Card Layout and Photos
The last Sapphire card we had come into the office was one of their Nitro+ cards, I haven’t had the chance to check out the Pulse lineup. The Pulse lineup is a little more budget-focused compared to the Nitro+ cards and that fits well with the 6500 XT as a whole. For styling, the 6500 XT Pulse has a black plastic fan shroud that extends up past the top of the PCI bracket. It has two red lines that run from end to end through the fan holes as well as similar lines molded into the plastic. It gives a nod to the angular designs that almost every card these days has, but it is a lot simpler than most which gives it a cleaner look. It wraps around the dual axial fans which also have a touch of red on the center stickers with a red ring and the red EKG in the pulse brand name.
The 6500 XT Pulse is a compact card which is a huge change from the last Nitro+ I took a look at. Sapphire has this card at 194mm long which just a few generations ago would have been a medium to long card, but compared to most of the cards now it is smaller. It is 107mm tall which is taller than the standard card height and taller than the EVGA 3050 I took a look at last week. Then for thickness, it fits right at the standard 2 slot width. It isn’t completely inside of the old PCI standard size with the height, but it's not far off.
Like I mentioned before, the 6500 XT Pulse has dual axial fans which blow down against the heatsink into the PCB. The extra height of the card allowed Sapphire to fit large fans with both being 90mm wide. They have 11 blades each and they rotate counterclockwise. The center stickers have a base metallic finish then with the red ring and the Pulse logo with the red accent on the EKG section as well. The fan blades have a slight twist to them, but significantly less than the Nitro+ cards have, and other than that the fans don’t have any other shapes to them. Looking through the fans though we can see that the heatsink design for the 6500 XT Pulse is a horizontal layout for its aluminum fins which typically is a little less efficient as the air being blow done has to run the full length of the card to get out. It will be interesting to see how the cooling is on this card.
Looking around at the top, bottom, and end edges shows that layout as well. Sapphire has the heatpipes visible from the top and bottom and from the looks of it the heatpipes are in an S shape with the center sitting over top of the GPU itself to pull the heat out to the ends of the card. The top of the card is more open than I expected given the heatsink layout, there is some room near the power connection in the heatsink where some extra air may be able to come out. The end of the card is designed for full airflow however with vents even in the section that does have the shroud over it.
The top edge of the card does also have some branding on it. Down on the end, they have the Radeon logo printed in red. That is right below the power connection which by the way is only a 6-pin, seeing those seems to be getting rarer. Then on the far left, they also have the Sapphire logo printed in red. The 6500 XT Pulse doesn’t have any backlit branding or any lighting at all actually. This does fit with the more budget focus of the card of course.
I feel like the main issue with the 6500 XT has been beaten to death, but I do have to bring it up a little for those of you who aren’t aware. Most video cards connect with 8 or 16 PCI lanes. The 6500 XT is running the Navi 24 GPU and if you look closely here at the PCI slot you can see that they are only connected with a x4 or 4 lane connection. I will talk about how that affects things in the performance section, but it is interesting to see how there aren’t any traces going to the 2/3 of the pins on the right side of the card.
Sapphire stuck right with the overall them when it comes to the backplate for the 6500 XT. The fact that there is a backplate at all is a big surprise. This is a real metal backplate with a textured black finish that matches up well with the plastic shrouds finish. They have ventilation holes in strategic locations like behind the GPU itself, at the top edge, and of course near the end of the card where the PCB ends short and the fans are able to blow through the heatsink out the back of the card. This is huge in helping with the airflow on the horizontal heatsink layout. We can also see that Sapphire placed one of the big heatpipes right in the middle of the section as well which helps a lot as well. The red accents continue here with the Sapphire and Pulse logos both having a little red on their otherwise white font. Then there is a red EKG that runs most of the way across the backplate to the Radeon logo which is also in red. All of that is of course flipped so it is readable when the card is installed in a traditional case as well.
The PCI bracket at the end of the 6500 XT Pulse has a large ventilation section cut out that covers 2/3 of the bracket. This is important with the heatsink layout that should be pushing air this direction. The bracket has the Sapphire logo stamped into it at the bottom. Then for display connections, I was surprised to see the card only has two. You get one DisplayPort which is down at the bottom and one HDMI which is up at the top. This isn’t Sapphire specific, the 6500 XT just only has those options.
