Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6700 XT review: Performance-boosting Trixx - ingramlighbothe

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Expectant 1440p and 1080p gaming performance
Trixx Boost can make performance significantly faster
12GB of memory bolstered away Infinity Cache
Exceptional design: Very cool, whisper quite, and attractive
Luxurious extras same ARGB header and triple-BIOS switch

Cons

No DLSS-equal feature means AMD's ray tracing execution is lackluster
Price is up, but wish be much higher on the street during global GPU shortage

Our Finding of fact

The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6700 Crosstalk delivers exceptional 1440p and towering refresh charge per unit 1080p play with no compromises differently ray tracing performance. It's silent, stylish, and looks important, with Sapphire's optional Trixx Boost public utility company capable of pushing frame rates significantly higher. We aren't taking price into retainer given grocery store conditions during a pandemic-driven world GPU shortage.

Best Prices Today

$730

The Radeon RX 6700 XT hits the streets today, and it's a rattling graphics card for 1440p and advanced refresh rate 1080p gambling. But in an unusual twist, AMD's darn good credit version of the RX 6700 Crosstalk isn't your but selection available on day one. Spell the Radeon RX 6800-series and flagship RX 6900 XT at first released in reference form with usance models favourable weeks afterwards, AMD partners like Sapphire, XFX, and Asus can ship their bespoke 6700 XT versions at the same clip as the reference card for this found.

Enter the Cerulean Nitro+ Radeon RX 6700 Crosstalk.

This graphics card isn't cheap. At $579, it costs $100 more than AMD's already expensive reference book model, and understandably so (every bit we explained in our initial Radeon RX 6700 XT review). Worse, you'll probably land up paying hundreds more in real life unless you'Re golden adequate to catch the initial stock overleap at a retailer. That's a tough pill to immerse, only the Nitro+ makes a muscular bid for being the most worthwhile version of the Radeon RX 6700 XT after a mates of easy tweaks. Its dead-unsounded, ice-cold custom cooler design delivers an outstanding user have smooth under ample cargo, while the company's flat-out excellent Trixx Boost software can help the Nitro+ RX 6700 Crosstalk heart out frames intimately as fixed as the Radeon RX 6800—a graphics card that costs a great deal more. Yes, even scalped.

Army of the Righteou's dig in.

Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6700 XT specs

The Sapphire Nitro+ is well-stacked around the duplicate "Navi 22" GPU as all Radeon RX 6700 XT models. That way it includes screaming-instant clock speeds, living for Smart Access Computer storage and time period beam of light tracing, access to totally of AMD's modern Radeon Software features, and an big 12GB of GDDR6 memory bolstered by 96MB of ultra-fast on-die Infinity Cache.

For a deeper look at the best new features found in the Radeon RX 6000-series, personify trustworthy to check out our RDNA 2 deep nosedive. (RDNA 2 is the name of the Energy-efficient graphics architecture powering AMD's latest GPUs.) Here's a refresher on the Radeon RX 6700 XT's specific technical details next to the RX 5700 XT it's replacement:

And here's a Sapphire-supplied rundown of the Nitro+'s own specifications, which largely coordinate with the reference models only include a few key differences, as well as additional details about the card's physical dimensions and extra features:

Most notably, Sapphire's graphics circuit card runs faster than the reference version, leastways on paper. AMD's "Game Clock" specification lists the estimated clock speed that the GPU will work at during gaming workloads, and the stock 2,424MHz speed listed aroused being accurate in our tests with F1 2020. Sapphire's spec sheet says the Nitro+ boosts busy 2,548MHz while gaming, and we so witnessed it holding at 2,524MHz to 2,536MHz under a long, coiled F1 2020 run. The higher clocks didn't constitute a practical conflict in frame rates, as you'll see in our benchmarks later, just information technology speaks to the efficaciousness of the Nitro+'s design.

The Chromatic Nitro+ 6700 XT gets its world power from an 8-stick and a 6-pin connector.

Higher clocks also require more power. The Nitro+ draws 260 watts of total board power, compared to 230 watts for the reference design. You shouldn't trouble about that flimsy uptick.

Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6700 XT design and features

But the real number reason to spend more for a hot-rod custom-built graphics card the like the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6700 XT is for its custom cooling and special-sauce software.

