GTX. I would really like to point out how much Ive been impressed with how well image sharpening works. Don't know if Nvidia has something similar, but if it doesn't it needs to get it as soon as possible. Considering the lowest RTX 2070 Super is 500 euros in my country, and is the only Nvidia card that is on par more or less with RX 5700 XT, I couldn't afford it. Even tho I wouldn't mind giving RT a chance, but for 120 euros... Man, thats a hefty premium.


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## Anymal (Feb 14, 2020)

Any driver issues? Report after 1 month.


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## Ravenas (Mar 22, 2020)

Trying to decide between this and the VII...


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 22, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> Trying to decide between this and the VII...



Go for the Navi, VII is gcn and ive seen a few viis exhibit code 43s recently (hardware fault)


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## Ravenas (Mar 23, 2020)

eidairaman1 said:


> Go for the Navi, VII is gcn and ive seen a few viis exhibit code 43s recently (hardware fault)



Both cards have roughly the same performance, however, with 16 gb of ram I feel I will be more future proof. Hardware faults aside.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 23, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> Both cards have roughly the same performance, however, with 16 gb of ram I feel I will be more future proof. Hardware faults aside.



Not really GCN arch is being phased out.


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## Ravenas (Mar 23, 2020)

eidairaman1 said:


> Not really GCN arch is being phased out.



The architecture itself maybe, but performance wise:


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 23, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> The architecture itself maybe, but performance wise:
> 
> View attachment 148928


101% and its 16GB. Not enough justification for a card that needs washer mods.

Tbf Id Grab a 5600XT/5700 for now and then look at RDNA 2.


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## Ravenas (Mar 25, 2020)

eidairaman1 said:


> 101% and its 16GB. Not enough justification for a card that needs washer mods.
> 
> Tbf Id Grab a 5600XT/5700 for now and then look at RDNA 2.



I agree overall with you, and for that reason I purchased the Sapphire 5700XT SE. I’m pairing it with the 3950X, so I don’t plan to upgrade for probably 5 years. My FX 8350 is throttling my Vega 64, and it’s becoming increasingly bad.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> I agree overall with you, and for that reason I purchased the Sapphire 5700XT SE. I’m pairing it with the 3950X, so I don’t plan to upgrade for probably 5 years. My FX 8350 is throttling my Vega 64, and it’s becoming increasingly bad.



Have you tried getting that memory to 1600-1866?


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## Ravenas (Mar 25, 2020)

eidairaman1 said:


> Have you tried getting that memory to 1600-1866?



I haven't played around with my memory much. 

I plan to bench my FX 8350/990 FX, and replace it with an entry x570/3600x paired with the VEGA 64 as a computer for my 7 year old son to play with.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> I haven't played around with my memory much.
> 
> I plan to bench my FX 8350/990 FX, and replace it with an entry x570/3600x paired with the VEGA 64 as a computer for my 7 year old son to play with.



Give him the fx rig

And you can typically find memory timings and volts required to run 1600/1866 on the rams website, thats what I did on my gskill set to get from 2133 to 2400 (anything Higher I need a FSB OC lol 200x25 would be more like 230x12.5 lol)


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## Ravenas (Mar 25, 2020)

eidairaman1 said:


> Give him the fx rig
> 
> And you can typically find memory timings and volts required to run 1600/1866 on the rams website, thats what I did on my gskill set to get from 2133 to 2400 (anything Higher I need a FSB OC lol 200x25 would be more like 230x12.5 lol)



Too late on the first part  I'm wanting to build it with him as well as an introduction to a hobby a picked up many years ago. He may not be interested, but we will see.

I haven't historically played with ram too much expect on vendor cards, the benefits weren't what I was looking for in terms of performance.


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 25, 2020)

Ravenas said:


> Too late on the first part  I'm wanting to build it with him as well as an introduction to a hobby a picked up many years ago. He may not be interested, but we will see.
> 
> I haven't historically played with ram too much expect on vendor cards, the benefits weren't what I was looking for in terms of performance.



It's pretty easy with the Asus boards you and I have, there are secondary timings i adjusted even.


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## nashathedog (Nov 16, 2020)

I think it did great in the review, It's got a cooler to handle the extra heat & it just about manages to beat out the 1080ti, The icing on the cake is that here we are a year later & I just managed to get one secondhand for a song, I was going to hold out for a 6800 but instead I'm teaming the Nitro+ SE up with a new 144hz Freesync 2 monitor instead, basically I'm all set for the Christmas lockdown. Keep safe.


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## Ravenas (Apr 10, 2021)

Just sold this card for $935 versus $439 MSRP 1 year ago. The market...


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