Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 assessment: Cool, quiet, and compelling

Worth When Reviewed

$269

Finest Costs At this time: Pulse Radeon RX 7600

$269.99

The brand new $269 Radeon RX 7600 graphics card hits the streets right now, and as we lined in-depth in our assessment of AMD’s reference mannequin, it’s a breath of contemporary air. After years of exorbitant GPU costs and stagnant new “upgrades,” the Radeon RX 7600 delivers a real generational enchancment for a lower cost than its predecessor—a profitable mixture. It provides quick, power-efficient 1080p gaming at an inexpensive worth level. Enter Sapphire’s Pulse Radeon RX 7600.

We’ve cherished Sapphire’s Pulse line since its introduction due to its laser-focus on glorious, cool, no-frills gaming for an inexpensive worth, whatever the GPU inside. That looks like an ideal mixture with AMD’s new glorious, inexpensive GPU, no?

It’s. After placing the cardboard by way of its paces, we’re completely satisfied to report that the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 is every little thing you’ll need from the RX 7600 lineup. It’s simply large enough to hold a reliable cooling answer with out being obtrusive, all for the baseline $269 MSRP worth.

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 specs and options

We’ve included AMD’s breakdown of the Radeon RX 7600’s technical specs beneath. Sapphire caught principally to reference specs with the Pulse, apart from providing a slight manufacturing facility overclock. The Pulse RX 7600 is rated for a mean sport clock velocity of two,356MHz, in comparison with the reference 2,250MHz.

AMD

We lined the Radeon RX 7600’s crucial technical bits in our reference card assessment and received’t rehash that right here. Along with the uncooked improve to the brand new 6nm RDNA 3 structure (which brings AV1 encoding, larger GPU and reminiscence clock speeds, new AI accelerators, and second-gen RT accelerators), AMD additionally packed the GPU with flat-out extra horsepower than its predecessor, the Radeon RX 6600 that launched at $329 in 2020. All instructed, the Radeon RX 7600 provides a mean of 35 % extra 1080p gaming efficiency for 18 % much less cash—a real generational improve. It falters in ray tracing, nonetheless, and upscaling applied sciences like AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS look dangerous at this decision.

The one side price briefly readdressing right here: the reminiscence configuration. AMD geared up the Radeon RX 7600 with a tiny 128-bit bus and 8GB of onboard reminiscence. That limits the Radeon RX 7600 to consideration for 1080p gaming (although it could actually deal with 1440p with lowered settings)—an inexpensive compromise in an inexpensive GPU, in contrast to equivalent compromises made in Nvidia’s $400 GeForce RTX 4060 Ti.

However PC players are fearful that 8GB of reminiscence capability isn’t sufficient now {that a} swathe of recent triple-A video games devour greater than that usually at Extremely decision. These edge circumstances are uncommon, nonetheless, and PCWorld contributor Keith Might examined the Sapphire Pulse RX 7600’s efficiency in a few of right now’s most VRAM-hungry video games to see what you possibly can count on. You’ll be able to see his evaluation within the video beneath, however backside line? When you bump graphics settings from Extremely to Excessive in these most-intensive titles, you continue to get a killer 1080p gaming expertise that appears nice and runs quick. Once more, at this inexpensive worth level, that’s completely cheap.

Onto the Pulse itself.

Sapphire caught to the tried-and-true Pulse design we’ve cherished in playing cards just like the Pulse RX 7900 XT and last-gen’s Pulse RX 6600 XT. It’s nonetheless good. The twin-slot card includes a primary aluminum fin stack and a deal with low noise output, bolstered by Sapphire’s Twin-X Cooling know-how. Twin “hybrid fan blades” and clever fan controls preserve factor operating good, cool, and quiet—as you’ll see later, the Pulse provides a lot decrease temperatures than AMD’s reference card, together with peak hotspot temperatures. That’s a testomony to Sapphire’s intentional design for all Pulse fashions.

Keith Might/IDG

You received’t discover any fancy extras like RGB lighting, dual-BIOS switches, or fan management headers on the change, however these luxuries aren’t typical on budget-priced playing cards, or on customized choices that hit the MSRP urged by AMD and Nvidia. One minor sacrifice? Whereas the AMD reference 7600 comprises DisplayPort 2.1 connections, that’s an optionally available specification, and the Pulse depends on the identical DisplayPort 1.4 know-how that Nvidia provides in its RTX 40-series GPUs. The upper bandwidth offered by DP 2.1 would principally be ineffective on a $269, 1080p-focused graphics card anyway, because it’s meant to energy pixel-packed high-resolution shows at ultra-fast refresh charges.

Keith Might/IDG

Aesthetically, the Pulse seems pretty much as good as ever, that includes a blacked-out design with pink highlights and a beautiful pink “pulse” heartbeat touring the size of the cardboard’s metallic backplate. (Sure, Sapphire nonetheless slapped a backplate on right here regardless of the low worth—at all times welcome, since naked PCBs look horrible whenever you’re utilizing a case with a tempered glass window.) Energy is dealt with by way of a easy, single 8-pin connection, no fiddly 12VHPWR adapters required.

In fact, as a contemporary AMD graphics card, the Sapphire Pulse can faucet into AMD’s suite of Radeon options, reminiscent of Good Entry Reminiscence for sooner sport efficiency in Ryzen + Radeon programs, Good Entry Video for sooner encoding in all-AMD PCs, FSR 2, Radeon Tremendous Decision, Anti-Lag, and extra. And the Radeon RX 7600’s new AV1 encoding works nice with the File & Stream options in AMD Adrenalin software program, which could truly be a bit higher than Nvidia’s vaunted Shadowplay now.

