The AMD RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX launches this past December were exciting. AMDs latest generation of cards showed that the giant cards that Nvidia had recently launched weren’t the only option with the upcoming generation and they had impressive performance as well. Sadly I didn’t get to see Sapphire's take on the new generation of cards but that changes today. They sent over the Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse and today I’m going to dive in and see what it has going on and then put it through our test suite to see how it performs. I’m especially curious to see how it compares to AMDs reference design as well as the RTX 4070 Ti and we can take a second look now and see how the 7900 XT fits in the market now that things have had time to settle down post-launch. So let’s dive in!
Product Name: Sapphire RX 7900 XT Pulse
Review Sample Provided by: Sapphire
Written by: Wes Compton
Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE
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Specifications |
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GPU |
AMD Radeon™ RX 7900 XT Graphics Card 5nm GPU AMD RDNA™ 3 Architecture |
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Engine Clock |
Boost Clock: Up to 2450 MHz Game Clock: Up to 2075 MHz
Boost Clock is the maximum frequency achievable on the GPU running bursty workload. Boost clock achievability, frequency, and sustainabilty will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to: thermal conditions and variation in application and workloads.
Game Clock is the expected GPU clock when running typical gaming applications, set to typical TGP(Total Graphics Power). Actual individual game clock results may vary. |
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Stream Processors |
5376 |
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Compute Units |
84 CU (with RT+AI Accelerators) |
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Infinity Cache |
80MB |
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Ray Accelerators |
84 |
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Memory Size/Bus |
20GB/320 bit GDDR6 |
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Memory Clock |
20 Gbps Effective |
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Displays |
Maximum 4 Displays |
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Resolution |
HDMI™: 7680×4320 DisplayPort 2.1: 7680×4320 |
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Interface |
PCI-Express 4.0 x16 |
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Output |
2x HDMI 2x DisplayPort |
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BIOS Support |
UEFI |
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Game Index |
4K |
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Sapphire Features |
Premium Digital Power Design Ultra High Performance Conductive Polymer Aluminum Capacitors Fuse Protection High TG Copper PCB Optimized Composite Heatpipe Tri-X Technology Intelligent Fan Control Precision Fan Control Metal Backplate Two-Ball Bearing Fans Angular Velocity Fan Blade TriXX Supported TriXX Boost Graphics Card Supporter |
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AMD Features |
AMD RDNA™ 3 Gaming Architecture 84 AMD RDNA™ 3 Compute Units (with RT+AI Accelerators) 80MB AMD Infinity Cache™ technology DisplayPort™ 2.1 AMD Radiance Display™ Engine AMD Radeon™ Boost technology* AMD Radeon™ Anti-Lag* technology* 20GB GDDR6 on 320-Bit Memory Bus PCI® Express 4.0 ready AMD FidelityFX™ technologies* AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution technology* Microsoft® DirectX® 12 Ultimate Microsoft® DirectStorage Vulkan® Optimized AMD smart technologies* AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition™ application AMD Noise Suppression* AMD Privacy View* AMD Radeon™ Super Resolution technology* AMD Link* AMD Freesync™ technology |
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Cooling |
3 Fans |
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Form Factor |
2.7 slot, ATX Dimension: 313(L)X 133.75(W)X 52.67 (H)mm |
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Power Consumption |
331W Total Board Power |
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OS |
Linux®, Windows® 10, and Windows 11. 64-bit operating system required |
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System Requirement |
Minimum 750 Watt Power Supply 2 x 8-pin Power Connector. PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard. Minimum 8GB of system memory. 16GB recommended. |
Before getting into testing I did also run GPUz to double-check that our clock speeds match up with the specifications. The Sapphire 7900 XT Pulse is listed with a boost clock of up to 2450 MHz and a game clock of up to 2075 MHz and GPUz has the game clock spot on but the boost clock was listed at 2449 MHz which is 1 MHz off, not a big deal or anything and right where it needs to be. For comparison, the reference 7900 XT had a game clock of 2000 MHz and a boost clock of up to 2400 MHz so Sapphire has given the Pulse a bump across the board but not a huge overclock by any means. Beyond that GPUz also documents the driver used for testing which is the latest AMD driver and the BIOS version for reference in the future as well.