Sapphire's 6700 XT brings back the new cooler design introduced with the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6800 XT, but with a a couple of minor tweaks. The tease still sports the same cyberpunk-esque black-and-silver design, with gorgeous RGB lights illuminating the logo on the backplate, the long light bar on the edge of the backplate, and the Sapphire name on the side of the card. That lighting bleeds through the puny cutouts separated across the metal backplate, a nice aesthetic touch.

The shroud itself includes a trio of "loan-blend fans" that merge characteristics from both axial and blower-trend fans, improving airflow and air press compared to yesteryear's axial fans patc keeping noise levels bass. Each fan comes loaded with 12 of the slim, swooping blades, set shallower than you normally see.

A closer flavor at the Nitro+'s hybrid fans. If you fall into place to expound this image and tone closely, you can see Sapphire's unique "Wave fin" heatsink underneath.

Subordinate the plastic shroud, Sapphire improved the Nitro+'s cooling capabilities with some significant alterations for this generation. Here's what we said about the Nitro+ 6800 XT's interior, which even holds true for this variation of the Nitro+:

"The Nitro+'s heat go down runs the card's full 12.2-inch length, featuring a new crinkled fin design that Chromatic claims helps to cut along meander noise. The metal over the GPU itself tapers down with a V-wrought notch to "accelerate and centralize" the airflow around the chip, per Sapphire. Sapphire also included a standalone metal cooler with its own hotness sinks and heatpipe for the memory, voltage regulators, and chokes. Taming temperatures on those components always helps, but it should bear witness especially welcome during overclocking attempts."

Spoiler conscious: Sapphire's vermiculate new Nitro+ cooling is scarily effective when applied to the Radeon RX 6700 XT, as you'll run into later. IT looks damnably full in your system too.

The Nitro+ includes an ARGB header to coordinate with your motherboard's lighting.

Sapphire also outfits the Nitro+ 6700 XT with an ARB header at the nates of its PCB, allowing you to contemporize your art card and motherboard lighting—a great boast we'Re starting to see more often connected premium boards like this. Keep it up.

That won't cultivate with my fat fingers!

The Sapphire Nitro+ likewise includes a physical BIOS switch, and even IT offers more functionality than usual. Most custom GPUs offer a dual BIOS switch, but the Nitro+ includes three toggles. The right "Performance Modal value" BIOS runs at the full 2,548MHz Game Clock speeds and boosts the card's magnate trammel to 211 watts, while the middle "Quiet Mode" tack dials those slightly gage to 2,433MHz and 186 Watts to run even quieter and tank. The leftmost option, but then, enables the ability to swap betwixt Performance and Quiet modes using Sapphire's Trixx software rather than having to physically agaze your case and toggling the BIOS switch over—a really handy and very practical feature indeed.

The single downside is where it's positioned. The Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6700 XT is a big graphics visiting card, measuring 3 slots thick and 12.2 inches long-staple, and it's wider than usual too. Sapphire's BIOS switch is remit along the butt against of the board's PCB, and the shroud extends around and in in advance of the tiny toggle. You'll probably take to stick a pen or something in there to actually be able to move it. I recommend going it set to its Performance Mode default on (which is already virtually silent) or victimisation the Trixx software for BIOS management instead.

sapphire trixx main gpu — The chief page for Sapphire's Trixx software.

Speaking of Trixx, Sapphire has refined it over the years into a truly useful piece of graphics add-in management computer software, earning it a spot next to EVGA's Preciseness X1 and MSI's Afterburner. You'll definitely want to install it from here if you gather up the Nitro+. Trixx includes an overview of your scorecard's hardware, a Nitro Glow tab that manages the onboard RGB lighting, and a Fan Health Check that can warn you if your blades are on the wand of handsome impermissible.

But the most important feature is Trixx Boost. Like the triple BIOS switch, this is a Sapphire innovation with killer application. Trixx Boost slightly lowers the result of your outturn figure of speech, and so cleans upwards the icon victimisation AMD's awesome Radeon Image Sharpening feature. The end result? Massively faster performance in games with little or no image quality degradation at 1440p resolution. Trixx Boost is so noteworthy to the Azure Nitro+ RX 6700 XT's rate proposition that we'll cut across its performance in its have segment after our standard benchmarks.

Now let's get to those.

Next varlet: Our test system, benchmarks begin

Our trial run system

We'ray in the process of moving to a new AMD Ryzen 5000-serial test rig to be able to benchmark the effect of PCIe 4.0 support on modern GPUs, also as the execution-boosting AMD Smart Access Memory and Nvidia Resizable BAR features (which are both supported the same underlying PCIe standard). Currently, we're examination it on an open bench with AMD's Spectre Max air cooler; in the future, we'll comprise moving the setup into a case and adding an NZXT Kraken liquid cooler to the mix. Near of the hardware was provided aside the manufacturers, but we purchased the storage ourselves.

