Overall and Final Verdict
After my previous Sapphire PURE experience, I had high hopes for the Sapphire PURE RX 7900 GRE, and in a majority of ways it didn’t disappoint. The bright white design is the highlight though, Sapphire did a great job putting together a clean design that still does integrate a little bit of flair. They did that with a few accent grooves and the use of grey accent lines. Having the shroud, backplate, and fans all matching with that bright white helps a lot. White can be tough and sometimes it can look good and not hold up but with our first PURE RX 7700 XT on hand to put next to the PURE RX 7900 GRE you can’t tell them apart. Not just because the white hasn’t changed at all but Sapphire’s design is the same between the two. It shows just how overkill that 7000 XT design was as well. Especially with the PURE RX 7900 GRE doing a good job with its cooling performance and leaving plenty of headroom for anyone who wants to overclock the card a little more. The Hellhound 7900 GRE that I previously took a look at does run cooler but the PURE RX 7900 GRE has done a better job on its fan profile to balance cooling and noise performance with it running extremely quiet in those important tests. The RX 7900 GRE as a whole of course performs well at both 1440p and 4k with 1440p performance capable of higher refresh rates and 4k performance that will stay smooth when playing demanding newer games. Of course, with esport-focused titles both resolutions aren’t going to be a problem at high refresh rates as well. That said, the PURE RX 7900 GRE did come in behind the Hellhound in almost all of our performance tests. The Hellhound had a more aggressive overclock and would most likely match up better against Sapphire's flagship line the RX 7900 GRE Nitro+. But the PURE RX 7900 GRE does still have the headroom for an overclock to catch up if needed.
As far as faults go. Aesthetically the main downside for me, which was an issue when I took a look at the PURE previously as well, is the lighting. They have the Sapphire logo up top backlit with red lighting and it glows through most of the white card. I think the red looks good actually but because it is in the center it should run the full length of the card. White lighting would better match the card though if we are changing things. Like with the Hellhound, the GPU Hotspot temps were a touch high, not concerning but I do wish they were a few degrees lower. The 7900 GRE, like with all of the Radeon cards right now, is still struggling in comparison with the competition in ray tracing even with improvements this generation. The same goes for power efficiency. The PURE RX 7900 GRE did help things, being a lot more efficient than the Hellhound but it is still running in the range where the last generation of Nvidia cards were at.
Overall though, the PURE RX 7900 GRE was outperforming the RTX 4070 SUPER cards that were just recently introduced and came close to the performance of the recently replaced RTX 4070 Ti. It is doing that at a lower price. The official MSRP of the RX 7900 GRE is $549 and Sapphire hasn’t gone too far beyond that for the PURE RX 7900 GRE which is selling for $569. This makes this a great buy. Especially in a world where we see a lot of all-white cards like this selling for a big premium, Sapphire hasn’t done that at all. For those looking for great 1440p performance and 4k capabilities the 7900 GRE is looking to be a good value and the Sapphire PURE RX 7900 GRE is THE option for anyone going for a while build.
Live Pricing: HERE
