Sapphire R9 390x Nitro Review

The tri x cooler keeps the gpu at a reasonable.

Sapphire r9 390x nitro review.

By jarred walton 18 june 2015. Power efficiency has been the weak point for amd in recent years and sapphire s r9 390 nitro is no exception as the only difference is that sapphire s cooler manages to hide the secondary effects of increased power consumption heat and noise very well. The design used by sapphire for the nitro r9 390x is a reference type that implements the new version of the well known tri x cooling system characterized by three fans den now built with the technical appreciated dual ball bearing and a heat pipe 10 mm. The sapphire r9 390 nitro comes with a gpu overclock of 40 mhz out of the box while memory has remained at the amd default of 1500 mhz.

With a price of 340 the card is more expensive than other r9 390s from other manufacturers sitting at a price point that competes with many high end gtx 970 cards. Intelligent fan control and two ball bearings on the fan spindles keep the noise down to an exceptable level. The tri x cooling design keeps everything cool under the hood. In this review we take a look at how sapphire s high end hawaii based tri x r9 390x and midrange tonga based nitro r9 380 stack up against the competition.

Are they worth buying now that amd has hbm technology in its fury series. Sapphire has its tri x r9 390x clocked slower than the msi radeon r9 390x gaming 8g we tested before this with the gpu clocked at 1055mhz versus 1100mhz on the msi card and the 8gb of gddr5 is. Sapphire s nitro edition delivers a tweaked 390 x straight out to box including 8gb of vram and a very nice looking thermal backplate. Sapphire s tri x r9 390x comes with three fans and two yes two 8 pin pcie power connectors.