Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6800 XT, 16GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP, lite retail

hardwareluxx.de (Excellent-Hardware): Positive Aspekte der Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+: + 16 GB Grafikspeicher + niedrige Lautstärke + semipassive Kühlung + schneller als das Referenzdesign + sehr gutes Overclocking-Potenzial + schicke RGB-Beleuchtung Negative Aspekte der Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+: - Verfügbarkeit und Preis

Mittlerweile gibt es neben den bereits ausführlich getesteten Referenzkarten der RX-6000-Serie von AMD auch diverse Boardpartnerkarten nicht zu kaufen, von denen sich bereits zwei dieser begehrten Exemplare zumindest für einen öffentlichen Test im Labor befinden. Die anhaltende Nichtverfügbarkeit ist umso ärgerlicher, als dass es sich bei diesen Produkten um wirklich gute und konkurrenzfähige Grafikkarten handelt, die es verdient hätten, auch die breite Masse der Kaufwilligen zu beglücken. Doch immer schön der Reihe nach…

Schon das neue Referenzdesign der Radeon RX 6800 XT wusste im Test zu überzeugen, eine Woche später starten die Custom-Designs. Im ersten Test stehen sich PowerColor Radeon RX 6800 XT Red Devil und Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT Nitro+ gegenüber. Beide kühlen leiser als die Referenz, tun sich aber schwer wie nie.

Although the situation is improving, it is still extremely difficult to score some of the latest graphics cards at prices even approaching their MSRPs. With that in mind, we’ve held off on covering some of the hottest GPUs to come through the lab for a while, because the coverage was inevitably (and understandably) met with groans and frustration by some of you. We get it, but the beat goes on, and GPUs are some of our favorite things to cover around here, especially models like the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6800 XT we’ll be showing you today.

As both cards are high-performance models, it is important to discuss their relative strengths at a 4K resolution. Taking the Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 Nitro+ first, it is a definite, clear step-up from the RX 5700 XT. It is over 50 per cent faster at the higher resolution and can be called a 4K-capable card with excellent image quality settings. Though not quite as fast as the RTX 3080 from Nvidia, anyone able to get their hands on one won't be disappointed with the pure performance on offer.

Meanwhile, besides the already extensively tested reference cards of AMD’s RX-6000 series, there are also various board partner cards (not) for sale, of which two of these coveted specimens are already in the lab for at least one public test. The continued unavailability is all the more annoying as these products are really good and competitive graphics cards that deserve to please the vast majority of people willing to buy. But first things first…

a fine interpretation of of the Radeon RX 6800 XT, the Sapphire Nitro+ is a solid and dependable choice for the well-heeled gamer.

Finally, there's price. Unlike the limited-release AMD reference model which targets the MSRP, the Nitro+ will certainly be fetching a premium. Given Sapphire's 5700 XT version came in $60 over MSRP, we’d estimate the 6800 XT Nitro+ will cost at least $700. That’s RTX 3080 money, but of course, you won't be able to buy one of those right now (and possibly for the next few months). We're crossing our fingers for good Radeon RX 6000 availability in the next 3 to 4 weeks, but we'll have to wait and see if Radeons don't suffer the same fate as GeForce GPUs.

Sapphire brings an interesting product to the table with the NITRO+ series. Not only do they offer good looks and are the metrics for acoustics and cooling on a suitable level, but they also perform a notch faster than reference as well. That does remain a tad relative, though, as, in the high-end spectrum, the margins for more performance and tweaking over the years have vanished a bit, as the players like AMD will try and get as much as they can from the products in that baseline configuration. Typically, tweaking margins were 15 maybe 20% years ago; these days, you're lucky to gain 5 to 10% overall. And within that thin margin, the AIB partners nab away from perf as well, with the factory tweaked products. So there is little more left, and most partners will perform quite close towards each other.

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 rated boost of 2360 MHz, which is 110 MHz higher than the AMD reference. In actual testing, when measuring clocks in all games at all resolutions, 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 in the graphics card BIOS, to report to software like GPU-Z, it has no effect on actual clocks, which depend almost exclusively on 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, the newer RX 6900 XT will deal with that next month. Compared to the Radeon RX 6800 non-XT, the Nitro+ is 16% faster, 26% faster than the NVIDIA RTX 3070 and RTX 2080 Ti, at higher resolutions. The performance uplifts are impressive, too, when compared to older cards, almost twice as fast as RX 5700 XT, more than three times as fast as the RX 590.