The fans have been redesigned and look remarkably similar to the axial-tech fans from Asus.
Meanwhile, the centrally located 90mm fan spins in a clockwise direction.
Then around on the backside of the card we find a full-length silver backplate with a backlit Nitro logo.
The backplate looks nice and features a number of cutouts to aid air-flow.
The smaller heatsink which is really a series of smaller heatsinks connected on a baseplate using two low-profile heatpipes.
It’s a neat kit that directly cools the GDDR6 memory along with the powerstages and inductors.
For the powerstages Sapphire is using Infineon’s TDA21472 OptiMOS powerstages which are rated for a 70A capacity.
13 have been used to deliver power to the GPU, 11 for GFX and 2 for SOC.
We expected to find more thermal pads here, but Sapphire has deemed that unnecessary.
Still, it’s good to see that some heat is being transferred to the aluminum backplate.
The GDDR6 memory has been left stock at 16 Gbps.
The card remained very quiet and couldn’t be heard over the case fans even then.
The gains at 4K are a little more impressive.
That’s not an amazing improvement, but it was enough to match a stock RTX 3080.
In terms of performance, the Nitro+ is excellent.
Key reasons to purchase the Nitro+ over a reference model include dual BIOS support and increased overclocking headroom.
Finally, there’s price.
Unlike the limited-release AMD reference model which targets the MSRP, the Nitro+ will certainly be fetching a premium.