AMD Ryzen 5900X, stock settings
AMD Wraith Max ice chest
MSI Godlike X570 motherboard
32GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 memory
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 big businessman supply ($352 on Amazon)
1TB SK Hynix Chromatic S31 SSD

We're comparing the $580 Sapphire Nitro+ against the $480 reference version of the Radeon RX 6700 XT, of course, too as the step-up $580 Radeon RX 6800 and last-generation's $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT. Along the Nvidia front, we've enclosed results for the $500 GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition and character reference-specification'd $330 EVGA RTX 3060 XC Dark Gaming. We unluckily had to skimpy on the superior, overclocked EVGA FTW3 Ultra for our results of the ostensibly $400 RTX 3060 Ti because our Founders Edition card wasn't immediately available for testing.

This review will stick to standard gaming benchmarks at 1440p and 1080p resolution, the poin audience for the RX 6700 XT. IT's not a great 4K gaming option. If you lack to see how well it handles factual-metre ray trace and the performance uplift manageable with Smart Access Memory, be sure to go over our original Radeon RX 6700 Crosstalk reference card review, which contains careful information some those extra features.

We test a variety of games spanning various engines, genres, vendor sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Each game is tested using its in-game benchmark at the highest possible graphics presets unless otherwise noted, with VSync, frame rate caps, real-time light beam trace Oregon DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, along with any other vendor-specific technologies like FidelityFX tools or Nvidia Reflex. We've also enabled worldly anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these cards to their limits. We feed each benchmark at least three times and number the mean result for each test.

We tested all graphics cards with their manufacturer-set default BIOS—Performance Mode, in the case of the Nitro+.

Gaming performance benchmarks

Watch Dogs: Legion

Look out Dogs: Legionis unrivalled of the first games to debut on next-gen consoles. Ubisoft upgraded its Break up locomotive engine to admit cutting-edge features the like period of time ray tracing and Nvidia's DLSS. We disable those personal effects for this testing, butLegion remains a effortful crippled even on high-end hardware with its optional heights-resolution texture pack installed. No card buns maintain a 60-frames-per-intermediate intermediate with Ultra graphics options enabled, and the game allocates more than 8GB of memory even at 1440p. Oof.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Yep, PlayStation exclusives are coming to the PC at once.Skyline Aught Dawn runs on Insurgent Games' Decima railway locomotive, the same engine that powersDeath Stranding.

Next page: gaming benchmarks continue

Gears Tactic

Gears Tactics puts it have brutal, fast-paced spin on theXCOM-like genre. This Unreal Engine 4-powered game was built from the ground up for DirectX 12, and we love being able to work a maneuver-expressive style game into our benchmarking suite. Advisable yet, the game comes with a plethora of graphics options for PC snobs. Sir Thomas More games should commit much loving care to explaining what flipping all these visual knobs mean.

You fire't use the presets to bench markGears Tactics, as it intelligently scales to work best along your installed hardware, meaning that "Ultra" connected one and only graphics card can load different settings than "Immoderate" on a weaker card. We manually down every options to their highest doable settings.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is more fun when you can child's play cooperatively with a pal, merely information technology's a bold experiment—and an absolute technical showcase. Running on the Vulkan API,Youngblood achieves blistering physical body rates, and IT supports each sorts of cutting-edge technologies equivalent ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, anachronous computing, and Nvidia's Complacent Adaptative Shading. The game includes a constitutional benchmark with cardinal different scenes; we tested Riverside.

Metro Book of Exodus

One of the best games of 2019,Metro Hegiraremains one of the best-superficial games around, besides. The latest version of the 4A Engine provides incredibly luscious, ultra-detailed visuals, with one of the almost stunning concrete-clip ray tracing implementations released yet. The Immoderate graphics preset we benchmark can thawing even the most powerful innovative hardware, every bit you'll see below, though the game's Ultra and High presets still look good at much higher compose rates.

We test in DirectX 12 mode with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS disabled.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is back! Gearbox's game defaults to DX12, so we do as well. Information technology gives us a coup d'oeil at the immoderate-common Unreal Engine 4's public presentation in a traditional triggerman. This game tends to favor AMD hardware.

