Sapphire Radeon Nitro+RX 5700 XT OC 8GB Video Card Review

Benchmarks, Performance, Temperatures and Power consumption

A video card does not work on its own, aside from drivers and all, we need the rest of the system.  So that you know what I am working with and to compare performance with your own system, here are my system specifications.

• Windows 10 Professional: https://geni.us/TbOpq
• Viotek G35DR 35” Ultra Wide Curved Monitor: http://geni.us/6LrGJ
• ASUS PB287Q 28″ 4K LED Monitor: https://geni.us/LeWBsp
• Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5700 XT OC 8GB: https://geni.us/VoHIZhu
• Fractal Design Define S2 Vision RGB Case: https://geni.us/t6xXT
• Alienware Wireless Gaming Headset – AW988: https://geni.us/z52uzC
• Arctic Liquid Freezer II 360: https://geni.us/iAqV
• Intel Core i9 9900K Processor: https://geni.us/0PrCbaY
• Patriot Viper Gaming RGB DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz 16GB Kit: https://geni.us/URlI8
• EVGA Z390 Dark Motherboard: https://geni.us/UmV6t
• WD Black SN750 1TB: https://geni.us/8sqXFs
• Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD: https://geni.us/QTA2
• WD Black PCI-e NVMe 512GB SSD: https://geni.us/mMNLde
• EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G+, 80 Plus Gold 1000W: https://geni.us/IVoE

Here are the specs on the Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 5700 XT OC.

I use GPU-Z to gather temperatures of the card, but I use a Kill A Watt for reporting the wattage consumed.  The Kill A Watt by P3 International is great, you can click on this link to check it out on my Amazon affiliated link and maybe get yourself one too.

 

I have changed up some of the games and programs I have used with more demanding and newer titles.  Here is the list of games and programs used for benchmarking.

• FutureMark’s 3DMark Fire Strike
• FutureMark’s TimeSpy
• Metro Exodus
• Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
• Shadows of the Tomb Raider
• Far Cry 5
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands

Alright, let’s get started.

The overall score on UL’s 3DMark FireStrike 1.1 was 22,809 and the hottest the card reached was 58°C.  During these tests, the maximum power consumed was 423Watts, while the average was 335Watts.  The Sapphire states that the card requires a 600Watt power supply, though they recommend a 650Watt.  So far it using more power than I would have expected, though not close to that 600Watts, but if they recommend that, it probably is for a good reason, so let’s move on.

The card scored an impressive 97% better than all other results on UL’s results.  Moving on to DX12, we have UL’s TimeSpy.

We can see in TimeSpy, the results are better than 81% of all other results.  The overall score was 9,251 and the card heated up to 60°C while consuming 360Watts at max, and averaging at 343 Watts.  While these are in fact non-playable benchmarks, they do give us an understanding on the performance we can expect.  Now that we are done with the synthetic benchmarks, let’s jump into some actual gaming benchmarks.  We will start off with Metro Exodus by our friends over at Deep Silver.

Throughout these benchmarks, I keep the settings the same, changing only the resolutions.  For example, I selected here “Ultra”, and throughout the test I changed the resolution only from 1920 x 1080 to 2560 x 1440 to 3840 x 2160.

Here are the results from all 3 presets below

At 3840×2160, Metro Exodus is unplayable at the Ultra preset.  It came in at 36.37 FPS, consuming an average of 370 Watts heating up the card to 85°C.  At 2560×1440, the game became almost totally playable at 56.54 FPS, taking up 365 Watts on average and keeping the PC toasty at 85°C.  At 1920×1080, the game was buttery smooth at 70.74 fps consuming 364Watts and keeping up the heat at 85°C.

While not 60FPS, it did a decent job at 2K, most might not even notice during play that it was not totally smooth.  To easily hit that 60, you would need to drop the eye candy, as we saw on 1920×1080 but only a little.  We may have a solution to that a little later in this review, a very handy idea Sapphire had on taking care of this for us.

So, let’s jump over and see what Laura has for us in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Again here, I keep the settings the same, changing only the resolutions.

Laura as usual, took things a little more lightly than Metro.

At 3840 x 2160 we could only muster up an average of 41FPS, drawing an impressive 356 Watts on average and toasting up the card to 88°C.  At 2560 x 1440, things were smooth at 80 frames though still a bit toasty at 89°C and consuming on average 373 Watts, that 4.78% more consumed than at 4K but that was a 95.12% improvement.  At 1920 x 1080, the frame rate increased 51.25% at 121 FPS and the temperature dropped 2° at 87°C but still took up 375 Watts on average.

Laura today would look through the ruins of yesterday to discover yesterday’s artifacts, so let’s go back to yesterday and see how things look and run on Assassins Creed Odyssey.

On Assassins Creed Odyssey at 3840 x 2160 we were presented with a slide show at 36 FPS, drawing 366 Watts on average and keeping things warm at 85°C.  At 2560 x 1440, performance rose 53.06% to 62 frames per second.  The card dropped 5° coming down to 80°C and consuming 380 Watts on average, 6.06% more power than at 4K.  At 1920 x 1080, the frame rate increased 21.58% over the 2K benches coming in at 77 FPS at 88°C, consuming 376 Watts on average.

Coming back to today, but going down to the south. Let’s see how Far Cry 5 performs.

Far Cry 5 did a bit better than I thought it would. At 4K, we reached and an average and incredibly playable 55 FPS at a toasty 86°C at 370 Watts on average.  At 2560 x 1440, the card reached 106 frames per second, 63.35% better than at 4K while coming in 3° cooler at 83°C consuming on average 380 Watts.

At 1920 x 1080, this card hit 131 frames per second, 21.097% faster than at 2K and 301 Watts on average hitting 82°C.  These scores impressed me a bit.

Let’s see how Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands performs.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wild Lands as usual didn’t fare so well at 4K, reaching only 34.47 frames per second and hitting 86°C consuming on average 376Watts.  2K did much better improving the frame rate by 53.83% coming in at 59.86 FPS, taking up 375 Watts on average and hitting 85°C.  At 1080P, the frame rate jumped 20.93% coming in at 73.86 cooling down 3° at 82°C and consuming 362 Watts on average.

While at 2K, we came in at 59.86 FPS.  It might have well as been 60FPS, because it was totally smooth.  So this makes Wild Lands playable at 2K and 1080P with all the eye candy on.

While the XT has been touted to be Sapphires fastest at the moment, it is a few dollars more than its little brother the Pulse 5700, but how much faster could it be right?  Well let’s compare the 2 in our next page, Benchmark Comparisons.

Continue on to: Comparing Performance