SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT OC Review – 14Gbps Memory Without The Hassle

1080P Gaming Performance

The AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT has finally arrived and while the launch didn't go smooth, the end product is a card that should definitely spice up the mainstream graphics segment. The Radeon 5600 XT is positioned not only against NVIDIA's Turing GeForce GTX lineup but also GeForce RTX lineup of graphics cards, with a starting price of $279 US.

The Radeon RX 5600 series uplifts AMD by bringing a modern architecture design and moving away from its GCN design featured on the Polaris GPUs. This allows AMD to bring more streamlined graphics performance in modern workloads and gaming titles. AMD was already ahead of the curve in utilizing new techs such as HBM and smaller process nodes and Navi is no exception. Aside from the new graphics architecture, AMD has also introduced GDDR6 memory and a smaller 7nm process node for their mainstream lineup which is a big update from the 14nm process on Polaris and Vega series cards.ASRock

While the Radeon RX 5600 series cards bring new technologies and features to the segment, the tech itself doesn't come cheap. We can see this in the table illustrating previous mainstream cards and their price segments. In that regard, the RX 5600 XT has definitely seen a markup in the prices of mainstream graphics cards. Also, there was the whole performance upgrade scene where AMD had to change the specifications of the card at the very last minute to compete against the NVIDIA price cuts for their GeForce RTX 2060. We will talk more about this in the review ahead.

AMD Radeon GPU Segment/Tier Prices

Graphics Segment	2015-2016	2016-2017	2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020
Ultra Enthusiast Tier	Radeon R9 Fury X Radeon R9 Fury Radeon R9 Nano	Radeon R9 Fury X Radeon R9 Fury Radeon R9 Nano	Radeon RX Vega 64	Radeon RX Vega 64	Radeon VII
Price	$649 US $549 US $649 US	$649 US $549 US $649 US	$499 US	$499 US	$699 US
Enthusiast Tier	Radeon R9 390X	Radeon R9 390X	Radeon RX Vega 56	Radeon RX Vega 56	Radeon RX 5700 XT
Price	$429 US	$429 US	$399 US	$399 US	$399 US
High-End Tier	Radeon R9 390	Radeon R9 390	N/A	Radeon RX 590	Radeon RX 5700
Price	$329 US	$329 US	N/A	$279 US	$349 US
Mainstream Tier	Radeon R9 380X Radeon R9 380 Radeon R9 370X Radeon R9 370	Radeon RX 480 Radeon RX 470	Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 570	Radeon RX 580 Radeon RX 570	Radeon RX 5600 XT
Price	$229 US $199 US $199 US $179 US	$229 US $179 US	$229 US $169 US	$229 US $169 US	$279 US
Entry Tier	Radeon R7 360	Radeon RX 460	Radeon RX 560	Radeon RX 560	Radeon RX 5500 XT Radeon RX 5500 XT
Price	$109 US	$129 US	$99 US	$99 US	$199 US $169 US

Well, in terms of performance the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB is supposed to be much faster than the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti at about 20% average. This would allow AMD to reach near RTX 2060 performance at a lower price point which is very impressive on paper. To cut down the costs, AMD had to go with 6 GB GDDR6 memory whereas their RX 5500 XT supports up to 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM. It is quite the sacrifice but in the market where the RX 5600 XT is competing, you won't find much aside from 6 GB cards (RTX 2060, GTX 1660 Ti, GTX 1660 SUPER).

Unlike the GeForce RTX cards which had some feature advantage over the Radeon RX 5700 series cards, the GeForce GTX cards don't feature RTX/DLSS support. This puts them just on par with the Radeon RX 5600 series in feature set with the exception of the Turing NVENC encoder which does an exceptional job for gamers on a budget. The Radeon RX 5600 is supported by the latest AMD Adrenaline 2020 Edition bringing features such as Radeon Boost, Integer Scaling, Radeon Image Sharpening, Radeon Anti-Lag, and Freesync support. These are an impressive list of features on their own and something to really consider when comparing AMD's and NVIDIA's budget tier range of cards.

