Last December, AMD launched the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT. At the time, we realized the price difference was so narrow that there was no good reason to get the “lower” card. Since then, online prices have dropped over $100, making the Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse featured today one of the leading choices. The RX 7900 XT ranks as one of the best graphics cards and Sapphire aims to improve the reference card with a larger form factor and better cooling, or at least quieter cooling. .
All core specs are unchanged, so you get the same AMD RDNA 3 GPU architecture and a healthy 20GB of GDDR6 20Gbps memory. That’s 67% more VRAM than Nvidia’s similarly priced RTX 4070 Ti. As you can imagine, the performance changes very little. This is true for most 3rd party graphics cards as factory overclocks are typically 3-5% at best. For the RX 7900 XT Pulse, the factory overclock is 2.1% and the TBP (total board power) increases by 5.1%.
Here’s an overview of the spec tables for GPUs competing with Sapphire cards.
| graphics card | RX 7900 XT Sapphire | RX7900XT | RX7900XTX | RX6950XT | RTX4080 | RTX4070Ti | RTX4070 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| architecture | Navi 31 | Navi 31 | Navi 31 | Navi 21 | AD103 | AD104 | AD104 |
| process technology | TSMC N5+N6 | TSMC N5+N6 | TSMC N5+N6 | TSMC N7 | TSMC 4N | TSMC 4N | TSMC 4N |
| Transistor (billion) | 45.6 + 5x 2.05 | 45.6 + 5x 2.05 | 45.6 + 6x 2.05 | 26.8 | 45.9 | 35.8 | 32 |
| Die size (mm^2) | 300+225 | 300+225 | 300+225 | 519 | 378.6 | 294.5 | 294.5 |
| CU/SM | 84 | 84 | 96 | 80 | 76 | 60 | 46 |
| GPU core (shader) | 5376 | 5376 | 6144 | 5120 | 9728 | 7680 | 5888 |
| Tensor / AI core | 168 | 168 | 192 | N/A | 304 | 240 | 184 |
| Ray Tracing “Core” | 84 | 84 | 96 | 80 | 76 | 60 | 46 |
| Boost clock (MHz) | 2450 | 2400 | 2500 | 2310 | 2505 | 2610 | 2475 |
| VRAM Speed (Gbps) | 20 | 20 | 20 | 18 | 22.4 | twenty one | twenty one |
| VRAM (GB) | 20 | 20 | twenty four | 16 | 16 | 12 | 12 |
| VRAM bus width | 320 | 320 | 384 | 256 | 256 | 192 | 192 |
| L2 / Infinity Cache | 80 | 80 | 96 | 128 | 64 | 48 | 36 |
| ROP | 192 | 192 | 192 | 128 | 112 | 80 | 64 |
| TMU | 336 | 336 | 384 | 320 | 304 | 240 | 184 |
| TFLOPS FP32 (Boost) | 52.7 | 51.6 | 61.4 | 23.7 | 48.7 | 40.1 | 29.1 |
| TFLOPS FP16 (FP8) | 105.4 | 103.2 | 122.8 | 47.4 | 390 (780) | 321 (641) | 233 (466) |
| Bandwidth (GBps) | 800 | 800 | 960 | 576 | 717 | 504 | 504 |
| TBP/TGP (Watts) | 331 | 315 | 355 | 335 | 320 | 285 | 200 |
| release date | December 2022 | December 2022 | December 2022 | May 2022 | November 2022 | January 2023 | April 2023 |
| Release price | $899 | $899 | $999 | $1,099 | $1,199 | $799 | $599 |
| online price | 779.99 | 779.99 | 979.99 | 629.99 | 1107.99 | 789.99 | 584.99 |
We already mentioned that the only difference between the core specs of the Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse and the reference 7900 XT is the GPU boost clock and TBP/TGP. However, these are paper specifications and there are other differences such as card design and aesthetics.
At the moment, Sapphire is one of the three cheapest RX 7900 XT cards available, with the others XFX RX 7900 XT Use AMD’s reference designs (MBA or “Made By AMD” cards), and ASRock RX 7900 XT Phantom Gaming OC. All priced at $779.99, but you’ll need an instant rebate at Newegg to purchase the Sapphire Card and ASRock Card.
Several other 7900 XT models are available for around $800, but the most expensive option at the moment is likely to be around the same price as the RX 7900 XTX (around $950).unless you TRUE If you love the beauty of these premium cards, I’d recommend stepping up to the faster AMD XTX GPUs rather than paying the extra $200, but that’s ultimately a personal choice. .
Looking at the main competitors, the Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti only has 12GB of VRAM, but it also has a lower TGP and typical features like DLSS, frame generation, tensor cores and improved ray tracing hardware. It comes with typical Nvidia additions. We’ll get into the performance results in a moment, but with our current test suite, this is a common story. Overall native resolution performance is similar, with AMD leading in rasterization and Nvidia leading in ray tracing.
Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse
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Sapphire’s Pulse card represents the design of the company’s base model and lacks additional features such as RGB lighting. It comes with a support bracket for the card, but this kind of bracket tends to be much more difficult to use than the “kickstand” that comes with other GPUs. Meanwhile, the support bracket is screwed to the case, so it stays in place even if you move your PC from room to room.
The Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse is a relatively large card measuring 313x134x53 mm. This is a triple slot card after all. Even though it’s technically a “2.7 slot” design, you can’t really put anything in the third overlapping slot. It also weighs 1417g, which isn’t too bad considering the dimensions. For comparison, the reference AMD 7900 XT card has dimensions of 276x113x51.5 mm and weighs 1490 g.
AMD’s cards are fairly compact, but they tend to affect cooling performance and noise levels, which is probably the biggest attraction of Sapphire’s Pulse models. More on temperature and noise later in the review.
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As you would expect from a 300W+ graphics card, it has three fans to match its large size. Sapphire’s latest design uses an “Angular Velocity Blade” fan, which is believed to move more air and last longer than previous Sapphire designs. Sapphire says the outer rim improves downward air pressure by up to 44% and increases airflow by 19%. The fan diameter is also 95mm compared to AMD’s reference design which uses a 78mm fan.
The radiator has 6 heatpipes to draw heat away from the GPU core and VRAM, again representing a typical design for graphics cards with a TBP rating of 300W and above. The only real improvement would be to opt for a full vapor chamber instead of heat pipes. This is what Made By AMD cards use.
Video connectivity consists of dual HDMI 2.1 ports and dual DisplayPort 2.1 UHBR13.5 ports. HDMI ports have a peak bandwidth of 48 Gbps, while DP2.1 ports offer up to 54 Gbps of bandwidth. AMD’s latest RDNA 3 GPU’s support for uncompressed resolutions reaches 4K and 229 Hz at DP2.1, while DSC (Display Stream Compression) can deliver ‘visually lossless’ 4K at up to 480 Hz. However, keep in mind that the fastest option at the moment is the 240Hz model, which is far from achieving a 4K display at 480Hz.
