Sapphire Radeon RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure Review

Name: Sapphire Radeon RX 6950 XT Nitro+ Pure
Brand: Sapphire
Price: 1250 USD

W1zzard

on May 10th, 2022,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Sapphire

(62 Comments) »

Introduction

The Sapphire Radeon RX 6950 XT Pure is a premium custom implementation of the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT launching alongside the RX 6750 XT and RX 6650 XT today in what is a mid-life refresh of the RX 6000 RDNA 2 series, as graphics card prices are finally cooling down and gamers are expected to seek out the fastest available graphics cards for the Summer. The RX 6950 XT is being launched as the company's new flagship graphics card, pushing down the RX 6900 XT one level. This means it's positioned above even the special "XTXH" variants of the RX 6900 XT that were almost 10% faster than the reference design.

The Radeon RX 6950 XT is based on the same RDNA 2 graphics architecture powering the rest of the RX 6000 series. Even the underlying "Navi 21" silicon is the same, built on the 7 nm (TSMC N7) process. What's new is that AMD significantly dialed up engine clocks (GPU clocks), used faster memory, and claims to have given the RX 6950 XT certain "secret sauce" enhancements at the firmware and driver levels. The RX 6950 XT is being priced at US$1,099, exactly US$100 above the launch price of the RX 6900 XT. Although they're coming down, we expect real-world prices to be higher than, and MSRP continues to be a fantasy figure. The introduction of the RX 6950 XT doesn't remove the RX 6900 XT from the product stack, which will remain, probably at prices well below the $1,000-mark.

The Radeon RX 6950 XT has the same exact core-configuration as the RX 6900 XT, as both SKUs max out the Navi 21 silicon. You get 5,120 stream processors spread across 80 RDNA 2 compute units, 80 Ray Accelerators that perform the most compute-intensive part of ray tracing, 320 TMUs, and 128 ROPs. The card is endowed with 16 GB of GDDR6 memory across a 256-bit wide memory bus, which seems narrow compared to the high-end GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere," but AMD has an ace up its sleeve—namely, Infinity Cache, a 128 MB on-die cache that operates at 1.5 TB/s bandwidth, lubricating the memory sub-system.

The first enhancement the RX 6950 XT has over its predecessor is engine clocks. The "game clocks" of the RX 6950 XT are set at 2100 MHz, up from 2015 MHz on the RX 6900 XT, which puts the game clocks into the league of some of the fastest XTXH silicon-based factory-overclocked cards, but without the fancy cooling requirements. The typical board power of the RX 6950 XT at its given engine clocks is rated at 335 W compared to the 300 W of the RX 6900 XT, and AMD is confident that the reference cooler can handle the extra heat just fine. In comparison, XTXH-based RX 6900 XT cards rely on elaborate cooling solutions as the power-tuning was in the hands of board partners.

The second enhancement is the memory. AMD is using 18 Gbps GDDR6 memory, compared to 16 Gbps GDDR6 on the RX 6900 XT. This results in a cool 12.5 percent increase in memory bandwidth, up from 512 GB/s to 576 GB/s. Since the company is using faster 18 Gbps-capable memory chips, we'll explore the memory overclocking headroom on offer. The third area of enhancements is at the firmware and driver (software) levels, based on AMD's "learning" of the RX 6900 XT over the months. While AMD didn't go into specifics, we've noticed some nice gains, especially in titles that are CPU limited, or DirectX 11-based.

The Sapphire RX 6950 XT Pure sees the return of the "Pure" brand-extension from the company, which denotes white-colored products (from way back when it made motherboards with white PCBs). It's being resurrected under the Sapphire NITRO+ series, making this a premium custom-design board. Sapphire is also debuting its latest-generation Ice Storm air cooler that is over three slots thick and uses an extremely airy-looking cooler shroud with an intricate set of heatsinks underneath for the various components. The card comes with factory-overclocked speeds of 2162 MHz (vs. 2100 MHz reference), while the memory is untouched at 18 Gbps. Sapphire is pricing the RX 6950 XT Pure at $1,250, a $150 premium over the $1,100 AMD baseline.

AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RTX 2080	$500	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super	$600	3072	64	1650 MHz	1815 MHz	1940 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3060 Ti	$570	4864	80	1410 MHz	1665 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6700 XT	$540	2560	64	2424 MHz	2581 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 22	17200M	12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 6750 XT	$600 MSRP: $550	2560	64	2495 MHz	2600 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 22	17200M	12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2080 Ti	$720	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$650	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3070 Ti	$700	6144	96	1575 MHz	1770 MHz	1188 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 6800	$750	3840	96	1815 MHz	2105 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT	$800	4608	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$900	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RTX 3080 Ti	$1,200	10240	112	1365 MHz	1665 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RX 6900 XT	$1,000	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6950 XT	$1,150 MSRP: $1,100	5120	128	2100 MHz	2310 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Sapphire RX 6950 XT Pure	$1,250	5120	128	2162 MHz	2368 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$1,500	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit
RTX 3090 Ti	$2,000	10752	112	1560 MHz	1950 MHz	1313 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit

Packaging

The Card

The Sapphire RX 6950 XT Pure looks fantastic thanks to its white color theme and clean design. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate, which has a part cut out to let airflow through the card.

Dimensions of the card are 32.5 x 13.5 cm, and it weighs 1576 g.

Installation requires four slots in your system.

Display connectivity includes three standard DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1.

Near the back of the card, you'll find this header, which lets you feed the RGB signal from your motherboard into the graphics card to synchronize it with the rest of your system.

The card uses a 8+8+6 power input configuration. This configuration is rated for up to 450 W of power draw.

The AMD Radeon RX 6000 series doesn't support multi-GPU. Here you can find the dual BIOS switch, which lets you activate the "OC" BIOS. Please note that the Sapphire Pure BIOS switch has three positions. The left-most setting is for software control through the TRIXX software.

Teardown

Sapphire's heatsink uses six heatpipes to quickly move heat away from the GPU and to the cooler. The main heatsink also provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.

The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. Note how it wraps around the card to create a more solid product look and feel.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.