So for this review, I will be taking a look at the SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT OC. This is SAPPHIRE's only available variant of the RX 5600 XT lineup making the choice for a SAPPHIRE card in this segment really easy . The card has an MSRP of $289.99 US which is a modest $20 US premium for the custom graphics card and puts it right in line with some of the lesser cost variants of the RTX 2060.

The AMD Radeon RX 5600 Series Family

The AMD Radeon RX 5600 series lineup is made up of a single desktop and mobility variant. The desktop variant is the Radeon RX 5600 XT which I will be testing today in custom flavor from ASRock while the mobility variant is the upcoming Radeon RX 5600M which should feature similar specs as the Radeon RX 5600 XT but with notebook optimized clock speeds and TDP.

AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB Official Specifications ($279 USD MSRP)

Rocking 36 Compute Units or 2304 stream processors on its Navi 10 XLE GPU, this card offers the same core count as the Radeon RX 5700. The clock speeds for the Radeon RX 5600 XT are tuned at 1130 MHz base, 1375 MHz game, and 1560 MHz boost. This would also lead to much lower TDP, around the 160W range while the Radeon RX 5700 has a TDP of 180W. The card will be able to put out 7.19 TFLOPs of Compute horsepower.

Coming to the memory design, this is where we start seeing major differences between the Radeon RX 5700 and the Radeon RX 5600 XT. While the Radeon RX 5700 rocks an 8 GB GDDR6 memory with a 256-bit wide bus interface, the Radeon RX 5600 XT would rock a 6 GB GDDR6 memory with a 192-bit bus interface. The Radeon RX 5700 also delivers a higher 448 GB/s bandwidth, and while the Radeon RX 5600 XT was initially planned to come with 12 Gbps memory, AIBs have released new 14 Gbps BIOS for their respective cards, offering up to 336 Gbps from the planned 288 Gbps bandwidth. The card will require a single 8-pin power connector & display outputs include a single HDMI 2.0b and triple DisplayPort 1.4 ports.

Do note that these are the reference specifications which are since the cards release not being followed by AIBs. AIBs are instead using custom BIOS's to deliver higher clocks for both GPU and VRAM along with higher TDP limits of up to 160W.

AMD Radeon RX 5000 '7nm Navi RDNA' GPU Lineup Specs:

Graphics Card	Radeon RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary	Radeon RX 5700 XT	Radeon RX 5700	Radeon RX 5600 XT	Radeon RX 5500 XT	Radeon RX 5300
GPU Architecture	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)	7nm Navi (RDNA 1st Gen)
Stream Processors	2560 SPs	2560 SPs	2304 SPs	2304 SPs	1408 SPs	1408 SPs
TMUs / ROPs	160 / 64	160 / 64	144 / 64	144 / 64	88 / 32	88 / 32
Base Clock	1680 MHz	1605 MHz	1465 MHz	1130 MHz	1670 MHz	TBD
Boost Clock	1980 MHz	1905 MHz	1725 MHz	1560 MHz	1845 MHz	1645 MHz
Game Clock	1830 MHz	1755 MHz	1625 MHz	1375 MHz	1717 MHz	1448 MHz
Compute Power	10.14 TFLOPs	9.75 TFLOPs	7.95 TFLOPs	7.19 TFLOPs	5.19 TFLOPs	4.63 TFLOPs
VRAM	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	6 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6 4 GB GDDR6	3 GB GDDR6
Bus Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	96-bit
Bandwidth	448 GB/s	448 GB/s	448 GB/s	288 GB/s	224 GB/s	168 GB/s
TBP	235W	225W	180W	150W	130W	100W
Price	$449 US	$399 US	$349 US	$279 US	$169 US (4 GB) $199 US (8 GB)	$129 US?
Launch	7th July 2019	7th July 2019	7th July 2019	21st January, 2020	7th October 2019	28th August, 2020

Radeon RX 5600 "7nm Navi RDNA GPU" Feature Set and A Word on HW-Enabled Ray Tracing

While we would share a few tidbits of the RDNA architecture itself below, there are also some highlights we should mention for the Navi GPU. According to AMD themselves, the Navi 10 GPU will be 14% faster at the same power and should consume 23% lower power at the same clock speeds as Vega 64 GPU. The AMD Navi GPU has a die size of 251mm2 and delivers 2.3x perf per area over Vega 64. The chip packs 10.3 Billion transistors while the Vega 10 GPU packed 12.5 Billion transistors on almost twice the die space.

