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

SAPPHIRE Pulse Radeon RX 5600 XT Overclocking Results

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.

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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.

Pros

• No BIOS updates required
• 14 Gbps memory out of the box
• Only $10 US Premium over RX 5600 XT MSRP ($289.99 US)
• Huge performance uplift versus Polaris cards
• Excellent Performance Per Watt
• Spectacular thermal performance
• Great factory overclock out of the box
• Aluminum metal backplate
• PCI-e Gen 4.0 Support

Cons

• Not fully DX12 Ultimate compliant
• Limited additional OC potential
• No dedicated hardware for Ray Tracing

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