Sapphire launches Radeon R9 285 ITX Compact Edition graphics card

Sapphire will launch a compact video card based on AMD’s new Radeon R9 285 GPU. The Radeon R9 285 ITX Compact Edition offers a dual-bios as a feature. Sapphire also plans to release a slightly overclocked version.

The R9 285 ITX Compact Edition is approximately 17cm long and 11cm high, and takes up two PCI-e slots. This means that the video card also fits in smaller housings. The Radeon R9 285 GPU, which was officially announced by AMD last week, is cooled by a 100mm fan. To provide the video card with sufficient energy, two PCI-e connectors with six pins each are mounted, Techpowerup reports.

In addition to compact dimensions, Sapphire has provided the video card with a dualbios option as a distinguishing feature. The user can switch between a UEFI-compatible bios, which supports the gop protocol, and an ‘old-fashioned’ video bios.

Sapphire clocked the GPU on the video card at 918MHz, while the gddr5 memory runs at an effective speed of 5.5GHz. The manufacturer would also like to release an overclocked version, in which the GPU has been increased by a modest 10MHz to 928MHz. Nothing is known yet about the prices and the exact availability of the R9 285 ITX Compact Edition, but the two versions are expected to come on the market from next month.