Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X Sports Three 8-Pin Power Plugs, Vapor Chamber Cooling

AMD exclusive graphics card partner Sapphire has provided a clear tease of a new AMD Radeon RX 7000 series design’s PCB. In a video shared on its Twitter account on Thursday, Sapphire announced “Vapor-X is back.” The firm’s reanimation of a product line which was only outgunned by its Toxic cards is welcome after nearly 10 years of absence. However, it must be noted that vapor chamber cooling is much more common amongst rivals now, so highlighting it in a product name isn’t quite as high-tech in 2022. Sapphire isn’t the first to provide RDNA 3 teases, rival PowerColor has also been teasing some tantalizing upcoming Radeon RX 7900 XT(X) graphics card designs.
We have taken some stills from the Sapphire teaser video for you to check out above and below. A few key details are revealed by the clip. Firstly, we can see the sizable copper vapor chamber is affixed on the PCB giving full coverage to the GPU and surrounding memory chips. This will provide good contact with the cooling assembly, which we assume will be a triple fan model with aluminum fins and heatpipes. There should be thermal pads added to other areas of the cooling assembly to make contact with the card’s VRMs, too.
Secondly, we can see that the Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX Vapor-X design features triple 8-pin power connectors towards the rear upper edge of the PCB. From a glimpse at the front of the PCB, which meets with the bracket, it looks like there are four outputs; two HDMI 2.1 outs and two DP 2.1 outs. The reference design also features a USB Type-C output, but perhaps that was just out of the camera shot here.
With the extra power input (one extra 8-pin compared to reference), and what is expected to be an excellent cooler, Sapphire’s upcoming Radeon RX 7900 XTX (and RX 7900 XT?) Vapor-X edition is likely to be able to convincingly outpace reference and other standard designs. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating, so we sadly will have to wait for official release to gauge the real-world benefits of premium cooling on AMD’s flagship RDNA 3 GPUs.
While you wait until Tuesday, December 13th for the first Radeon RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT cards to become available, it is well worth a look back at our AMD Radeon RX 7000 launch coverage and RDNA 3 deep dive articles. Please remember, though, that AMD’s new flagship will be targeting NVIDIA RTX 4080 performance, not the territory inhabited by the RTX 4090.