On Friday, July 22, Sapphire has announced the Nitro+ RX 480, their latest card in the Nitro+ family.

The Nitro+ RX 480 redefines Polaris technology in what appears to be a robustly built card extra features such as fan shutoff, RGB lighting and warranty fan replacement. According to AnandTech, among the key features of the new Nitro+ RX 480 graphics card are included software fan health monitoring, an improved cooler with a back plate and higher clock speeds. Along with these features, the Nitro+ RX 480 will come with improved power delivery over the reference RX 480 and RGB lighting.

The cooler in Nitro+ RX 480 is improved with two 95mm dual-ball bearing fans. These improvements led to a potentially quieter operation and a longer fan life. Sapphire has also adding a feature called "Fan Check" that allows users to monitor the health of their fans. In case that any issue is detected, users can contact customer support for a replacement fan.

Both the 8GB and 4GB versions of the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 480 card will come with factory overclocks to six percent and about three percent over AMD's reference cards respectively. For gaming enthusiasts who enjoy running on overclocked hardware the Sapphire's graphics card includes a Nitro Boost dual bios switch that allows users to further increases the power limit and boost clock for some extra performance.

The card also comes with an 8-pin power connector that helps feed overcloking endeavors. A new model of Sapphire's own Black Diamond Chokes helps drop coil temperatures by another 15 percent.

Sapphire's Nitro+ Radeon RX 480 comes with a DVI-D port and two DisplayPort connectors. The high-performance graphics card will be listed at $219 for the 4GB model and $269 for the 8GB variant.

According to PCWorld, Sapphire's Nitro+ RX 480 graphics card performs well in the SteamVR benchmark that evaluates the virtual reality performance. The card also performs well in the 3DMark's DX11 Fire Strike benchmark, as well as in the Time Spy benchmark.