Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT evaluation: No-fuss efficiency

At a look

Expert’s Rating

Pros

• Quieter than recommendation design
• Excellent 1440 p and 4K video gaming efficiency
• Dual HDMI outputs to opt for double DisplayPorts
• Simple, appealing style
• 20 GB of GDDR6 memory
• Better worth than competing RTX 4070 Ti

Cons

• 7900 XT isn’t a fantastic worth compared to last-gen offerings still readily available
• Larger than referral 7900 XT
• Ray tracing efficiency is great however lags far behind Nvidia GPUs
• No bonus like RGB, dual-BIOS switches, and so on

Our Verdict

The Sapphire Pulse costs the very same or less than referral Radeon RX 7900 XT designs while providing remarkable acoustic outcomes and a better setup of ports. It’s bigger than the referral card, however more enjoyable to have in your system.

Best Prices Today: Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT

While lovers drool over the ultra-premium, no-compromises experience used by Sapphire’s elegant Nitro+ graphics cards, the business performs for PC players on a spending plan, too. Instead of filling up on awesome however cost-adding functions like RGB and dual-BIOS switches, Sapphire’s Pulse series of GPUs rather concentrates on providing an excellent, uncomplicated video gaming experience without breaking the bank.

Case in point: The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT we’re evaluating today. Seemingly priced at the exact same $899 as AMD’s recommendation 7900 XT, we’ve seen it choosing as low as $849 on the streets. In exchange for that lower rate, the Pulse provides a moderate factory overclock, quieter fan sound, and a more engaging display screen output setup than the stock design– plus, through April 28, you can get a complimentary copy of Sony’s The Last Of United States Part I for PC if you purchase the card from a licensed seller.

That’s quite rad. Let’s dig in.

Note: See our roundup of the finest GPUs for video gaming to find out about completing items, what to search for in a GPU, and purchasing suggestions.

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT functions, specifications, and style

The Sapphire Pulse is constructed utilizing the very same fundamental setup as the referral GPU. You can wade much deeper into that in our initial Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT evaluation, however in a nutshell, this is a fantastic graphics card for 1440 p and 4K/60 video gaming alike, filled with 20 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, AMD’s incredible Infinity Cache innovation, AV1 encoding, DisplayPort 2.1 (unlike Nvidia), and assistance for game-enhancing Radeon functions like Smart Access Memory, Radeon Super Resolution, and FSR 2 And the brand-new RDNA 3 graphics architecture lastly made Radeon helpful for content developers!

Sapphire

Sapphire didn’t alter much under the hood. The Pulse 7900 XT provides a moderate overclock, striking 2,075 MHz instead of 2,025 MHz, however that does not almost alter efficiency aside from drinking a bit more power (though the Pulse still just needs a set of basic 8-pin power adapters to run).

Brad Chacos/IDG

The most amazing technical tweak might be its port setup. While the referral design consists of double DisplayPort 2.1 connections, an HDMI 2.1 a port, and USB-C, the Sapphire Pulse 7900 XT rather dumps the USB-C port for a 2nd HDMI offering. That’s helpful for screen versatility and VR headset users alike. It’s likewise an uncommon discover nowadays.

But Sapphire revamped things over the hood totally, to welcome result.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT’s customized cooling style operates in numerous elements and functions created to enhance dependability and thermals. Those consist of a metal backplate filled with thermal pads to assist dissipate heat, a trio of “angular speed fan blades” with two-ball bearings that Sapphire declares “lead to 44% more down atmospheric pressure and approximately 19% more air flow” compared to previous generations, and smart fan control coupled with ultra-accurate rotation speed for those blades. Include everything up and the Pulse provides a happily peaceful video gaming experience.

Sapphire likewise enhanced the Pulse 7900 XT with beefed-up circuitry and internal parts, such as “ultra-high efficiency conductive polymer aluminum capacitors” to make it possible for a 20- stage power shipment, a high-density PCB with copper blended in, and fuse defense to protect your valuable GPU if a part offers up the ghost. Sapphire even tosses an assistance bracket into package to fight prospective GPU droop while this monster hides in your PC case.

Brad Chacos/IDG

You may require it. While the Sapphire Pulse’s 2.7-slot width looks downright affordable beside the 3- and 4-slot leviathans so typical today, it’s especially thicker than the svelte 2-slot AMD recommendation Radeon RX 7900 XT. The additional heft and sufficient cooling hardware make the Pulse run visibly quieter than the recommendation card.

What you will not discover with the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT: bonus. Look somewhere else if you’re a lover that desires expensive functions like RGB, GPU fan headers, and dual-BIOS switches. While definitely welcome, functions like those include considerable additional expense, and the Pulse line is laser-focused on strong, uncomplicated efficiency that beats what you generally get in budget-priced variations of a GPU. If you desire enthusiast-focused additionals, highly think about Sapphire’s premium Nitro+ line rather. It’s constantly great however specifically remarkable this generation.

Enough talk. Let’s go into efficiency.

Our test system

We evaluate graphics cards on an AMD Ryzen 5900 X PC utilized specifically for benchmarking GPUs. We now check with PCIe Resizable BAR (likewise called Smart Access Memory on Ryzen systems) active, as a lot of contemporary video gaming PCs launched in the last 4 years support the performance-boosting function, either natively or through a motherboard firmware upgrade. Nvidia likewise advises turning on the optional “Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling” alternative in Windows to let the RTX 40- series stretch its legs to the maximum, so we’ve made that modify. The majority of the hardware was supplied by the producers, however we acquired the storage ourselves.