Also, when it comes to ray tracing, AMD is indeed developing their own suite around it. According to their vision, current GCN and RDNA architecture will be able to perform ray tracing on shaders which will be used through ProRender for creators and Radeon Rays for developers. In next-gen RDNA which is supposed to launch in 2020 on 7nm+ node, AMD will be bringing hardware-enabled ray tracing with select lighting effects for real-time gaming. AMD will also enable full-scene ray tracing which would be leveraged through cloud computing.

New Compute Unit Design
Great Compute Efficiency For Diverse Workloads

• 2x Instruction Rate (enabled by 2x Scalar Units and 2x Schedulers)
• Single Cycle Issue (enabled by Executing Wwave32 on SIMD32)
• Dual Mode Execution (Wave 32 and Wave 64 Modes Adapt for Workloads)
• Resource Pooling (2 CUs Coordinate as a Work Group Processor)

As you can tell, AMD is changing a lot in terms of architecture with RDNA (Radeon DNA) compared to GCN. There's a new Compute unity design, a more streamlined Graphics pipeline & a multi-level cache hierarchy. Aside from the GPU architecture, support for GDDR6 memory is another major change that brings AMD's graphics cards on par with NVIDIA in utilizing modern memory designs for higher bandwidth.

SAPPHIRE introduced their PULSE lineup a few generations ago as a more value-oriented series so that there was a nice fill in between reference and their premium NITRO+ lineup and this go around I would argue that, except for modest clocks, this PULSE is as premium their previous NITRO+ Cards

The shroud wraps the heatsink effectively and has the usual PULSE colors of black and red.  The lack of glossy black accents in favor of matte black is very welcome.  The red paints itself a nice accent to the branding of the line and the embedded metal grid is a nice touch to dress it up.  The only complaint is that the shroud does have a bit of flex to it.   The backplate extends over the side of the card but has welcome cutouts for the BIOS Switch as well as exhaust and PCIe power connector cutouts. As an added bonus of functionality to the aluminum backplate SAPPHIRE have added thermal pads to help transfer additional heat from the VRM section of the back of the PCB to the backplate for extra cooling.

The sides of the card expose the 5 heat pipes SAPPHIRE stuffed into the densely packed finned heatsink.  Peeking under the heatsink we can see that the VRAM and VRM heat dissipation plate is nicely adorned with fin stacks to help dissipate heat even better since it's independent of the GPU core heatsink.

Thanks to the reduced power requirements for the 5600 XT configuration over the 5700 Series class we see that SAPPHIRE was able to reduce the input to a single 8-pin connector. SAPPHIRE also kept the switchable BIOS to allow for pulling back on the power and deliver a silent mode, which makes little sense when you look at the thermals and power of the default BIOS as it already runs so cool and quiet, might be worth additional testing.

We see a return of SAPPHIRE's removable fan design making for easy cleaning of the heatsink or replacing a dead or dying fan. Under those fans is the same robust and effective cooler they used for the full bore 5700 tier class of

Tearing down to a bare PCB was a very easy task but also well assembled. You can easily spot the reduction of the additional 6-pin connector and missing memory modules along with the reduced power delivery.

