Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 570 4GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX570 is amazingly just £207, which represents incredible value for money for anyone looking for a competent gaming card without spending a small fortune. The performance isn’t a million miles away from that of the RX580, which is around £275. It goes knock for knock with the GTX 1060 in terms of performance too, and they’re currently anywhere from £230-280!

Overview

Sapphire has long been one of my favourite manufacturers when it comes to AMD graphics cards. They usually have some of the best overclocks, and the best aftermarket coolers, and I’m happy to report that the same holds true for their RX570. While the card is based on older hardware, they’ve made sweeping changes to the rest of the card to give it a new lease of life.

The power delivery is improved, allowing the card to clock much higher to deliver faster performance than the old RX470. This is supported perfectly by one of their best coolers to date, which is so robust it can comfortably run the card in passive cooling mode until the card hits around 60c, which means it’s literally silent for most of the day. Even when gaming and the fans kick in, it’s still wonderfully quiet and manages to stay cool. This extra cooling meant we could even squeeze a little more performance by overclocking the card even further, and even then it was still staying under 70c.

The design of the card is superb too, not only in terms of its durable build quality, but its aesthetics are spot on too. The oversized cooler doesn’t just perform great, it also looks the part too. I’m very happy to see such a premium quality backplate installed too, especially given the card is still priced so competitively.

In terms of performance, it’s certainly faster than the older RX470, and it’s not too far behind the RX580 too, which is exactly what we expected. This also makes it pretty competitive against the Nvidia GTX 1060, while also being a little bit cheaper too. It did falter a little in some tests, but this seems to be an issue with Nvidia tuned games and immature drivers, so we expect it will improve. The inclusion of support for HDR video output, Radeon Chill, FreeSync 2 and a few other cool features all add value for money. While it wouldn’t be a big upgrade for those who own the RX470, those who’ve put off upgrading for over two years are going to see some big improvements at a very competitive price.

Pros

• Exceptional build quality
• One of the best coolers on the market
• Quick release fans
• Silent fan mode
• Still a little bit of overclocking headroom available
• Competitive price
• Ideal for 1080p gaming at maximum settings
• Trusted brand name
• FreeSync 2, Chill, HDR and ReLive support

Cons

• None

Neutral

• Not a big performance leap from the RX470, but still a robust replacement for that card at the same price point

“If you’re looking to upgrade your ageing graphics card on a budget, but still want to play the latest games with the quality slider all the way up, the Sapphire Nitro+ RX570 is a great card with a nicely upgraded feature set. Highly recommended!”