Review: Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro 4GB and 8GB OC

Conclusion

We're in a better position now to truly evaluate the Radeon RX 480 after a few cards have passed through the labs.

Sapphire makes a strong case as the go-to brand for the nascent GPU with its trio of Nitro cards priced at reasonable levels. The 4GB model, mostly on pre-order for £200, matches the reference card's pure benchmark performance even though it's hamstrung by slower memory. It's able to do this because it maintains the boost speed through gruelling testing.

And performance from the card is handsome at either FHD or QHD resolutions, particularly if you game at its strengths of Vulkan and DX12. Nicely built and looking the business, our only reservation, for the moment, is the unexpected fan-speed profile caused by the Radeon Control Centre taking charge of cooling. We're hopeful it will be resolved in an update soon.

The 8GB Nitro OC, meanwhile, fetches a £50 premium and delivers performance that's just a few per cent better. One can argue that the double-sized buffer is more important moving forwards, though the capabilities of the GPU's engine is likely to falter before limitations in onboard memory really come to play. Really, we'd want to see a 10 per cent price premium for the 8GB card, not the current 20 per cent or so.

Sapphire has proved it has the wherewithal to produce decent Radeon RX 480s without the user breaking the bank. If it was our money and budget was tight, the nod would have to go to the Nitro 4GB priced at £200.

Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro 4GB

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The Sapphire Radeon RX 480 Nitro 4GB and Nitro 8GB OC are on pre-order at Scan Computers here and here.

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