 

 

All of the testings were done on our Intel Z370 test bench powered by a 5GHz Core i9-9900K. We ran all tests involving DX11 through 3 paces and averaged the results of all metrics to come to the final numbers. For DX12 and Vulkan we used the latest release of FrameView at the time.  I took the average of average frame rates as well as the 99th percentile results from the run.  I had been using 1% and .1% results but while working on an upcoming review, before starting this one, I had decided to move to a 99th percentile to represent the bottom end of the framerates for a more simple method of charting and reading for our readers.  For those uncertain of what the 99th percentile is representing is easily explained as showing only 1 frame out of 100 is slower than this frame rate. Put another way, 99% of the frames will achieve at least this frame rate. The representation of the 99th percentile is much more consistent in experience than the 1% and .1% lows, and this was ultimately done as a way to deliver better metrics to the audience.

Test System

Components	Z370
CPU	Intel Core i9-9900k @ 5GHz
Memory	32GB Mushkin Redline DDR4 3600
Motherboard	EVGA Z370 Classified K
Storage	Kingston KC2000 1TB NVMe SSD
PSU	Cooler Master V1200 Platinum
Windows Version	Latest verion of windows at the time of testing
Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling	On if supported by GPU and driver.

Graphics Cards Tested

GPU	Architecture	Core Count	Clock Speed	Memory Capacity	Memory Speed
Sapphire RX 5600 XT Pulse	Navi 10	2304	1130/1660/1750	6GB GDDR6	14Gbps
AMD Radeon RX 5700	Navi 10	2304	1465/1625/1725	8GB GDDR6	14Gbps
NVIDIA RTX 2060 FE	Turing	1904	1365/168	6GB GDDR6	14Gbps
AMD RX Vega 64	Vega 10	4096	1247/1546	8GB HBM2	945Mbps
NVIDIA GTX 1080 FE	Pascal	2560	1607/1733	8GB GDDR5X	10Gbps
AMD RX Vega 56	Vega 10	3584	1156/1471	8GB HBM2	800Mbs
NVIDIA GTX 1070 FE	Pascal	1920	1506/1683	8GB GDDR5	8Gbps
MSI RX 580 Armor 8GB	Polaris 20	2304	1366	8GB GDDR5	8Gbps
NVIDIA GTX 1060 FE 6GB	Pascal	1280	1506/1708	6GB GDDR5	8Gbps

Drivers Used

Drivers
Radeon Settings	20.4.2
GeForce	445.87

The SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT OC comes packed with 6GB GDDR6 14 Gbps memory from the factory, none of that flashing nonsense needed on this one. The 2304 Navi based Stream processors boost up to 1750 MHz and in our testing found they stayed right around the 1700-1725 MHz clock range. The RX 5600 XT has been billed as the ultimate 1080p card and the 1080p resolutions is going to be our focus.

Firestrike

Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the regular version of Firestrike which runs at 1080p and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.

Time Spy

Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.

Thermals

Thermals were measured from our open test bench after running the Time Spy graphics test 2 on loop for 30 minutes recording the highest temperatures reported. The room was climate controlled and kept at a constant 22c throughout the testing.

Power Draw

Power draw numbers were taken from the total system power draw by measuring with a Kill-A-Watt. We ran Unigine Valley for 30 minutes and observed the highest sustained load. Something to keep in mind when observing total system power draw is that there are times where a GPU simply being faster and requiring more from the CPU can cause the total system power draw to increase with the like of the Core i9-9900K. That said, the total system power draw is still important as it is how much power it is taking to run the system.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title and because of that, we test this title in DX12.  I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.

Rainbow 6 Siege

Rainbow 6 Siege has maintained a massive following since its launch and it consistently in Steams Top Ten highest player count game.  In a title where the higher the framerate the better in a tactical yet fast-paced competitive landscape is essential, we include this title despite its ludicrously high framerates.  We use the Vulkan Ultra preset with the High Defenition Texture Pack as well and gather our results from the built-in benchmarking tool.

Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn brings the DX11 powered Dunia 2 engine back for another beating in Hope County.  We test this game using the Ultra Preset and follow the built-in benchmarking tool for consistency's sake.

Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics is the latest in the Gears franchise and takes things in a completely different direction with the gameplay design. It is built on a DX12 based Unreal Engine 4 build. We used the Maximum settings allowed but refrained from enabling Variable Rate Shading as all cards ar not capable of supporting this feature.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint

Ghost Recon Breakpoint is powered by the latest iteration of the Anvil Next 2.0 game engine. This is the same engine that was used in Assassin's Creed Odyssey but in Breakpoint has been updated to support the Vulkan API. We performed our tests using the High Preset with the Vulkan API.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019)

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is back and this time on a new engine running DX12 to allow for some sick DXR Ray Traced Shadows, but we're not testing that here since this card isn't designed for that level of rendering. We tested in the 'Fog of War' mission where we tested our RT performance run. At 1080p we set the settings all to High.

Resident Evil 3

The Resident Evil 3 Remake has surpassed the RE2 Remake in visuals and is the latest use of the RE Engine.  While it does have DX12 support the DX11 implementation is far superior and because of that, we will be sticking to DX11 for this title.  We use the cutscene where Jill and Carlos enter the subway car for the first time and a 2 minute capture at that point.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset but since we're testing the 'Ultimate 1080p' card, High it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility

Total War Three Kingdoms

Total War Three Kingdoms is powered by their TW Engine 3 (Total War Engine 3) and in this iteration, they have stuck to a strictly DX11 release. We tested the game using the built-in benchmark using the Dynasty model that represents a battle with many soldiers interacting at once and is more representative of normal gameplay.

With the rise in popularity of Ultrawide resolutions and gamers pulling into that format rather than going up to the next resolution we wanted to take a look at how the SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5600 XT OC performed when gaming at a slightly higher resolution.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider, unlike its predecessor, does a good job putting DX12 to use and results in higher performance than the DX11 counterpart in this title, and because of that, we test this title in DX12.  I do use the second segment of the benchmark run to gather these numbers as it is more indicative of in-game scenarios where the foliage is heavy.

Rainbow 6 Siege

Rainbow 6 Siege has maintained a massive following since its launch and it consistently in Steams Top Ten highest player count game.  In a title where the higher the framerate the better in a tactical yet fast-paced competitive landscape is essential, we include this title despite its ludicrously high framerates.  We use the Vulkan Ultra preset with the High Defenition Texture Pack as well and gather our results from the built-in benchmarking tool.

Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn brings the DX11 powered Dunia 2 engine back for another beating in Hope County.  We test this game using the Ultra Preset and follow the built-in benchmarking tool for consistency's sake.

Gears Tactics

Gears Tactics is the latest in the Gears franchise and takes things in a completely different direction with the gameplay design. It is built on a DX12 based Unreal Engine 4 build. We used the Maximum settings allowed but refrained from enabling Variable Rate Shading as all cards ar not capable of supporting this feature.

Ghost Recon Breakpoint

Ghost Recon Breakpoint is powered by the latest iteration of the Anvil Next 2.0 game engine. This is the same engine that was used in Assassin's Creed Odyssey but in Breakpoint has been updated to support the Vulkan API. We performed our tests using the High Preset with the Vulkan API.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare (2019)

Call of Duty Modern Warfare is back and this time on a new engine running DX12 to allow for some sick DXR Ray Traced Shadows, but we're not testing that here since this card isn't designed for that level of rendering. We tested in the 'Fog of War' mission where we tested our RT performance run. At 1080p we set the settings all to High.

Resident Evil 3

The Resident Evil 3 Remake has surpassed the RE2 Remake in visuals and is the latest use of the RE Engine.  While it does have DX12 support the DX11 implementation is far superior and because of that, we will be sticking to DX11 for this title.  We use the cutscene where Jill and Carlos enter the subway car for the first time and a 2 minute capture at that point.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. This game is rather intensive after the Medium preset but since we're testing the 'Ultimate 1080p' card, High it is. We tested using the built-in benchmark utility

Total War Three Kingdoms

Total War Three Kingdoms is powered by their TW Engine 3 (Total War Engine 3) and in this iteration, they have stuck to a strictly DX11 release. We tested the game using the built-in benchmark using the Dynasty model that represents a battle with many soldiers interacting at once and is more representative of normal gameplay.

