Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 4GB Video Card Review

Nathan Kirsch

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Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 4GB Arrives At $219

The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 480 4GB television menu is ultimately here ! Forget the woes of the AMD Radeon RX 480 citation design as this custom-made tease could possibly solve all the GPU cooler and power concerns may had. The Nitro Radeon RX 480 solves the high temperature and forte noise levels by featuring a large GPU cooler with three bull heatpipes and dual fans. The display panel designers then placed an 8-pin PCIe ability connection alternatively of a 6-pin to ensure the Polaris GPU on the RX 480 is getting all the might it needs and then some. At $ 20 more than the reference plan ( $ 199 ) it looks like Sapphires Nitro Radeon RX 480 was a God send and could be the Radeon RX 480 to own.

When shopping for an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics poster youll find that there are 4GB and 8GB versions available and that effect and memory clocks on the 4GB cards will vary between manufactures. The AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB citation design was clocked at 1266MHz boost with 8Gbps memory speeds while the AMD Radeon RX 480 4GB address card featured the lapp core clock, but uses 7Gbps or higher memory. This means it is up to AMDs dining table partners to set the clock speeds. On the Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 4GB it is factory overclocked to 1306MHz on the congress of racial equality and 7.5Gbps on the memory. The Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 8GB is clocked at 1342MHz on the core and 8Gbps on the memory. Be indisputable to take a close look at the clock speeds if you have your take care set on the RX 480 ! Those are of class the default ‘ Nitro Boost ’ clock speeds, but you can switch to ‘ silent ’ modality and then both circuit board runs at 1266MHz .

The model that we ’ ll be looking at today is the Sapphire Radeon RX 480 4GB that is priced at $ 219, whereas the Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 8GB is priced at $ 269 .

The Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 4GB is a decently sized wag that measures in at 240mm x 120mm adam 42mm ( L x W x H ), so at just 9.5-inches in duration it should fit in the majority of background PCs. Along the top boundary of the card the Sapphire logo that features 1customizable RGB lighting thanks to ‘ Nitro Glow ’ lighting technology. The tease uses Sapphire ’ s democratic Dual-X GPU cool design that continues to be updated as clock time goes on .

You can even change the colors of the LED, for your own custom-make design. This can be controlled via software using the latest version of SAPPHIREs Overclocking Utility TriXX 3.0, or through hardware by pressing the crimson button on the back of the Nitro RX 480 card .

One of the biggest sell features of the Sapphire Nitro RX 480 is the 8-pin PCIe power connection that is located on the end of the card. You can besides see one of the 4-pin fan headers of the 95mm cool fans. Sapphire recommends a 500W or greater power supply for your bet on system with this 150W TDP video batting order model .

The Sapphire Nitro RX 480 comes with a full coverage black metallic element spinal column plate to help protect the components on the back of the card and to add rigidity to the circuit board to keep it from looking saggy on the army for the liberation of rwanda side of the PCIe x16 slot interface. It besides helps keep your batting order cool as Sapphire did place a thermal pad behind the VRM components, so this should help dissipate some heat away from the hot parts of the card. Notice that top edge of the backplate has holes cut in it. This is part of the ‘ Nitro Free Flow ’ arrangement that allows hot vent to escape through these vents .

On the back of the Nitro RX 480 you ’ ll besides be able to change the LED mode settings with a push button interchange or vBIOS versions as this card ships with two BIOS versions. The LED mode switch will let you can choose from a set of six unlike modes including Sapphire blue, rainbow, PCB Temperature indicator, winnow travel rapidly index, custom ( set in TRIXX 3.0 software ) or off .
nothing is said on the landing page of this model about what specifics on the dual BIOS modality, but we were able to talk with Ed from Sapphire USA and he told us that the 2nd BIOS ( the one close to the IO panel ) has a tight fan profile and world power profile that has been tweaked to better maintain baron .

Sapphire went with two DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, two HDMI 2.0b and a Dual-Link DVI-D connection when it comes to video outputs. The HDMI 2.0 port does support 4K ( up to 4096×2160 ) @ 60Hz ! azure does not include any DVI to VGA adapters or SLI bridges in the accessory bundle with this card, so just a friendly heads up there. We aren ’ thymine going to bother showing you the box or retail bundle as you just get a flying depart guide and a driver phonograph record ( who in truth loads drivers from a cd-rom these days anyhow ? ). Notice that the card is higher than most as the winnow shroud extends above the bracket and the dual-slot cards overall acme is 120mm .

hera is a close search at the heatsink Sapphire is using on the Nitro RX 480 and you can tell it ’ s massive compared to the small factory solution. This heatsink has respective heatpipes and the cool besides makes contact with the office components, so it should greatly help the thermal performance of the card. The two larger heatpipes are 10mm thick ! The Sapphire Nitro RX 480 4GB exemplary that we are testing has a default option temperature aim of 75C and a semi-passive fan that doesn ’ thymine kick on until the temperature reached 52C .

The Sapphire Nitro RX 480 can be used with SAPPHIREs Overclocking Utility TriXX 3.0 for wax control of the cards fans settings and temperature targets, therefore be certain to download that if you wanted to actually dial in the circuit board. The utility besides allows you to manually adjust clock speeds, voltages, fan speeds, LED colors, and more .

The graphics card cooler uses two 95 mm brushless cooling fans that have dust-repelling double ball bearings. The airfoil section blades help provide the airflow needed to keep this Polaris based GPU cool with lower noise levels versus smaller standard fans. The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 480 utilize ‘ quick associate ’ fan engineering that allows you to remove one cheat and then the winnow can be lifted out at an angle away from the joining pins. This allows you to easily remove and clean the fans, but more importantly if a fan were to ever fail you could fair get a refilling fan in the chain mail alternatively of an entire new circuit board .

We removed the fans and found that Sapphire is using Champion DC Brushless CF1015H12D exemplar fans that are made in China are the factory fans.

Our Sapphire Nitro Radeon RX 480 4GB television poster is based on a pre-production design. We know this as it has a 6-phase exponent system for the GPU and we have been told by Sapphire that the retail cards will merely have a 5-phase power system. One of the phases is purportedly disabled in the vBIOS, but we don ’ t know how to check that and if this will impact our world power numbers or overclocking results .
immediately that we have the basics out of the direction we can take a look at the test arrangement and get to the benchmark !
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