INTRODUCTION

   The most demanding gamers, enthusiasts and even professionals currently have 4 valid choices to choose from when it comes to graphics cards, the GeForce RTX 4080 and 4090 models by NVIDIA and the Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX by AMD. Yes, both NVIDIA and AMD will be launching new even higher performance models in the near future (and they've both launched more affordable ones since (including the GeForce RTX 4060 unveiled yesterday) but for now these 4 hold the performance crown (with the GeForce RTX 4070 trailing closely behind). SAPPHIRE is clearly the leading AMD AIC (add-in-card) partner currently and since far too many of you have asked for the past month, I’ve been testing their latest and top of the line graphics card, the NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X 24GB.

   SAPPHIRE Technology continues to be a world leading manufacturer and global supplier of innovative graphics and mainboard products, delivering its AMD Radeon based products to the PC markets addressing gaming, eSports and performance graphics enthusiasts as well as delivering an array of professional graphics products and embedded system solutions. Recently SAPPHIRE has penetrated new markets with a series of GPU Compute server systems targeting the blockchain and commercial cryptocurrency mining businesses.

   The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a pumped up version of the RX 7900 XT model and so it sports sports 96 RDNA 3 compute units, 6144 stream processors, 192 raster units (or render output units), 96 ray accelerators (or ray tracing cores), 384 texture mapping units, 96MB infinity cache and 6 shader engines (also 24GB of 384-bit GDDR6 VRAM). In terms of featured technologies once again we find AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.2 for maximum performance and visuals (with FSR 2.3 and Fluid Motion Frames technology scheduled for late 2023), radiance display engine for incredible color accuracy at up to 8K 165Hz (12-bit HDR with full coverage of the REC2020 color space), image sharpening, noise suppression which helps reduce ambient noise, anti-lag for faster input commands, smart access memory (performance boost when paired with an AMD Ryzen CPU), FreeSync for no image stuttering and tearing and AMD link which allows you to stream your Windows desktop and games to mobile devices, TVs and other Windows PCs. SAPPHIRE of course has further tweaked the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and so their NITRO+ Vapor-X model comes with increased game clocks (2510Mhz from 2455MHz), three 8-pin power connectors (420W power limit compared to the 350W of the reference model), dual-RGB LED bars, dual-heatsink vapor chamber cooler with die casted aluminum-magnesium alloy frame, high density 14-layer 2oz copper & TG PCB, metal backplate, dedicated VRM cooling, dual-BIOS, composite heatpipes and three two-ball bearing quick-connect fans with angular blades. Being the flagship model by SAPPHIRE the NITRO+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X 24GB certainly looks unique so let's move on with today's review to see how it performs.