Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Pulse OC Review 35

Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Pulse OC Review

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W1zzard
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on ,
Manufacturer: Sapphire
Cooler Performance Comparison »

Temperatures

Temperature & Noise Comparison (AMD Press Driver)
IdleGaming
GPUNoiseGPUHotspotNoiseRPM
AMD RX 760034°CFan Stop73°C86°C32.4 dBA1510 RPM
ASRock RX 7600 Phantom Gaming34°CFan Stop56°C71°C26.8 dBA1387 RPM
PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound36°CFan Stop69°C84°C30.2 dBA1293 RPM
PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound (Quiet BIOS)36°CFan Stop67°C81°C30.0 dBA1299 RPM
Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse35°CFan Stop65°C79°C33.5 dBA2145 RPM

At the start of the review process, Sapphire advised that they are seeing some fan speed differences with the AMD official Press Driver, and they recommend that we perform thermal testing with the older 23.4.2 WHQL that they've provided to us. I reached out to AMD, and they confirm that there's some issues related to fan speeds that will be fixed in the final launch driver. At this time it is unclear whether the fan speed behavior of that new driver is that of the Press Beta or of the WHQL driver, so I decided to test fan speeds and thermals on all cards with both drivers, to ensure I'm not testing the wrong thing and come to the wrong conclusions. All performance testing in this review ("FPS" numbers) was done with the Press Driver only, as that's the one with all the latest game optimizations.

Temperature & Noise Comparison (AMD 23.4.2 WHQL)
IdleGaming
GPUNoiseGPUHotspotNoiseRPM
AMD RX 760041°CFan Stop77°C89°C32.1 dBA1489 RPM
ASRock RX 7600 Phantom Gaming33°CFan Stop61°C77°C26.2 dBA1113 RPM
PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound38°CFan Stop72°C87°C29.0 dBA1132 RPM
PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound (Quiet BIOS)38°CFan Stop71°C85°C28.7 dBA1126 RPM
Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse35°CFan Stop73°C89°C31.4 dBA1579 RPM
Testing notes & interpretation
  • GPU temperatures listed here are based on GPU-Z measurements of the on-chip temperature sensor.
  • We report these GPU temperatures under a constant load for ease of comparison, as well as an idle state most end users will experience often. This combination helps dictate cooling needs and provides context for how well the thermal solution performs.
  • Please note that GPU temperature is contingent on a variety of factors. Some, including clock speed, voltage settings, cooler design, and production variances, are beyond the control of the end user. Others, such as ambient temperature, case design, and airflow pathway affecting the GPU, can be mitigated to certain extents.
  • The data in the table above shows results for similar cards, achieved in identical conditions during previous TechPowerUp reviews.

Thermal Analysis

For this test, we first let the card sit idle to reach thermal equilibrium. Next, we start a constant 100% gaming load, recording several important parameters while the test is running. This shows you the thermal behavior of the card and how the fans ramp up as temperatures increase. Once temperatures are stable (no increase for two minutes), we stop the load and record how the card cools down over time.

GPU Clock, Voltage Temperature, Fan Speed over Time


We also ran the same test with the 23.4.2 WHQL drivers:


Fan Noise

Noise Testing Details
  • The tested graphics card is installed in an open bench system. The system does not emit any noise on its own, all components are passively cooled.
  • All cards are loaded with the same test: a custom-engineered game-like load in Unreal Engine 4 that always renders the same frame at 60 FPS to minimize variance.
  • To ensure 100% loading of the GPU, the render complexity is set dynamically so that each card operates at peak performance without being CPU limited.
  • We're not using Furmark because it creates too high a load that forces fans to run faster than what is encountered during typical gameplay.
  • Noise results of other cards on this page are measurements of the respective reference design.
  • We let the card heat up and wait for fan speed to no longer change. Depending on the fan-control algorithm, this can often take quite some time.
  • Noise level measurements are conducted using a 1/2" calibrated measurement microphone that records onto the host PC using a digital audio processing pipeline. The microphone is recalibrated at least once a month.
  • Measurement distance is 50 cm. Our previous noise-level measurements took place at a distance of 1 m. We reduced the distance to be able to better distinguish acoustics of the very quiet graphics cards.

All modern graphics cards support idle-fan-stop nowadays, so no reason to report idle fan noise.

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May 15th, 2024 19:42 EDT change timezone

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