The Sapphire RX 6800 XT Nitro+ is the company's flagship for the RX 6800 XT Navi 21 generation. It is built around a large triple-slot, triple fan cooler, paired with a large factory overclock and dual BIOS. Out of the box, the card runs at a rated boost of 2360 MHz, which is 110 MHz higher than the AMD reference. In actual testing, when measuring clocks in all games at 4K, we saw an increase from 2257 MHz to 2380 MHz, which is interesting as that's +123 MHz. Looks like Sapphire's boost rating is quite conservative. By the way, this number is a made-up value that gets put into the graphics card BIOS to report to software like GPU-Z, it has no effect on actual clocks, which depend almost exclusively on the power limit on Navi. In terms of relative performance, this makes the RX 6800 XT Nitro+ 3% faster than the RX 6800 XT reference at 4K resolution. The lead of RTX 3080 is shrinking down to just 2% now. The RTX 3090 is 12% faster and much more expensive, but the newer RX 6900 XT will deal with that next month. Compared to the Radeon RX 6800 non-XT, the Nitro+ is 16% faster, and 26% faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti, at higher resolutions. Almost twice as fast as the RX 5700 XT and more than three times as fast as the RX 590, performance uplifts compared to older cards are impressive, too.

With these performance numbers, the Radeon RX 6800 XT is the perfect choice for 4K gaming at 60 FPS. It achieved that mark in nearly all titles in our test suite. Things are different once you turn on raytracing. Just like on NVIDIA, there's a hefty performance hit when running with the DirectX Raytracing API. We only tested two games so far, but it seems the loss in performance is bigger than on NVIDIA, who improved in that area with Ampere. Remember, this is AMD's first-generation raytracing implementation. Performance is still very respectable, reaching roughly RTX 2080 Ti levels. Now that RT hardware is available for both AMD and NVIDIA, and game developers are making console games on AMD's new RDNA 2 architecture, it'll be interesting to see how raytracing performance evolves in the coming months.

In our review, AMD's RX 6800 XT reference cooler impressed us with good temperatures and even better noise levels. It's finally a large triple-slot design with three fans. This definitely sets the bar high for AMD's partners and their own cooler designs. We've seen excellent heatsinks from Sapphire before, and the Nitro+ is no exception. In our apples-to-apples cooler testing, we found out that Sapphire's cooler is definitely better than the AMD reference heatsink, sitting roughly between that and the massive NVIDIA RTX 3090 cooler. We've measured gaming temperatures of 75°C, 2°C lower than the AMD reference. Noise levels are pretty much identical, too, so it's safe to say that Sapphire's Nitro+ cooler will give you an experience comparable to the AMD RX 6800 XT reference. Sapphire does have an ace up its sleeve, and that's the dual BIOS. Once you toggle to the silent BIOS, noise levels go down a bit, by 1 dBA. With 30 dBA, the card is almost whisper quiet in heavy gaming—4K is no problem, very impressive. Just like on the AMD reference design, idle fan stop is included on the card to provide the perfect noise-free experience during desktop work, Internet browsing, media playback, and light gaming.

AMD surprised us with the power efficiency of their new Navi 21 RDNA 2 graphics processor, beating even NVIDIA's Ampere lineup. Despite the large factory overclock, Sapphire did not go overboard with power consumption. It's 15 W higher for 3% performance gained, a very reasonable tradeoff. The maximum power limit has been increased, too, so AMD's Boost algorithm can boost higher, for longer.

Back in my original review of the reference design, I had to increase the power limit on the AMD RX 6800 XT to see any meaningful performance gains from overclocking. This is not the case on the Sapphire Nitro+ because of the increase in the board power limit I just mentioned. Maximum manual overclock ended up slightly higher than both the PowerColor Red Devil, which we also tested today, and the AMD reference. These differences are small, though. I'm currently reviewing the ASUS RX 6800 XT STRIX Liquid Cooling, it'll be interesting to see the results for that card later today or tomorrow.

Sapphire's MSRP for the RX 6800 XT Nitro+ is $770, which is a $120 increase over the AMD reference design. That's a really large increase for a card that's just a bit better than the AMD card. Sure, noise levels and temperatures are improved, but only by a small amount. In a side-by-side test, most people might not even notice a difference. Looking at the physical cooler design, I don't see any way there's $120 more cooler here. AMD uses a metal cooler shroud and vapor chamber, Sapphire uses plastic and heatpipes. Sapphire's VRM has one power phase more than AMD, hardly worth mentioning. While the lack of the USB-C output will be a complete non-issue for nearly everyone, it's still a bit of cost saved, probably around $10.

At $770, the Sapphire Nitro+ also goes up against custom-design RTX 3080 cards like the EVGA FTW3 and MSI Gaming X. Now, none of those graphics cards are in stock, of course, and people are paying insane prices to jump on the RDNA 2 or Ampere train, so I'm sure Sapphire will sell everything they have even at that price point. No doubt, RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 are fantastic cards that will give you an amazing gaming experience, but there's only so much that can be worth more. I heard from several board partners that their margins are really thin because AMD is charging so much money for their new GPU, guess while stock is low, we're going to have to pay for that.