Sapphire Radeon RX 6500 XT Pulse Review

Name: Sapphire Radeon RX 6500 XT Pulse
Brand: Sapphire
Price: 200 USD

W1zzard

on Jan 20th, 2022,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Sapphire

(45 Comments) »

Introduction

AMD released the Radeon RX 6500 XT yesterday (Jan 19th), and the Sapphire Pulse RX 6500 XT we have with us today dropped at our doorstep a little late, but we can finally tell you all about it. The Pulse brand represents Sapphire's value-oriented brand of graphics cards that have everything you need to just install and game. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is the world's first gaming GPU built on the 6 nm silicon fabrication node that offers improved transistor-density and power gains over 7 nm. It is based on the same RDNA2 graphics architecture as the rest of the RX 6000 series. It logically succeeds the RX 5500 XT from the previous generation, but with full DirectX 12 Ultimate capability.

At the heart of the AMD RX 6500 XT in this review is the Navi 24 silicon. This tiny 107 mm² chip packs 1,024 stream processors across 16 RDNA2 compute units, each with a Ray Accelerator. Thanks to the 6 nm process, AMD is able to run them at a scorching 2.61 GHz engine clocks. The card is endowed with 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, but over a baffling 64-bit wide memory bus that's half that of the RX 5500 XT. AMD attempted to overcome this limitation by deploying its Infinity Cache technology—a fast 16 MB on-die cache with the GPU, which speeds up the memory sub-system. Another surprising design choice is the card's PCI-Express 4.0 x4 system bus, which may prove enough for the target performance AMD intends for this SKU, but install it on older machines with Gen 3 and you half the bus bandwidth, as the PCIe lanes remain at just four. We dug deeper into this in our Radeon RX 6500 XT PCI-Express Scaling article

The design goal with the RX 6500 XT is essentially unchanged from the RX 5500 XT—1080p e-sports gaming with moderate settings. To turn up the eye-candy, you could use the FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) feature. Another dividend of the 6 nm node is the card's tiny typical board power figure of just 107 W. It can make do with a single 6-pin PCIe power connector. The Sapphire Pulse RX 6500 XT tops AMD's work with a compact version of its Dual-X cooling solution with an aluminium fin-stack heatsink, and a pair of 80 mm fans to cool it. The heatsink is longer than the PCB underneath, so some of the airflow from the second fan flows through the heatsink and out a large vent on the backplate. Sapphire is running the RX 6500 XT Pulse at default clocks—there is no factory OC. There is no official price guidance, but we expect this card to go for around $300–400, a huge premium over AMD's imaginary $199 SEP.

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX 580	$300	2304	32	1257 MHz	1340 MHz	2000 MHz	Ellesmere	5700M	8 GB, GDDR5, 256-bit
GTX 1060 6 GB	$300	1280	48	1506 MHz	1708 MHz	2002 MHz	GP106	4400M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
GTX 1650	$250	896	32	1485 MHz	1665 MHz	2000 MHz	TU117	4700M	4 GB, GDDR5, 128-bit
RX 5500 XT	$350	1408	32	1717 MHz	1845 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 14	6400M	4 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
Sapphire RX 6500 XT Pulse	$350 MSRP: $200	1024	32	2685 MHz	2825 MHz	2248 MHz	Navi 24	5400M	4 GB, GDDR6, 64-bit
GTX 1650 Super	$400	1280	32	1530 MHz	1725 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	4 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
GTX 1660	$480	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	2000 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR5, 192-bit
RX Vega 56	$800	3584	64	1156 MHz	1471 MHz	800 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1660 Super	$550	1408	48	1530 MHz	1785 MHz	1750 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
GTX 1660 Ti	$500	1536	48	1500 MHz	1770 MHz	1500 MHz	TU116	6600M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5600 XT	$700	2304	64	1375 MHz	1560 MHz	1500 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 2060	$570	1920	48	1365 MHz	1680 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	6 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 5700	$950	2304	64	1465 MHz	1625 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2060 Super	$800	2176	64	1470 MHz	1650 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX Vega 64	$850	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit

Packaging

The Card

The Sapphire RX 6500 XT Pulse is instantly recognizable as a Sapphire Pulse card. The primary color is black, with red highlights on the front and back. On the back, you'll find a metal backplate, which is designed to let some airflow through the cooler.

Dimensions of the card are 19.5 x 12.0 cm, and it weighs 487 g.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.0 and one DisplayPort 1.4 port.

With Navi 24, AMD has cut back on the hardware decode capabilities of the GPU. AV1 video decode is not supported.

The card has one 6-pin power input. This configuration is rated for up to 150 W of power draw.

Radeon RX 6500 XT does not support CrossFire.

Teardown

Sapphire's cooler uses two heatpipes and also provides cooling for the memory chips and GPU VRM circuitry.

The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.