AMD RX Vega 64 Sapphire Nitro Pictured & Tested – Features 3 8-Pin Connectors, 3 Fans & LED Lighting Everywhere

Nov 13, 2017

It appears the wait for custom versions of AMD’s high-end Vega graphics cards is nearing its end as more and more leaks surface of what potentially could be on-shelves in time for the holidays from the company’s add-in-board partners.

A couple of weeks ago we saw XFX tease its own custom RX Vega, today we get a glimpse at what Sapphire is working on, and it’s quite the beast.

The AMD Radeon RX Vega Sapphire Nitro Is A Beast

So first things first, let’s talk about the exterior design of Sapphire’s new Nitro series for the Vega family. The new Vega Nitro is two and a half slot, triple fan, triple 8-pin affair with a massive heatsink. The heatsink itself appears to be a modified version of what Sapphire used in its R9 Fury Nitro designs. The fan array has also been improved, it now features two 95mm fans and one 85mm fan, in contrast to the previous triple 90mm fan design. To keep all of that heft in check, the Sapphire includes a PCIe support bracket with these cards to prevent sag and/or damage to the PCIe slot due to the sheer weight of the card.

Sapphire has maintained the classic black, white and silver aesthetic of the Nitro series with a sleek looking detailed backplate. Nearly all sides of the card have some sort of LED lighting, including the top, the back and the side. In terms of I/O the card is slightly unique, featuring two DisplayPorts and two HDMI ports, instead of the standard three and one I/O of the reference Vega design.

The card that HWBattle got their hands on features the default RX Vega 64 clock speeds, a factory overclocked version of the Nitro is expected as well. Although, we don’t know what the clock speeds on that version will look like at the moment. With that being said, even at stock clocks the RX Vega 64 Nitro is able to boost to higher clock speeds than usual thanks to the significantly improved cooling.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and Vega 56 Graphics Card Lineup:

Graphics Card	AMD Radeon R9 Fury X	AMD Radeon RX Vega Nano	AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 Reference	AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Reference	AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited	AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid
GPU	Fiji XT	Vega 10	Vega 10	Vega 10	Vega 10	Vega 10
Process Node	28nm	14nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	14nm FinFET	14nm FinFET
Compute Units	64	TBD	56	64	64	64
Stream Processors	4096	TBD	3584	4096	4096	4096
Raster Operators	64	64	64	64	64	64
Texture Mapping Units	256	TBD	224	256	256	256
Clock Speed (Base)	1000 MHz	TBD	1156 MHz	1247 MHz	1247 MHz	1406 MHz
Clock Speed (Max)	1050 MHz	TBD	1471 MHz	1546 MHz	1546 MHz	1677 MHz
FP32 Compute	8.6 TFLOPs	TBD	10.5 TFLOPs	12.6 TFLOPs	12.6 TFLOPs	13.7 TFLOPs
FP16 Compute	8.6 TFLOPs	TBD	21.0 TFLOPs	25.2 TFLOPs	25.2 TFLOPs	27.4 TFLOPs
Memory (VRAM)	4 GB HBM1	8 GB HBM2	8 GB HBM2	8 GB HBM2	8 GB HBM2	8 GB HBM2
Memory Bus	4096 bit	2048 bit	2048 bit	2048 bit	2048 bit	2048 bit
Bandwidth	512 GB/s	TBD	410 GB/s	484 GB/s	484 GB/s	484 GB/s
TDP	275W	150W	210W	295W	295W	350W
Price	$649	TBD	$399 ($499 US Actual)	$499 ($599 US Actual)	$599	$699
Launch	2015	2018	2017	2017	2017	2017