INTRODUCTION

   To counter the latest GeForce RTX 4080/4090 graphics cards by NVIDIA last December AMD launched their latest Radeon RX 7900 XT/XTX cards and even though the 4090 model wasn't quite in their reach the RX 7900 XTX did manage to exchange blows with the 4080 (the RX 7900 XT model not so much). Needless to say, whenever both AMD and NVIDIA release their stock/founders edition cards they always leave room for improvement thus allowing AIC (add-in-card) partners to further tweak their offerings in terms of performance (clocks), cooling and of course noise levels. Over the years the guys over at SAPPHIRE have established themselves as one of the top AMD graphics cards manufacturers and today with me i have one of their most popular models currently, the PULSE AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB model.

   SAPPHIRE Technology continues to be a world leading manufacturer and global supplier of innovative graphics and mainboard products, delivering its AMD Radeon based products to the PC markets addressing gaming, eSports and performance graphics enthusiasts as well as delivering an array of professional graphics products and embedded system solutions. Recently SAPPHIRE has penetrated new markets with a series of GPU Compute server systems targeting the blockchain and commercial cryptocurrency mining businesses.

   Just like the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB which i reviewed in early December (review here) the PULSE model by SAPPHIRE also sports 84 RDNA 3 compute units, 5376 stream processors, 192 raster units (or render output units), 84 ray accelerators (or ray tracing cores), 336 texture mapping units and 6 shader engines (also 20GB of GDDR6 VRAM). In terms of featured technologies again we find AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.2 for maximum performance and visuals (with FSR 2.3 and Fluid Motion Frames technology scheduled for late 2023), radiance display engine for incredible color accuracy at up to 8K 165Hz (12-bit HDR with full coverage of the REC2020 color space), image sharpening, noise suppression which helps reduce ambient noise, anti-lag for faster input commands, smart access memory (performance boost when paired with an AMD Ryzen CPU), FreeSync for no image stuttering and tearing and AMD link which allows you to stream your Windows desktop and games to mobile devices, TVs and other Windows PCs. That being said SAPPHIRE has tweaked several aspects of the Radeon RX 7900 XT and so aside increasing its game clocks (2075Mhz from 2025MHz) they've also used a larger 14-layer 2oz copper PCB which they've paired with a more robust dual-heatsink cooler with composite heatpipes and three dual-ball bearing fans with angular blades. The PULSE model isn't meant to be worlds apart from the stock AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT but still it should perform better overall so let's see if that's really the case.