of Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT Launch wasn’t enough to claim our pole position GPU Benchmark Hierarchyand now we have learned some batches Reference 7900 XTX card shipped with vapor chamber issueThe Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X has no such issues, promising the usual performance boost thanks to its higher clocks and better cooler.How does it perform when compared to best graphics cardwhere are the cards in stock?
As with any 3rd party AIB (add-in board) partner card, the only real changes compared to the reference design come in the form of cooling and aesthetics, with the potential for increased clock speeds and power limits. . Sapphire’s RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ follows that pattern T:
| graphics card | Sapphire 7900 XTX Nitro+ | RX7900XTX | RX7900XT | RTX4090 | RTX4080 | RTX 4070 Ti |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| architecture | Navi 31 | Navi 31 | Navi 31 | AD102 | AD103 | AD104 |
| process technology | TSMC N5+N6 | TSMC N5+N6 | TSMC N5+N6 | TSMC 4N | TSMC 4N | TSMC 4N |
| Transistor (billion) | 45.6 + 6x 2.05 | 45.6 + 6x 2.05 | 45.6 + 5x 2.05 | 76.3 | 45.9 | 35.8 |
| Die size (mm^2) | 300 + 222 | 300 + 222 | 300 + 185 | 608.4 | 378.6 | 294.5 |
| SMS | 96 | 96 | 84 | 128 | 76 | 60 |
| GPU shader | 12288 | 12288 | 10752 | 16384 | 9728 | 7680 |
| Tensor cores | none | none | none | 512 | 304 | 240 |
| Ray Tracing “Core” | 96 | 96 | 84 | 128 | 76 | 60 |
| Boost Clock (MHz) | 2680 | 2500 | 2400 | 2520 | 2505 | 2610 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 20 | 20 | 20 | twenty one | 22.4 | twenty one |
| VRAM (GB) | twenty four | twenty four | 20 | twenty four | 16 | 12 |
| VRAM bus width | 384 | 384 | 320 | 384 | 256 | 192 |
| L2 cache | 96 | 96 | 80 | 72 | 64 | 48 |
| ROP | 192 | 192 | 192 | 176 | 112 | 80 |
| TMU | 384 | 384 | 336 | 512 | 304 | 240 |
| TFLOPS FP32 | 65.9 | 61.4 | 51.6 | 82.6 | 48.7 | 40.1 |
| TFLOPS FP16 (FP8/INT8) | 132 (132) | 123 (123) | 103 (103) | 661 (1321) | 390 (780) | 321 (641) |
| Bandwidth (GBps) | 960 | 960 | 800 | 1008 | 717 | 504 |
| TBP (Watts) | 420 | 355 | 300 | 450 | 320 | 285 |
| release date | December 2022 | December 2022 | December 2022 | October 2022 | November 2022 | January 2023 |
| launch price | $1,099 | $999 | $899 | $1,599 | $1,199 | $799 |
Sapphire’s Vapor-X model is $100 more expensive than the reference card at $1,099. Unfortunately, the manufacturer’s suggested retail price means little. Newegg has a listing for $1,522.97 (opens in new tab) — plus $49.99 shipping, add insult to injury. (From a third-party vendor, of course.) Not that the reference 7900 XTX is better, but for now Listed for $1,439.99 from another third-party seller (opens in new tab).
Hopefully supply and pricing will improve in the coming months, but right now all 7900 XTX cards are pretty overpriced.The 7900 XTX typically outperforms the RTX 4080 in rasterization performance, a significant difference in complex ray tracing games, but the RTX 4080 card Starting at $1,269.99 (opens in new tab)That’s more than we’d like, but it’s about $200 cheaper than the 7900 XTX for the time being.
For more information AMD’s RDNA 3 architecture, that article is a good place to start. Nothing has fundamentally changed in Sapphire’s design, so we pretty much know what to expect, but let’s go ahead and take a look at the card itself and take it apart.
