Packaging

The Card

For the new RDNA 3 Radeon RX 7000 Series of graphics cards, Sapphire has come up with a completely new design. The main color is a matte gray that looks stunning. I love the looks of the main cooler, it's almost like it came right out of Apple's design labs. The metal backplate is a bit more busy, with various cutouts, logos and labels.


Sapphire has installed an amazing RGB solution on their Nitro+. You get two smooth lighting bars that Sapphire calls "Pantheon+," one on top of the card and one on the bottom. There's an additional RGB-illuminated Sapphire logo on the back.


Dimensions of the card are 31.5 x 13.5 cm, and it weighs 1939 g.


Installation requires four slots in your system.


Display connectivity includes two standard DisplayPort 2.1 ports (RDNA 2 had 1.4a) and two HDMI 2.1a (same as RDNA 2).

AMD has upgraded their encode/decode setup. It now comes with two independent hardware units that can encode and decode two streams of video in parallel, or one stream at double the FPS rate. There's support for VP9, H.264, H.265 and AV1 decode, and encoding is supported for H.264, H.265 and AV1.


The card uses a classic triple 8-pin power input config, rated for 525 W maximum power. NVIDIA on the other hand uses the new 12+4 pin ATX 12VHPWR connector, which is rated for up to 600 W of power draw.


This dual BIOS switch lets you toggle between the default BIOS and a "secondary" BIOS. Sapphire doesn't give this BIOS any proper name, it runs the card at slightly lower clock speeds, no idea why we need a second BIOS for that. The lower clocks result in a small decrease in temperatures, fan speed and noise levels.

With this generation, Sapphire is including their software BIOS switch feature, too. The BIOS switch has three positions: left-most = default BIOS, middle = secondary BIOS, right = software-controlled. In Sapphire's TRIXX software you can now toggle the BIOS selection, without having to open your case or crawl under your desk.


Near the back of the card, Sapphire has placed an ARGB output that lets you sync the rest of the system to the RGB effects of your graphics card. Here you also get a 4-pin header for a case fan that runs synced with the graphics card fan speed. The "Fan In" label is actually a bit misleading, I would have called it "Fan Out," or "External Fan," or similar.

Teardown

The main heatsink provides cooling for the GPU chip, memory chips and VRM circuitry. Unlike many other cards which use a classic heatsink baseplate, Sapphire has installed a vapor-chamber baseplate, which soaks up the heat and moves it to the heatpipes quickly. Seven heatpipes then transfer heat to the cooling fins.


The backplate is made from thick metal and of excellent build quality. It protects the card against damage during installation and handling. Note the thermal pads and the cable for the RGB element.