Strange Brigade

Strange Brigade is a concerted third-person shooter where a team of adventurers blasts through with hordes of mythological enemies. IT's a technological show window, built around the next-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with features like HDR support and the power to toggle nonsynchronous figure out along and off. It uses Rebellion's custom Azure engine. We test using the Vulkan renderer, which is quicker than DX12.

Next page: gambling benchmarks keep on

Total War: Troy

The in vogue courageous in the popularTotal War saga,Troywas relinquished aside free for its first 24 hours happening the Epic Games Lay in, moving complete 7.5 jillio copies earlier it went on proper sale.Total War: Troy is stacked using a restricted version of theTotal War: Warhammer 2 railway locomotive, and this DX11 title looks arresting for a turn-settled strategy game. We test the Sir Thomas More intensive battle bench mark.

F1 2020

The latest in a protracted logical argument of in racing games,F1 2020is a gem to tryout, supplying a wide array of both graphical and benchmarking options, making it a much more reliable (and fun) alternative that theForzaseries. It's built on the latest version of Codemasters' buttery-sinuate Self-importance game engine, complete with support for DX12 and Nvidia's DLSS technology. We test two laps on the Commonwealth of Australi course, with clear skies on and DLSS off.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Grave Raider concludes the boot trilogy, and it's hush up utterlybeautiful a couple of years after its debut. Square Enix optimized this game for DX12 and recommends DX11 alone if you'Re exploitation older computer hardware or Windows 7, so we test with DX12.Shadow of the Tomb Plunderer uses an enhanced version of the Foundation engine that also poweredRise of the Grave Raider and includes facultative real-time beam trace and DLSS features.

Rainbow Six Beleaguering

Rainbow Hexa Siege still dominates the Steam charts years later on its set up, and Ubisoft supports it with haunt updates and events. The developers give poured a ton of work into the plot's AnvilNext engine over the geezerhood, eventually rolling out a Vulkan version of the game that we use to test. By nonpayment, the gamy lowers the render scaling to increase frame rates, but we set it to 100 percent to benchmark native rendition performance on nontextual matter card game. Still still, frame rates soar.

Next page: Trixx Advance performance

Trixx Boost performance: Wow!

Trixx Boost is a feature Lazuline added to last generation's RDNA 1-based Nitro+ RX 5700 XT, configurable using the company's Trixx management software package that also controls the art card's light personal effects.

The feature leverages the Radeon Double Sharpening feature AMD debuted aboard the RDNA architecture. Trixx Boost creates custom resolutions just down the stairs regular 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, which are and so upscaled to conform to your display. Radeon Image Sharpening (which works with all major graphics APIs instantly) cleans away the blurry personal effects usually associated with image upscaling. When you select the new custom resolutions in your game's graphics options, carrying into action soars, as you'll get wind in our benchmarks further pop.

sapphire trixx options — The Trixx Supercharge interface.

It's wicked-smart, and I'm shocked other GPU makers with package suites haven't cribbed it. Honestly, Trixx Boost does nothing you can't bash manually withanygraphics card by cobbling together custom resolutions in AMD or Nvidia control panels, so turning on AMD surgery Nvidia's sharpening features. That's a complicated process that entails dive deep into control control panel submenus though, limiting it to enthusiasts. Trixx Hike makes it painless, and you can set it up in mere transactions.

Open the Advance lozenge in Trixx, use a slipper to determine at what percent of the original resolutions you want the custom resolutions created for—the default is 85 per centum, which works great with the 1440p gameplay this posting targets—then toggle on Radeon Image Sharpening and clickApply. Your screen will flash a few times.

screenshot 17 — Screenshot of a customised resolution created exploitation Sapphire's Trixx Boost software. Select these in your games rather than native 4K, 1440p, or 1080p to get Trixx Hike up's benefits.

After that's through, simply select the new custom resolutions rather than the usual 4K, 1440p, and 1080p options in your game settings and lear frame rates soar.

How sharp? On a par with the step-up Radeon RX 6800 that costs $100 more than the RX 6700 Crosstalk. Sulfurous deuced. Check out the 1440p and 1080p results:

If you recover the default 85-pct custom resolution scaling too blurred or other than compromised, you can inch information technology back aweigh closer to autochthonous 100-percent scaling in chondritic unrivaled-percent increments until you find the sweet spot for your eyes. The nigher you get to autochthonic resolution, the lower the performance gains, however.

