Overall and Final Verdict
Even though I haven’t had the chance to check out Sapphire's design for the 5000 series cards, the 6700XT Nitro+ doesn’t skip a beat. The styling is completely new when compared to the last Sapphire card that came into the office, but even with everything being new you can see where Sapphire focuses. Their past cards took cooling seriously and the 6700XT Nitro+ does as well. The triple-fan design does a great job of mixing noise and cooling performance. When compared with the other 6700XT’s that I’ve had the chance to check out. The XFX had a little more overall cooling performance at 100% fan speed, but the 6700XT Nitro+ is very close while being much quieter. I also really dig the look that Sapphire had gone with. Especially with the backplate and their use of RGB to accent it.
The performance of the 6700XT Nitro+ isn’t a surprise at all of course. It runs right with the other 6700XT’s. That means amazing 1080p performance and 1440p performance that can often take advantage of high refresh rate 1440p monitors that have come down in price over the last few years. Overall it runs with the RTX 3060 Ti on the Nvidia side, but in some of the games I test with it came in closer to the RTX 3070.
As for faults, the biggest issue with the card itself is its overall size. But that isn’t exclusive to the 6700XT Nitro+ at this point. All three of the 6700XT’s I’ve taken a look at were huge. The SFF fan that I am wishes that wasn’t the case, but it’s the direction cards are going right now. Beyond that, the only nitpick I had was that I wouldn’t mind seeing the PCI bracket being black to match the card a little better and to match with most cases better when installed.
Now it wouldn’t be right to write about any card without acknowledging the major availability issues that have been a problem for over a year now. This isn’t Sapphire's fault at all, but the availability issues and with it the crazy pricing are the biggest current downside for this and every card right now. I don’t have the price being a downside on the 6700XT Nitro+ in our pro’s and con’s below because Sapphire’s original MSRP of $579 wasn’t too bad, especially when the MSI that I took a look at was over $200 more. Finding the 6700XT Nitro+ at the MSRP of course may be nearly impossible. But as things settle back down the Sapphire 6700XT Nitro+ looks to be a great card to consider.
Live Pricing: HERE
