This card is the last puzzle piece for me. Why? Well, I’ve tried every other model coming from the Pulse series based on the AMD’s current-gen Navi architecture, feel free to check them out, I will put a link, so it finally came time for me to check out the strongest of them all – the Sapphire RX 5700 XT Pulse model.
Since all of them look alike, as they should since they’re coming from same Sapphire’s Pulse sub-brand, especially if you compare it with so to speak regular RX 5700 Pulse model, I won’t talk about its design too much as I basically covered it multiple times by now, all I can see that I’m a bit iffy on the top shroud design and build quality wise, feels a bit too plasticky, well the other side, the metal back-plate that is, looks much better. Everything else is more or less the same, we have the red glowing non-RGB LED Sapphire logo on the side, even the power connector configuration is the same as on its weaker brother, one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCI-express power connector. The same goes for the video output configuration with one HDMI and three DisplayPorts.
Sapphire RX 5700 XT Pulse – mid-range offer of the top
For its cooler configuration, Sapphire just slapped onto this RX 5700 XT Pulse basically the same cooler setup found on their RX 5700 Pulse model, so a nice big single chunk of the aluminum heatsink, but with a slight upgrade, this one has five heatpipes instead of three on the RX 5700 model. Although its TDP is just slightly higher compared to it, as you’ll see later on, despite having a more beefed up cooler the RX 5700 XT version brings in the higher temperature of its GPU and surrounding components, before all as the GPU voltage is around 0,2V higher, with the fan speed being mostly around 1400 to 1500 RPM, which was still very quiet, especially comparing it to other RX 5700 XT’s out there.
Speaking of that, be sure to check to subscribe because I’m planning to do something with two RX 5700 XT, I’m not going to reveal it yet, but it’s going to be interesting, I’ll give you a hint – I’m going to revisit one of my old videos.
Back to the cooler, the two 95 mm fans also carry 0 RPM 0 dB fan stop technology when the card is idling where in that passive state the GPU temperature hangs below 50°C, while as I said when they’re spinning under load, they don’t make a lot of noise as they mostly spin at around 1500 RPM. Here’s a short sound clip of the fans with the card being under full load, while also showing the sound meter for measurement comparison.
Where does the RX 5700 XT Pulse?
Before I jump over to the benchmarking results, let’s first take a look at some of my gameplay footage with these two series, I will put them side by side, you can see the live performance figures of each in the left top corner of their screen. You can find my setup which I used here to test them in the description box down below, and if you have any questions about them, free feel to leave them in the comment section down below and I will try to help you out!
As with every other aftermarket RX 5700 XT, the Sapphire RX 5700 XT Pulse is also factory overclocked, but not to a great extent, the boost clock is rated at 1925 MHz, while ASRock’s Taichi model which I recently checked out, I’ll put a link to it in the right top corner of this video, had a boost clock of 100 MHz than that, it’s one of the most out of the box overclocked model out there. Altogether in practice, I saw it roaming mostly just a bit below that figure, around 1900 MHz.
Results-wise, this put her somewhere in the middle of the offering compared to my other graphics cards reviews of this series, but nothing that can not be fixed with a little bit of manual overclocking, but before that, let me first leave you to check out these stock numbers. Again, nothing that will sweep you of your feet, as we’ve all probably seen this multiple times, this series is generally speaking ideal for 1440p gaming or 1080p in case of high-refresh rate monitors and more optimized games.
So, what about its overclocking potential? Well, on the memory side of things, it was pretty usual, just touching basis with the 1,9 GHz mark, which is the software limit anyway, while for the GPU, well, with using these settings here, it resulted in it boosting to just a bit below 2,1 GHz mark in a best-case scenario, which is a pretty good result. With that, I got around 5% of a performance boost, which is pretty decent compared to other models out there, among better ones for sure. If you want to go a bit conservative and even lower down the temperatures some more, feel free to use this other combination of settings for overclocking and undervolting, it will give you some pretty well-balanced results, while still delivering some extra performance
Speaking of the temperature, I’ve already mentioned the idle one, while under gaming and synthetic benchmarks I saw it being just shy of 70°C for the GPU and 90°C for the junction, a bit above 70°C for the VRM’s and 80°C for the video memory. In that case, the GPU was pulling around 200 W according to the GPUz readout, while from the wall that was mostly around 230W under Furmark’s GPU only Stress test and when you subtract the system idle figure from the total system power consumption in that case.
All in all, Sapphire’s RX 5700 XT Pulse series seems like a well-balanced choice that has a lot of additional potentials to be pushed a bit more performance-wise with some overclocking, while also having one of the more sensible price tags when comes to aftermarket RX 5700 XT models, so my guess is that it will find its way to a lot of users shortlist if it’s not already in their configurations as now some time has passed since this series launched.
That’s it for this time from me, thank you for watching, please take a second to toss me a thumbs up if you enjoyed my content, that really helps a lot, and if you like what you saw feel free to subscribe and if you already are, be sure to press that notification bell down below so you don’t miss out on a new video until then, catch you later guys.
That’s it for this time, thanks for checking out my Sapphire RX 5700 XT Pulse Super review and if you have any question feel free to hit me in the comments section of my YouTube video listed above, you can contact me via my social media channels!
