AMD Sapphire Pulse 5600XT 6G

Is this the best $500 graphics card right now?

Gamers have had a lot of reading to do to help them determine the best graphics cards to buy in the midrange market. The last few months has seen the release of Nvidia’s 1600-series Super cards, AMD’s RX 5500 XT and now we have another disruptive entry to add to the mix, the RX 5600 XT. The 5600 XT is a very interesting card indeed, and one that AMD believes is the one that can cause arguably the biggest mid-range realignment of this generation. Let’s see if it holds up to this promise.

The RX 5600 XT is equipped with the Navi 10 GPU, with clock speeds and the memory spec being the primary differences between it and the more expensive RX 5700. Both cards include 2,304 shader processors. Strangely, AMD decided to equip the 5600 XT with 6GB of RAM, an odd choice given the lower tier 5500 XT ships with 8GB, not to mention that next generation consoles will have 8GB. Will 6GB be enough for uncompromised 1080P gaming in, say, two years? We’ll have to wait and see.

AMD made the 11th hour call to increase the 5600 XT’s clock speeds, likely in response to Nvida’s revised RTX 2060 pricing. But leaving BIOS flashing to end users is a haphazard decision at best, and is a risky strategy from AMD. Obviously AMD really didn’t want to drop the price. We tested with the new BIOS, specifically the performance version as the silent one gives up too much performance for limited gain.

We have Sapphire’s Pulse RX 5600 XT on hand. Pulse cards are Sapphire’s mid-tier products, above the basic reference cards, and below the Nitro series cards. It comes with dual BIOS’, but there isn’t much point to using the silent BIOS given how quiet the card is anyway. It’s an attractive and very well built card. Do note that it’s essentially a triple slot card.

AMD is positioning the 5600 XT as the ultimate 1080p card, and the performance results back that up. The new BIOS pushes it ahead of the RTX 2060, and therefore the entire 1660 series. We were also very impressed with Sapphire’s cooler. The card remained essentially silent at all times. We never saw temperatures go higher than 70c, meaning the card was able to maintain impressive boost clocks in the 1,720MHz range for long periods. In fact with the silent running levels, we wouldn’t even bother with the silent BIOS as you’ll lose too much performance for no apparent advantage apart from saving a few watts.

Sapphire’s Pulse RX 5600 XT is a very impressive and aggressively priced 5600 XT. With its newly boosted clock speeds, it’s highly competitive with Nvidia’s offerings. It beats the RTX 2060 on price and performance, while remaining quiet with good thermals and power consumption levels. We really wish it had 8GB for that extra bit of future proofing. 8GB also looks better on the box to uninformed buyers. If you’ve got $500 to drop on a graphics card right now, and don’t care about the RTX feature set, then the 5600 XT is the card to get. CHRIS SZEWCZYK