Onto the benchmarks!

Our take a look at system

Keith Might examined the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 on his testing system, which runs utilizing the identical core elements as Brad’s fundamental PCWorld GPU testing rig. You’ll be able to see Keith clarify the elements in his rig in video type right here, whereas this hyperlink particulars what’s inside the principle GPU rig. Keith offered numbers for the Zotac card; the comparability information was pulled from our just-updated database of GPUs utilizing the principle take a look at rig.

We take a look at quite a lot of video games spanning varied engines, genres, vendor sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics APIs (DirectX 9, 11, DX12, and Vulkan), to attempt to characterize a full vary of efficiency potential. Every sport is examined utilizing its in-game benchmark, sanity checked by Nvidia’s FrameView instrument, on the highest doable graphics presets except in any other case famous, with VSync, body fee caps, real-time ray tracing or DLSS results, and FreeSync/G-Sync disabled, together with some other vendor-specific applied sciences like FidelityFX instruments or Nvidia Reflex. We’ve additionally enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these playing cards to their limits.

We run every benchmark a minimum of 3 times and listing the common end result for every take a look at. We’ve centered our testing on 1080p efficiency alone in a choose handful of video games, since our authentic Radeon RX 7600 assessment already established that this class of GPU is greatest suited to 1080p gaming with out ray tracing enabled because of the method it’s technically configured. If you wish to see all that work, go try that assessment; the aim of this one is to match the Sapphire Pulse’s efficiency particularly towards AMD’s reference 7600, therefore limiting our benchmarks to a extra centered choice.

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 gaming benchmarks

Keith Might/IDG

No surprises right here. The Sapphire Pulse’s modest manufacturing facility overclock and enhanced cooling let it eke out a number of extra frames than AMD’s reference Radeon RX 7600. It’s an incredible, inexpensive possibility for 1080p gaming with glorious visible constancy and quick body charges out of the field.

That’s notable, as a result of as we lined in our reference 7600 assessment, performance-boosting picture upscaling applied sciences like AMD’s FSR and Nvidia’s DLSS negatively have an effect on visible high quality at 1080p decision, since they’re working with so many fewer pixels than at 1440p or 4K. So choosing up a 1080p graphics card that gives an incredible native expertise is vital. The Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 checks that field with gusto.

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 energy and temperatures

Let’s begin with the Sapphire Pulse’s energy draw, although the thermals and acoustics are the true draw right here.

We take a look at energy draw by looping the F1 22 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes after we’ve benchmarked every little thing else (to heat up the GPU) and noting the best studying on our Watts Up Professional meter, which measures the facility consumption of our total take a look at system. The preliminary a part of the race, the place all competing automobiles are onscreen concurrently, tends to be essentially the most demanding portion. 

This isn’t a worst-case take a look at; it is a GPU-bound sport operating at a GPU-bound decision to gauge efficiency when the graphics card is sweating exhausting. When you’re taking part in a sport that additionally hammers the CPU, you possibly can see larger general system energy attracts. Contemplate your self warned.

Keith Might/IDG

The Sapphire Pulse comes with a small manufacturing facility overclock and provides barely sooner efficiency than the AMD Radeon RX 7600 reference card, so it’s no shock to see it draw barely extra energy. The vitality consumption stays sufficiently small that you simply don’t want to fret about it in any way.

Onto the Pulse’s sturdy go well with. We take a look at thermals by leaving GPU-Z open throughout the F1 22 energy draw take a look at, noting the best most temperature on the finish.

Sapphire’s simple, however efficient Pulse cooling design impresses but once more. Not solely does the Pulse preserve general GPU temperatures decrease than the Radeon RX 7600 reference design, it tames the height GPU hotspot temperature extra successfully too, maxing out at 84 levels Celsius on the Pulse and 90 levels on the reference mannequin.

Higher but, the Pulse runs exceptionally quiet, a spotlight of Sapphire’s cooling design for the road. You’ll barely (if ever) hear it even below load, and the cardboard provides idle fan cease capabilities that cease the blades from spinning in any way for those who aren’t gaming or performing different GPU-intensive hundreds. The reference card could be very quiet, too, however the Pulse does it whereas operating cooler and sooner.

Must you purchase the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600?

Keith Might/IDG

When you’re in search of an inexpensive 1080p graphics card, this could completely be in your brief listing. The Radeon RX 7600 is the primary low-cost GPU launch price praising in years, and the Sapphire Pulse runs sooner, cooler, and simply as silent as AMD’s reference card, all for a similar wallet-friendly $269 price ticket.

It’s a testomony to Sapphire’s strict “no-frills, simply nice gaming” method to the Pulse lineup, which proves particularly welcome right here within the funds phase. Fashionable AV1 encoding is a tasty cherry on high for streamers.

You shouldn’t activate ray tracing with the Radeon RX 7600, or purchase it for 1440p gaming. Our rather more detailed authentic AMD Radeon RX 7600 assessment breaks down why in exacting depth (together with suggesting potential alternate options if desired). However these aren’t essentially drawbacks on this mainstream worth vary. If you wish to purchase a contemporary graphics card which you could plop into your system and expertise quick, high-fidelity 1080p gaming with minimal trouble—and with out busting your checking account—the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 is effectively price shopping for.