Summary
Many hunters are the death of the hare, as the old saying goes. And so, after the test weekend, I am somewhat torn. Even if the Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Nitro 16 GB is a nice card in itself, it has actually already lost with the smallest Navi31. The 5 to 8 percent advantage of the factory overclocked card over a Radeon RX 7800XT with around 18 percent higher power consumption actually nips any euphoria in the bud. Nobody really knows where the 33 percent more processing power has gone, because the hoped-for performance simply doesn’t arrive.
Yes, you can certainly reduce the power consumption to approx. 260 to 270 watts with a different BIOS, but the bottom line is that it doesn’t really improve. If you really want to take a closer look at the card, you’ll have to manually “optimize” the default BIOS using trial and error in the Radeon software. It will certainly be possible to achieve some improvement in this way, but this will vary greatly from card to card. However, you won’t notice the few FPS more or less anyway. But nobody can expect a tester to first laboriously optimize the respective card by hand in order to then test it. This simply cannot and should not be generalized.
The too small Infinity Cache and the even lower memory bandwidth compared to the RX 7800XT negate all the advantages on paper in reality. This is a real pity, but certainly intentional in order to avoid in-house cannibalization. However, if you were expecting to outperform the GeForce RTX 4070 Super, then you made a huge miscalculation. It would have needed a little more performance for that. It’s fine at the power socket, but the world of pixels simply turns too slowly.
The Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Nitro 16 GB
Whether you have to give the card such a high percentage of power depends on your point of view and your ability to suffer with energy costs. The Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Nitro 16 GB cuts a really good figure from a technical point of view, because it can’t help the chip. It’s fair to separate the two at this point. Despite slight savings in the voltage converter phases, the board makes a very high-quality impression and the cooler and pads are really rock solid. In the end, there is almost nothing that speaks against the Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Nitro 16 GB, except perhaps the price and the performance compared to the other cards. In terms of efficiency, NVIDIA is clearly ahead (not only) in this performance and price class, but we’ve just been over that. On the other hand, the card is very quiet, despite the almost 300 watts of waste heat.
The ray tracing performance has at least taken a significant step forward and is now on a par with the larger Ampere cards. This must also be acknowledged, even if there are still up to double-digit lags in DXR performance. But the gap has narrowed. This also applies to things like the excellent video encoder. With RDNA3, AMD has completely turned telemetry on its head, which has worked well in most respects. The fact that you can finally read out a TBP that is reasonably accurate, even if it is only a good estimate, is a big step forward. NVIDIA has long relied on real monitoring of the rails by means of shunts, AMD now at least relies on the summation of all values from the DCR and some math, which also works. Sapphire has not slipped up here either.
Conclusion
A card that is only a maximum of 8 percent faster than a more economical Radeon RX 7800XT should ultimately cost only marginally more than perhaps a 10% price premium, especially as AMD uses the very best salvage here. At the current street price of the Saphire RX 7800XT Pulse of 523 euros including VAT, that would be around 575 euros for an RX 7900 GRE Pulse. However, AMD has set the entry-level price (RRP) at a minimum of 609 euros. This means that the Sapphire RX 7900 GRE PULSE comes in at 609 euros, the PURE at 639 euros and the NITRO+ even at 669 euros. Considering the performance compared to the Radeon RX 7800XT, this is simply far too expensive. Let’s hope that street prices will soon adjust to reality.
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 GRE, 16GB GDDR6, 2x HDMI, 2x DP, lite retail (11325-04-20G / 11325-04-21G)
Onlineshop: Jetzt vorbestellenBerlin, Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Hannover/Laatzen, München, Stuttgart: nicht lagerndStand: 14.08.24 19:43 | 559,97 €*Stand: 14.08.24 19:45 | |
dotcomp.de | 3-4 Tage | 672,20 €*Stand: 14.08.24 18:33 |
Bestellware - 7-9 Tage Lieferzeit | 717,37 €*Stand: 14.08.24 19:34 |
- 1 - Introduction, technical data and technology
- 2 - Test s4etup and methods
- 3 - Teardown: PCB and components
- 4 - Teardown: cooler and cleaning tips
- 5 - Teardown: material analysis
- 6 - Gaming-Performance Full-HD (1920 x 1080)
- 7 - Gaming-Performance WQHD (2560 x 1440)
- 8 - Gaming-Performance Ultra-HD (3840 x 2160)
- 9 - Gaming-Performance DLSS / FSR (3840 x 2160)
- 10 - Gaming-Performance FSR3 Frame Generation (3840 x 2160)
- 11 - Latenzen
- 12 - Power consumption and balancing
- 13 - Transients and PSU recommendation
- 14 - Temperatures, IR analysis and clock rate / OC
- 15 - Fan curves, noise and audio sample
- 16 - Summary and conclusion
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