Overclocking the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 5600 XT OC was an interesting affair, but not an exciting one. Using Wattman we were able to take the GPU Core slider all the way to the right and in gaming we found the core clock increasing to a stable 1750 MHz only an effective 25-50 MHz uplift. The memory was able to take a slight overclock from 1750 MHz base to 1800 MHz. Unfortunately, we found the increase does not do a whole lot in performance, it also didn't move the needle in terms of power and thermals showing that SAPPHIRE has already done a good job of squeezing the 5600 XT pretty well.

Firestrike

Firestrike is running the DX11 API and is still a good measure of GPU scaling performance, in this test we ran the regular version of Firestrike which runs at 1080p and we recorded the Graphics Score only since the Physics and combined are not pertinent to this review.

Time Spy

Time Spy is running the DX12 API and we used it in the same manner as Firestrike Extreme where we only recorded the Graphics Score as the Physics score is recording the CPU performance and isn't important to the testing we are doing here.

Forza Horizon 4

Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series.  The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games.  We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.

Rainbow 6 Siege

Rainbow 6 Siege has maintained a massive following since its launch and it consistently in Steams Top Ten highest player count game.  In a title where the higher the framerate the better in a tactical yet fast-paced competitive landscape is essential, we include this title despite its ludicrously high framerates.  We use the Ultra preset with the High Defenition Texture Pack as well and gather our results from the built-in benchmarking tool.

Far Cry New Dawn

Far Cry New Dawn brings the DX11 powered Dunia 2 engine back for another beating in Hope County.  We test this game using the Ultra Preset and follow the built-in benchmarking tool for consistency's sake.

Thermals

Thermals were measured from our open test bench after running the Time Spy graphics test 2 on loop for 30 minutes recording the highest temperatures reported. The room was climate controlled and kept at a constant 22c throughout the testing.

Power Draw

Power draw numbers were taken from the total system power draw by measuring with a Kill-A-Watt. We ran Unigine Valley for 30 minutes and observed the highest sustained load. Something to keep in mind when observing total system power draw is that there are times where a GPU simply being faster and requiring more from the CPU can cause the total system power draw to increase with the like of the Core i9-9900K. That said, the total system power draw is still important as it is how much power it is taking to run the system.

AMD marketed the Radeon RX 5600 XT as the "Ultimate 1080p Gaming Card" and announced it at a great price of $279.99 making it a compelling option for existing RX 480 8GB and GTX 1060 6GB owners, who are likely still gaming at 1080p. NVIDIA promptly dropped the price of the GeForce RTX 2060 to $299 and effectively muddied the waters. The reason this was a real issue for AMD is that the initial specifications of the RX 5600 XT had the core clock a bit lower and the memory running at 12 Gbps. This was a problem for them.

In comes the famous flashing je-mess. AMD began working at the last minute to push out VBIOS updates for the vendors pushing the memory to 14 Gbps and the core clocks up a bit. We can see that the move was warranted and a good call, it just came at a bad time and the expense of a lot of hassle for the end-user. It's a shame that the image of the RX 5600 XT had to be tarnished because of its miscalculated launch efforts.

But, this card, the SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5600 XT OC doesn't suffer from any of those woes. It comes and has come from the factory with a default clock speed increase on the core and the memory. It is well built, offers great cooling, power draw, and performance. The SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5600 XT does deliver the strongest raw power when it comes to most traditionally rasterized games and does so with a whisper.

For those wanting to lay down the most frames for the dollar at this price point will do well to consider the SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5600 XT OC model, especially those still on the RX 480/580 and GTX 1060. But, something to keep in mind, is that the first generation Navi cards are not fully DirectX 12 Ultimate compliant. If that is something you care about then you do need to take it into consideration, if not then you'll find little to complain about with the SAPPHIRE Pulse RX 5600 XT OC.

 

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