By our eyes, the 85-pct grading is arrant for 1440p resolution, greatly enhancing frame rates with pocket-size to no red in visual faithfulness—only a somewhat softer look in menus and other stable screens at times. It's too aggressive for 1080p gameplay, though. The reduced 85-percent resolution for that full treatmen out to 1632×918, and it's far too restricted-in and blurry for our tastes, with noticeable aliasing jaggies in places. Some games also display letterboxes at the Trixx-circumscribed resolution. If you're playing at 1080p try setting the custom declaration to 90 operating theatre 95 per centum instead, and go with whatever looks bully by your eyes.

Next page: Power, thermals, and haphazardness

Power eviscerate, thermals, and noise

We exam baron draw by iteration theF1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes later on we've benchmarked everything else and noting the highest reading on our Watts Up Pro beat, which measures the power consumption of our full test scheme. The initial parting of the hotfoot, where all competing cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the most demanding portion.

This isn't a worst-case test; this is a GPU-bound gamey running at a GPU-bound solvent to gauge performance when the nontextual matter card is sweating tough. If you're playing a secret plan that also hammers the CPU, you could see higher general system of rules power draws. Consider yourself warned.

Nvidia GPUs prevent our computer from fully going into idle in the five proceedings of downtime we use for this test, though IT does so later a longer duration. That's new to this Ryzen 5900X platform; we didn't see it on our centenarian Intel-based testbeds, nor with AMD Radeon graphics card game installed. We'll have to deepen our methodology going forward and thrustin around the behaviour to understand it more fully.

The Sapphire Nitro+ draws slightly more energy than the reference book Radeon RX 6700 XT, merely that's to be expected given its higher powerfulness terminus ad quem, faster filaria, and abundant RGB lighting. This hot gat still draws less mogul than the RTX 3070 and evening an overclocked RTX 3060 Ti, nonetheless, which shows just how power-efficient AMD's young RDNA 2 architecture is.

We mental test thermals past going GPU-Z open during theF1 2020 power draw test, noting the highest maximum temperature at the end.

The Nitro+'s strong custom cooling design delivers, and how. Sapphire's menu runs over 10 degrees ice chest than AMD's reference board while running in dear silence—and that's with its default Performance Mode BIOS. Enough said. The Quiet Fashion BIOS offers actual silence, simply the Performance Mode is quiet sufficiency that most people should stick to its quicker speeds.

Should you bribe the Cerulean Nitro+ RX 6700 XT?

Most people should avoid purchasing any graphics card aright now. Thanks to a crushing mixture of supply shortages, insane requirement for all gaming hardware during the epidemic, logistics woes, tariffs, and the manic disorder moving around the booming Ethereum cryptocurrency, graphics cards deal retired instantly at retail and tend to be available only for hundreds of dollars more at resale sites like Ebay and Craigslist. I'd recommend most people model on the sidelines and well out their PC games via Nvidia's GeForce Now military service until the dust settles.

All that said, if you're bored at home and get a wad of stimulant hard cash or unspent vacation earnings in your bank account, the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 6700 Crosstalk is a fantastic graphics card for ultra-quality 1440p and high-refreshen-rate 1080p gaming (though AMD's GPU struggles with ray traced games). It looks fantastic and runs in frigid silence.

Better yet, Trixx Encouragement makes information technology a much more worthwhile purchase than rival RX 6700 XT options, especially in today's strange GPU market. While the Nitro+'s factory overclock doesn't provide whatever realistic speed advantage over the reference RX 6700 XT, flipping on Trixx Boost immediately elevates the card's 1440p gaming performance to the level of the Radeon RX 6800. Hell yes. Sapphire's robust customised cooler also provides plenty of headroom if you want to stress pushing things even further via manual overclocking. The Nitro+'s handy threefold-BIOS switch over is addressable as a backup if things go skew-whiff.

In a sane world, the reference RX 6700 XT is priced $100 too in flood for what it offers (hence its lower 3-leading rating) and Lazuline's Nitro+ adds other $100 on top of that. But in today's in love reality, Trixx Boost and an exceptional cooler likely makes this one of the Sunday-go-to-meeting options available. If you're going to spend double to grab a graphics carte du jour, this should personify on your fugitive list until nontextual matter card prices recover their sanity. Information technology's great. Just be sure to install Trixx!

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may realize a small committee. Read our affiliate link insurance policy for more details.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/394252/sapphire-nitro-radeon-rx-6700-xt-review.html

Posted by: ingramlighbothe.blogspot.com