Sapphire Nitro Series Missed Opportunity

[james1701]

I was messing around with Trixx this morning looking to see how well my Nitro Fury would overclock and decided to turn the fans on a straight 50% duty cycle. Normally with the clock button turned on, and the temp range set to 85, this card hits 76 during heavy gaming sessions. With the fans on 50% and the overclock turned up with no voltage increases the card would max out at only 57C with an ambient of 20C. I could hear the fans running, but they were still quiet. About half the noise as my Gigabyte Windforce cards.

I don't blame Sapphire for advertising what may be one of the quietest air cooled cards on the market, but have really missed a good opportunity advertising to the enthusiasts market. I have not seen much of anything else that can keep an air cooled card at that low of a temp and stay that quiet.

 

[tential]

I was messing around with Trixx this morning looking to see how well my Nitro Fury would overclock and decided to turn the fans on a straight 50% duty cycle. Normally with the clock button turned on, and the temp range set to 85, this card hits 76 during heavy gaming sessions. With the fans on 50% and the overclock turned up with no voltage increases the card would max out at only 57C with an ambient of 20C. I could hear the fans running, but they were still quiet. About half the noise as my Gigabyte Windforce cards.

I don't blame Sapphire for advertising what may be one of the quietest air cooled cards on the market, but have really missed a good opportunity advertising to the enthusiasts market. I have not seen much of anything else that can keep an air cooled card at that low of a temp and stay that quiet.

Sapphire doesn't advertise it, but reviews tell the tale.

It's the reason both my recent cards are sapphire. They have great coolers.

 

[grimpr]

Imho, the best AMD gpu oem along with Asus, quality cards at good prices.

 

[Actaeon]

I had a pair of Sapphire Tri-X 290Xs and they were great. 290Xs run very hot and that cooler kept them cool while still being quiet. I hope my just ordered G1 Gaming with Windforce is just as good.

 

[crisium]

Nitro appears to be the successor to the Tri X? My Fury Tri-X is very quiet, and I wonder if they could have made it even better, which would be amazing.

 

[james1701]

A fellow streamer has a Tri-X and from what he posted, the Nitro is quieter, improved power phases, and mine does not have any coil whine what so ever. The new Nitro series scores just a little higher on benches because of a slightly higher clock. I was playing around overclocking and I could go to 1140 on the core and 1100 on the memory with no added voltage.

It's really been nice that I discovered Sapphires weekly Twitch stream from Sapphire Ed on Sundays.

 

[tweakboy]

They dropped the ball,

 

[Despoiler]

Nitro appears to be the successor to the Tri X? My Fury Tri-X is very quiet, and I wonder if they could have made it even better, which would be amazing.

The Nitro is their custom board version of the Tri-X. Tri-X being a reference board.


...but yes the Sapphire Fury cards are stupid quiet. Only 2 of the 3 fans will spin up for light to medium loads. Excellent idea. Even when you have 100% load the fans only spin at 36%. Temps stay below 75C. I also set my fans to constant 45%. My water pump is still louder. Temps never go above 67C. Idle is like 34C.

 

[Mercennarius]

Sapphire makes the best AMD cards IMHO.

 

[tential]

A fellow streamer has a Tri-X and from what he posted, the Nitro is quieter, improved power phases, and mine does not have any coil whine what so ever. The new Nitro series scores just a little higher on benches because of a slightly higher clock. I was playing around overclocking and I could go to 1140 on the core and 1100 on the memory with no added voltage.

It's really been nice that I discovered Sapphires weekly Twitch stream from Sapphire Ed on Sundays.

Mine is a SERIOUSLY poor overclocker. I leave it at 1000 on the core.

However, I'm VERY happy with my R9 290.

Part of the reason I upgrarded from a HD7950 to an R9 290, so close to Pascal/Polaris and after Fiji's launch was for the new cooler from Sapphire. I'll upgrade to Polaris for sure and will be SUPER excited to see the new sapphire cooler. From the HD7950 til now, Sapphire's cooler has gotten better EACH year. That's hard to say from other people.

So most likely, I'll buy a Polaris Sapphire GPU as I doubt anyone will beat their cooler.

Edit: I think I've said before, if I was AMD, I'd just have Sapphire make the reference coolers from now on lol. OR just label the best OEM cooler as a "reference" cooler and stop producing a blower cooler as a reference card. People will still make a blower cooler. Just like XFX made one for the R9 390. Someone will make a cheap cooler as it's in demand. But AMD should stop labeling the worst cooler possible as the reference one, and thus hurt itself in launch benchmarks.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I have a Nitro R9 390, it's really quiet... but then again, my previous card was a reference 7970, so almost everything is quiet compared to it. I should mention also that I bought this card before the Hitman promotion, I contacted Newegg and was able to get a code for the game. Looking forward to some DX12 goodness.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

I just got a Sapphire R9 370 single fan for my gf's PC. Really happy with it so far, the thing feels like a brick.