• AMD Ryzen 5900 X, stock settings
• AMD Wraith Max cooler
• MSI Godlike X570 motherboard
• 32 GB G.Skill Trident Z Neo DDR4 3800 memory, XMP active
• Corsair HX1500 i power supply(and optional $2012 VHPWR 600 cable television for Nvidia GPUs)
• 1TB SK Hynix Gold S31 SSD x2

We normally test a range of video games covering different engines, categories, supplier sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 9, 11, DX12, and Vulkan), to attempt to represent a complete variety of efficiency capacity. Given that the 7900 XT’s efficiency is currently well developed and the Sapphire Pulse does not included an intense overclock, we spot-checked a smaller sized handful of titles covering those different APIs to reveal the efficiency distinctions in between the Pulse and the recommendation card.

Spoiler alert: They’re minimal. Have a look at our initial Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT evaluation for a much deeper set of criteria and basic AMD RDNA 3 analysis if you’re interested. We’ll exist these outcomes without much commentary.

Each video game is checked utilizing its in-game standard, peace of mind examined by Nvidia’s FrameView tool, at the greatest possible graphics presets unless otherwise kept in mind, with VSync, frame rate caps, real-time ray tracing or DLSS results, and FreeSync/G-Sync handicapped, together with any other vendor-specific innovations like FidelityFX tools or Nvidia Reflex. We’ve likewise made it possible for temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) when offered.

We run each standard a minimum of 3 times and list the typical outcome for each test. Beyond esports, we’ve restricted our standards to 4K and 1440 p resolutions, as those are the natural suitable for these juggernaut GPUs.

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT video gaming efficiency

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Brad Chacos/IDG

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT power and thermals

Here’s where the essential distinctions in between the AMD referral style and the Sapphire Pulse will really shine. AMD created the recommendation Radeon RX 7900 XT to suit a small two-slot style; Sapphire crafted the Pulse for much better acoustic efficiency.

We evaluate power draw by looping the F1 22 standard at 4K for about 20 minutes after we’ve benchmarked whatever else (to heat up the GPU) and keeping in mind the greatest reading on our Watts Up Pro meter, which determines the power usage of our whole test system. The preliminary part of the race, where all contending cars and trucks are onscreen all at once, tends to be the most requiring part.

This isn’t a worst-case test; this is a GPU-bound video game performing at a GPU-bound resolution to assess efficiency when the graphics card is sweating hard. If you’re playing a video game that likewise hammers the CPU, you might see greater total system power draws. Consider yourself cautioned.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The Sapphire Pulse provides mostly the exact same efficiency as the referral 7900 XT, so it’s no surprise to see it draw approximately comparable levels of power. All of these high-end GPUs are reasonably starved. Power needs power.

We evaluate thermals by leaving GPU-Z open throughout the F1 22 power-draw test, keeping in mind the greatest optimum temperature level at the end.

Brad Chacos/IDG

The Sapphire Pulse provides somewhat greater thermals than the referral 7900 XT, however temperature levels stay exceptional, and the factor those thermals are greater is due to the fact that the Pulse’s additional heatsink bulk and slower-spinning angular speed fans run much quieter than the recommendation card.

Should you purchase the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT?

When AMD introduced its brand-new RNDA 3-powered Radeon 7000- series, the $899 Radeon RX 7900 XT didn’t offer engaging adequate worth to advise. You ‘d be much better off costs another $100 and getting the remarkable Radeon RX 7900 XTX rather.

Now that we’re beginning to see discount rates (and a remarkable Last of United States PC video game package) drip in, the Radeon RX 7900 XT shines a bit brighter. We’ve seen the Sapphire Pulse offered as low as $849, and other designs for even less. That pits the 7900 XT straight versus custom-made GeForce RTX 4070 Ti designs, and the Radeon card wins that fight each time with its faster 1440 p/4K efficiency and adequate 20 GB of memory. Nvidia wins on ray tracing and content development, however for pure video gaming, the Radeon RX 7900 XT provides far more value.

Brad Chacos/IDG

And if you’re trying to find a strong, simple Radeon RX 7900 XT that will not spend a lot, highly think about the Sapphire Pulse. The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT provides a quickly, pixel-packed video gaming experience at visibly lower sound levels than the referral 7900 XT– precisely what Sapphire set out to do. Buying Sapphire’s rock-solid custom-made cooling for the exact same or less than a referral design makes it a no-brainer. It’s a bit thicker in your case, sure, and you will not get additional functions like RGB or dual-BIOS switches, however the Sapphire Pulse is effective, happily peaceful, and features a welcome dual-HDMI port setup that you will not discover on many other graphics cards.

With modern-day graphics cards costing a lot, nevertheless, you ought to have the ability to get a strong high refresh-rate 1440 p and 4K/60 video gaming for even less with a last-gen GPU like the Radeon RX 6800 XT, which can be discovered for as low as $579 nowadays. It’s certainly slower than AMD’s newest and biggest offerings however look around if you can— while the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7900 XT uses engaging worth versus its direct contemporary rivals, in today’s GPU market, last-gen is where you’ll discover the very best offers.