A Closer Look

Unlike many other manufacturers, Sapphire's thermal solution doesn't consist of two parts. The main cooler simply cools all components, including GPU, memory, and voltage regulation circuitry. The card doesn't come with a backplate.


The card requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is good for up to 300 W of power draw.


Sapphire includes a dual BIOS with their card, which switches between a UEFI compatible BIOS for fast boot and a legacy BIOS that works with older systems. Both BIOSes have the same performance, power, and fan settings.


We've seen the IR 3567 voltage controller on the AMD reference design. It supports software voltage control and monitoring via I2C and is well supported in overclocking software.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by SK Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's Hawaii graphics processor uses the GCN shader architecture. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC, Taiwan, with 6.2 billion transistors on a 438 mm² die.