Sapphire RX 5500 XT Pulse 4GB Review

How Much Does It Cost?

In the modern world, you would think we would know the price of this product before it launched today. At least, you think someone would know, but they amazingly it’s still not 100% confirmed. However, it seems the 4GB model will be $169.99 + Tax and shipping in the US and £159.99 in the UK. Furthermore, the 8GB model will be $199.99 + tax and shipping, or £179.99 in the UK. How that will change in the coming weeks as they get into a price battle with Nvidia remains to be seen. I’ll update the pricing as soon as we have more information and links to retailers.

Overview

Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first, as I’ve always been a fan of Sapphire and often regard them as the best AMD cards money can buy. They often come with a little bit of a price premium for that, but for the sake of a great cooler, it’s often worth it. This was made clear when the Pulse turned out to be the quietest graphics card I’ve ever tasted, and that’s certainly impressive.

The fans are enormous, so big that they barely fit within the cards shroud. That means big airflow at low RPM, and great cooling performance overall. It’s also a fairly attractive card too, just a clean black shroud design and no RGB messing about. It still looks like the high-end Sapphire cards, but a bit more back to basics, which is fair enough for a budget card.

Gaming Performance

The performance was honestly pretty great here, at least for this price range. In Tomb Raider, it hit an easy 70 FPS putting it just ahead of the RX580 and further ahead of the GTX 1650 Super. For 1080p gaming, it’s going to make easy work of any modern game using high settings, and even ultra settings in a few if you desire.

For 1440p gamers, it did give playable framerates at high settings, but dropping to medium would be more ideal. It’s easily competitive with the current budget GTX 16xx cards of a similar price though. Sure, AMD comes out on top in some games, Nvidia in others, but that’s pretty much to be expected.

For 4K gaming, it’s a no go, but I mean, this is a budget card so let’s be realistic. However, you do get other benefits now thanks to the latest AMD Adrenalin 2020 Software. Check that out here.

Should I Buy One?

It all comes down to price, and the margins are already pretty slim here. Nvidia has some competitive cards at this price range and now, so does AMD. There’s certainly nothing wrong with the Sapphire Pulse, but £10, either way, can be a game-changer. For 1080p gaming, it’s perfect for the job, and being the quietest GPU we’ve ever tested is certainly worthy of merit too.