Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro Detailed

[btarunr]

Here are some more pictures of the Radeon RX 480 Nitro by Sapphire, which was first pictured in June. This is the company's premium RX 480 offering, featuring a custom-design PCB, and a large new-generation cooling solution. Unlike its first pictures, which showed a silver/chrome color on the metal cooler shroud; the final design features a gunmetal finish. The cooler features a dense aluminium fin-stack heatsink to which heat drawn from the GPU by copper heat pipes, is dissipated under the airflow of two 100 mm fans, which stay off when the card is idling. These fans are easily detachable, letting you clean the heatsink underneath.

The card draws power from a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, located along the rear side of the PCB, and not the usual top. The Sapphire logo along the top features RGB LED lighting, with a selection button on the PCB. The card is rumored to feature GPU clocks of up to 1350 MHz. Also featured is dual-BIOS. A back-plate runs along the entire length of the card. The card is listed for pre-order by OCUK for 249 GBP (incl VAT), a 20 GBP premium on the reference-design card.



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[AsRock]

Very nice looking card, getting sick of the over the top plastic crap that's become common.

 

[RejZoR]

Interesting power input placement at the end of the card PCB (and not from the side). This will make quite few people very happy.

 

[Chaitanya]

Gigabyte, Msi, Evga and Asus should take design cues from this gpu. a very well designed card, also Rgb implementation looks non intrusive.

 

[RejZoR]

Would be nice if more vendors would place thermal pads underneath backplate, especially where GPU, VRAM and VRM is positioned. Those elements heat up both sides of PCB, but we always cool just one side and basically entirely neglect the other one. If backplate is metal, it would be silly not to utilize its properties for cooling as well.

 

[Dethroy]

Such a nice and clean looking card. Expected more than 1350 Mhz though.
Is it just me, or does it look shorter than the reference card?

 

[Jack1n]

Such a nice and clean looking card. Expected more than 1350 Mhz though.
Is it just me, or does it look shorter than the reference card?
View attachment 76200

I believe it is the same length, but because it is wider, it may seem like it is longer.

 

[john_]

When the card was seen first with a silver cover, everyone was thinking about making pasta. In black looks much better.

 

[Dethroy]

When the card was seen first with a silver cover, everyone was thinking about making pasta. In black looks much better.

Agreed. But apparently it's gunmetal (grey) and not black

 

[bug]

Would be nice if more vendors would place thermal pads underneath backplate, especially where GPU, VRAM and VRM is positioned. Those elements heat up both sides of PCB, but we always cool just one side and basically entirely neglect the other one. If backplate is metal, it would be silly not to utilize its properties for cooling as well.

I think it's a question of how much heat actually goes towards the backplate when the other side is cooled/cooler.

 

[ArdWar]

I think it's a question of how much heat actually goes towards the backplate when the other side is cooled/cooler.

Heat will just flow wherever it can flow provided that the other place is cooler, no matter if the other side is at absolute zero. So yeah, in this case every heat dissipating surface would help however hot/small it is, unless it actually block airflow.

 

[ixi]

Looks neat, but 2x 100mm, above 60% I think they will make loud noise... Ou well, time to wait for some benchmarks

 

[arbiter]

Looks neat, but 2x 100mm, above 60% I think they will make loud noise... Ou well, time to wait for some benchmarks

I doubt fans will even need to get that high to keep heat down. my acx 1080, fans don't even get to point i can hear them even with 2+ghz clock. I run little bit more aggressive fan curve over stock which keeps the card around 70-75c max. Most likely same will hold true for this.

 

[ensabrenoir]

About the same price i paid for my 6870's back in the day.... whole lot more performance though....gonna invent a reason to get one variant these cards.

 

[ixi]

About the same price i paid for my 6870's back in the day.... whole lot more performance though....gonna invent a reason to get one variant these cards.

In my days I played on GTX 8800, that was some old beast, sadly didn't last long before changed to AMD.


GPU Engine Specs
CUDA Cores
575
Texture Fill Rate (billion/sec)
36.8
Memory Specs
Memory Clock
900MHz
Standard Memory Config
768MB
Memory Interface Width
384-bit
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec)
86.4

 

[RMX]

Nice design. Though hesitant to pick one up after I had 2 cards in a row from Sapphire with massive coilwhine

 

[overlord]

Such a nice and clean looking card. Expected more than 1350 Mhz though.
Is it just me, or does it look shorter than the reference card?
View attachment 76200

Obviously shorter as those Fans aren't a separate add-on component adding to length of card but placed directly above GPU & RAM.

 

[HD64G]

If only I had the money for this little gem... Easier to settle down with a custom RX470 hopefully.

 

[verycharbroiled]

cards like this are perfect for my htpc (antec fusion black 430 case). currently have a sapphire nitro r9 380itx so i wont be needing it but this kind of card has its place.

@RMX: im currently running 3 sapphires (380, 2x390s) no coil whine. my old sapphire HD5830 didnt either. luck of the draw?

 

[ShurikN]

Much better looking card than the Strix one.

 

[wiak]

i just wonder how the cooler is built. does it have alot of heatpipes and copper?

 

[GhostRyder]

Such a nice and clean looking card. Expected more than 1350 Mhz though.
Is it just me, or does it look shorter than the reference card?
View attachment 76200

Reference hangs off the end with the blower, this does not which is probably why its a little shorter. Although I guess it would have to be measured first for confirmation because pictures can be deceiving.

Great looking cooler, sapphire really know how to make a very attractive card!!!

 

[INSTG8R]

What a beauty! Leave it to Sapphire to do it right

 

[peche]

Such a nice and clean looking card. Expected more than 1350 Mhz though.
Is it just me, or does it look shorter than the reference card?
View attachment 76200

I believe it is the same length, but because it is wider, it may seem like it is longer.

reference uses a blower cooler, which normally is larger than the PCB itself
lookk a this...

Spoiler: crd's back

 

[nemesis.ie]

Nice design. Though hesitant to pick one up after I had 2 cards in a row from Sapphire with massive coilwhine

Per the card's specs:

- Black Diamond Chokes for improved power and eliminate potential of coil whine