Sapphire's Radeon RX 5700 XT Nitro+ looks great; it introduces a fresh new style for the series. The cooler is dominated by straight lines with black as the primary color and some silver accents. The RGB functionality has been improved, too, by adding more control options to Sapphire's TRIXX software. Out of the box, Sapphire has overclocked their card to 1905 MHz rated Boost. This translates into a 3% performance improvement over the AMD reference design, which is similar to other Navi custom designs, but the differences are in the single-digit percentage range, which probably isn't enough to base your buying decision on. At 1440p, AMD's Radeon VII flagship is only 5% faster than the Nitro+, and the RTX 2070 Super is 8% ahead. Compared to NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2070, the Sapphire card delivers 5% higher FPS. NVIDIA's recently released RTX 2060 Super is 8% behind, and the difference to the RX 5700 is 15%. With these performance results, we can definitely recommend the RX 5700 XT for maximum details gaming at 1440p resolution, or high-refresh-rate gaming at 1080p.

Sapphire's cooler not only looks good, but also delivers on cooling performance and noise levels. With 72°C at full load, it is among the coolest Navi cards we've tested so far. What is also worth mentioning is that memory runs cooler than on any other card due to a separate heatsink for these chips. Noise levels are good with the default performance BIOS, reaching 33 dBA. If you want even quieter, the secondary "quiet" BIOS is for you. It runs a more relaxed fan curve, allowing for slightly higher temperatures and 32 dBA noise output. While the PowerColor Red Devil is still a bit quieter, the differences are small and difficult to notice subjectively. What's a bit odd is that the quiet BIOS has some overshoot in its fan control. When the card goes out of idle, the fans will ramp up, reaching 1350 RPM. After a minute or so, when the fan speed algorithm detects that it is "too fast," fan speed will gradually go down, reaching the final speed of 1170 RPM. We have seen this behavior on AMD's RX 5700 reference design, but no other RX 5700 XT custom designs, so it looks like a BIOS issue. As expected, Sapphire includes the idle-fan-stop feature with the Nitro+, which completely shuts off the fans during idle, desktop work, Internet browsing, and light gaming.

A noteworthy innovation is the "software BIOS switch" feature. Unlike all other dual BIOS cards, which use a physical BIOS switch, Sapphire lets you control the BIOS selection through their TRIXX software. If you prefer the manual method, you can still toggle between both BIOSes—the switch has three positions. A small oversight is that there seems to be no way for TRIXX to know when you've manually switched away from the "software switch" setting, so it will still show you the software BIOS switch option even though you've forced the switch in manual selection mode, which could lead to some confusion. Just to clarify, this feature does not use SoftPowerPlay Tables, neither does it flash the BIOS every time you switch. The card has an additional electrical switch circuit that is controlled by this feature, which selects the BIOS chip that is "connected". The switching is instant (so you can flash without a reboot), but the GPU/driver re-read the BIOS only during system startup.

Power consumption of the Nitro+ is a little bit higher than on other custom Navi cards, which is probably due to the higher voltage for its high and stable factory overclock. With 270-280 W, this isn't a huge deal as most decent power supplies will have no problems powering the card. It still hurts overall efficiency since the out of the box performance increase is only 3% compared to the 18% power increase.

Overclocking our sample reached the second-highest GPU overclock we've ever seen on a Navi card, but the differences are small and mostly due to the silicon lottery. On the other hand, it is possible that the lower temperatures help eke a few more MHz out of the Navi GPU. Unlike the AMD reference, memory overclocking worked correctly now, but ends up limited by the adjustment range in Wattman, which tops out at 1900 MHz. Let's hope AMD reconsiders putting artificial OC limits into their driver. After manual overclocking, we gained 3.3% in real-life performance.

Sapphire does have a unique feature for their new Navi graphics cards, which is called "TriXX Boost". It's a new capability of their TriXX overclocking software and lets you precisely set a custom resolution (in small steps) that's active system-wide. That new resolution can now be selected in your games and nets you higher FPS with a small loss in image quality due to the lower rendering resolution. Paired with Radeon Image Sharpening, this can help improve performance without compromising image quality too much.

On the topic of raytracing, I'm sure you've already made up your mind on whether it's something you're interested in or not, but I don't doubt for a second that NVIDIA is pushing the technology very hard with their excellent developer relations, and it looks like the adoption rate is improving. We're also hearing rumors that next-gen consoles will feature some sort of raytracing technology, too. I'd say, it's not a big deal for the near future, but it could become relevant in the years to come, so if you're future-proofing for many years to come, this could be a factor. My recommendation is not to worry about the future too much and look at what you need today to buy a new card when you need it, selling the old one to offset the cost.

According to Sapphire, their Radeon RX 5700 XT Nitro+ will retail for around $440, which is a $40 premium over the AMD reference RX 5700 XT. The out-of-the-box performance increase of 3% can justify a $15 bump, and the better cooler and idle fan stop should be worth another $10. Add the RGB features and dual BIOS for another $10, and Sapphire's pricing seems very reasonable. Still, with many board partners releasing custom designs around the same price point, competition will heat up. For example, we have the Sapphire Pulse, which comes at only $410, with slightly lower performance, higher temperatures, and more noise. PowerColor's Red Devil is similarly priced as the Nitro+ at $440, but with better noise, similar performance, but higher temperatures. We recently reviewed the MSI Gaming X, which looks gorgeous and has the best cooler we've seen so far. Going more expensive, we have the ASUS RX 5700 XT STRIX and of course NVIDIA's RTX 2070 Super cards. I guess as stock levels normalize for the RX 5700 XT, we'll see the premium custom designs come down a little bit in pricing, probably gravitating towards $430.