Sapphire Releases Cheaper, Slower RX 7900 XT Without Vapor Chamber

Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L
Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L (Image credit: JD.com)

Sapphire added a new Radeon RX 7900 XT, one of the best graphics cards, to the company's lineup. The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L arrives with a somewhat revamped exterior and cooling system.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L features a similar design to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X available in the U.S. market. However, there are some significant changes with the former. The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L lacks the Vapor-X moniker, meaning the graphics card doesn't leverage Sapphire's vapor chamber to cool the GPU and memory. Instead, the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L utilizes a standard copper base plate. As a result, it doesn't provide the same thermal performance, but it's cheaper, so Sapphire can reduce the overall product cost.

The different cooling system doesn't affect the dimensions of the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L. It's still a 3.5-slot monster that measures 320 mm long, just like the flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X.

Sapphire has also cut some corners with the RGB design. For example, the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L only has one RGB strip on the shroud, whereas the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X has two. However, it doesn't affect the appeal of the graphics card since the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L still looks very attractive, even without the extra RGB lighting.

The Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L has the same 2,450 MHz boost clock speed as the Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT. The new cut-down variant offers marginally lower performance than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X. The margin isn't that significant, though, since the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L only has a 4% lower boost clock than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X.

The variation in the cooler and clock speeds are the only aspects that separate the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L from Sapphire's other models. The graphics card still depends on three 8-pin PCIe power connectors for external power and offers three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port for connecting displays.

Sapphire's cost-cutting measures allow the vendor to bring the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L's pricing down to the $899 MSRP. Chinese news outlet Expreview spotted the Radeon RX 7900 XT 20G Ultra Platinum L for $898.88 on JD.com. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X sells for $970.23 in China. That's a $71.35 difference, which essentially tells us that it's what the extra RGB strip and vapor chamber cost.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • -Fran-
    It still has the 3 8-pin power adapters, so it can still be OC'ed... I wonder how high it can go with the """""lesser""""" cooler.

    This is also to say/ask/comment, I wonder how much the Vapour chamber matters for these. If Sapphire decided to just not use it on these, I'm almost sure it won't really matter and still run cooler than reference design... Or I'd expect it to.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • gg83
    -Fran- said:
    It still has the 3 8-pin power adapters, so it can still be OC'ed... I wonder how high it can go with the """""lesser""""" cooler.

    This is also to say/ask/comment, I wonder how much the Vapour chamber matters for these. If Sapphire decided to just not use it on these, I'm almost sure it won't really matter and still run cooler than reference design... Or I'd expect it to.

    Regards.
    Hell yeah! I think you are right. Shoot at the price, one could add a waterblock or something.
    Reply
  • dancemonkey82
    I'm confused by this article... you're comparing an XT card to the top of the range nitro+ XTX and stating that the cost difference of ~70 USD is the cost of the vapour chamber and rgb... what about the cost of the extra VRAM and cores???

    Everyone said the XT was poor value compared to the XTX when it was only 100 less, now Sapphire release one with a cheaper cooler for only 70 less and that's a good thing??? I don't understand.
    Reply