Sapphire R9 380 Nitro 4GB Graphics Card Review

Sapphire has long been known as one of AMD’s best GPU partners, making some very incredible cards in the past like the Toxic 290X, which was one of the best cards available.

Today we have Sapphire’s R9 380 Nitro 4GB card, a value oriented card using a value oriented GPU, seems like a nice match lets see how well it stacks up!

PACKAGING, PRICING AND SPECIFICATIONS

Taking a look at the front of the packaging, we can see this card features 4GB of GDDR5 video memory. It also features Saphires Dual-X cooling solution, as well as a factory overclock of 985 MHz on the Core Clock and 1450MHz on the Memory, this is up from the reference speeds of 970MHz and 1375MHz.  It also supports AMD’s FreeSync technology, and is marketed toward 1440p gaming, both of which we’ll go over a bit later. You will also notice that the packaging has damage, unfortunately from being shipped.

Opening the box up we see the card backed in a thick foam insert keeping the card safe during shipping and this type of packaging seems better than the plastic or cardboard used by most other vendors.

The card is currently retailing at Amazon for $237 although its MSRP should be at $220, this is probably due to low stock at this time.

DESIGN AND COOLING

Sapphire created a new branding called Nitro for their cards and one of the big differences with it from other products in their lineup is there will only be a single Nitro card for each GPU series (i.e., only one Nitro 380 and only one Nitro 390 etc), which is a refreshing change of pace from other brands and. Let’s take a look at some of the other features here!

Sapphire went with dual 100mm fans on their Dual-X cooler and went with a black and grey theme on the shroud, this is far different from what they used before in the Toxic cards and is a welcome change of pace.

Looking to the bottom of the card, we see 4 thick copper heat pipes that extend the length of the PCB. It’s clear that Sapphire did not cut any corners.

Taking a closer look at the card we can see the capacitors. Sapphire went with capacitors rated for 16K hours and went with black diamond chokes, which the manufacturer claims will run 10% cooler and use 25% less power than standard chokes.