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Sapphire Radeon RX 6600 XT Pulse OC

W1zzard

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Sapphire's Pulse is a cost-efficient, no-frills Radeon RX 6600 XT custom design that comes in at only a small price increase over the AMD base price. In our review, we found that the card still achieves excellent noise levels while also keeping temperatures low.

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Pro: no fan overshoot! Great job, AMD.
 
Amazing efficiency and insanely good idle power consumption. I sincerely hope the upcoming 6500 series could have a 75W SKU at sub $200 ...
 
There's a very interesting thing going on in the market right now for the RX 6600 XT that ive noticed.
In some markets, mainly EU and Middle east, that RX 6600 XT cards can be found for less than RTX 3060 cards are offered for - which IMO makes this situation very interesting.
 
The MSRP is still way too high for what the card offers compared to the now 2 year old 5700xt and 5 year old $200 580. Take this down to $300 and under and now we’re talking.
Amazing efficiency and insanely good idle power consumption. I sincerely hope the upcoming 6500 series could have a 75W SKU at sub $200 ...
I’m also holding out for a sub 75 watt 6500, my low profile rx560 is getting long in the tooth.
 
So how much longer until the 6600, 6500xt and 6500 are released???

My max budget for a video card is $350 CAD so about $280US. Back in the HD 4850 days it was $225 CAD. Exchange rate and 13% sales tax can have a big influence on purchases……..

I have a feeling if a card came out now for the price of my RX480 it would probably have less performance than the RX480 lol
 
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if you're going to specialize in just one resolution, you have to be a BEAST at that resolution, and this thing is meh at 1080p, such BS AMD!
 
A good enough product but in those market conditions there isn't any good value in any GPU. When prices come down to earth, this GPU might become the new Polaris for casual gamers but with the best efficiency in FPS/W.
 
What a horrible product in a horrible market. This thing competes with cards from a few years ago in a very unimproved way - the same performance at basically the same price. This is not progress, this is stagnation at best. Are we back to ancient times when 1080p was the goal? It's not a bad card per se, noise and power consumption seem reasonable, but performance of an 5700 and a PCI-e x8 capped interface should be considered low-end/entry level for easy to run esport titles, not 400$ MSRP mid-tier gaming card.
 
I get no paid, price to high.
 
So how much longer until the 6600, 6500xt and 6500 are released???

My max budget for a video card is $350 CAD so about $280US. Back in the HD 4850 days it was $225 CAD. Exchange rate and 13% sales tax can have a big influence on purchases……..

I have a feeling if a card came out now for the price of my RX480 it would probably have less performance than the RX480 lol
If you're lucky you can get these around MSRP perhaps with Black Friday deals?

I don't think anyone, except Intel, will do such an obvious seppuku :laugh:
 
What a horrible product in a horrible market. This thing competes with cards from a few years ago in a very unimproved way - the same performance at basically the same price. This is not progress, this is stagnation at best. Are we back to ancient times when 1080p was the goal? It's not a bad card per se, noise and power consumption seem reasonable, but performance of an 5700 and a PCI-e x8 capped interface should be considered low-end/entry level for easy to run esport titles, not 400$ MSRP mid-tier gaming card.

I'm sorry to break it to you bud, but that price-performance line basically stayed the same since 2016 except for some outliers, namely the GTX1660S and the RX 5600 XT.

They are charging 400USD for this card because they can in this market. However it will and up 1.3-1.5x over MSRP anyway.
 
What a horrible product in a horrible market. This thing competes with cards from a few years ago in a very unimproved way - the same performance at basically the same price. This is not progress, this is stagnation at best. Are we back to ancient times when 1080p was the goal? It's not a bad card per se, noise and power consumption seem reasonable, but performance of an 5700 and a PCI-e x8 capped interface should be considered low-end/entry level for easy to run esport titles, not 400$ MSRP mid-tier gaming card.

It's twice as fast as a RX580; and it's common to slice up a big piece of silicon in smaller parts and re-sell it as a 6600 model. If you ask me it's a perfect card really for 1080p. PCI-E 8x does'nt cause any problems since it's already tested on PCI-E 3.0 vs 4.0. There's 1% difference.

Wait a while as the pricing will come down. AMD is at the end of the day a business in for the money too. Not a free charity.
 

Value and Conclusion​

According to Sapphire, the MSRP for the RX 6600 XT STRIX OC is $400

Typo.
 
I'm sorry to break it to you bud, but that price-performance line basically stayed the same since 2016 except for some outliers, namely the GTX1660S and the RX 5600 XT.

They are charging 400USD for this card because they can in this market. However it will and up 1.3-1.5x over MSRP anyway.

LOL and those are the two cards I bought last year before the price run-up. No wonder everything looks ridiculous nowadays...
 
It's twice as fast as a RX580; and it's common to slice up a big piece of silicon in smaller parts and re-sell it as a 6600 model. If you ask me it's a perfect card really for 1080p. PCI-E 8x does'nt cause any problems since it's already tested on PCI-E 3.0 vs 4.0. There's 1% difference.

Wait a while as the pricing will come down. AMD is at the end of the day a business in for the money too. Not a free charity.
It's basically the same performance as an RX5700 which is really not exciting for a new 400$ card - even if you don't consider that buying it for twice the MSRP will be very unlikely. As for the PCI-e, I wonder how many people building new systems will opt to get such a weak GPU, so it will most likely be a PCIe 3.0 x8 card in most cases, which is more suited to low end and laptop GPUs. Price will probably not come down before mid-late 2022, maybe even 2023, and at this point this performance will really be garbage-tier.

This thing exists only because the die is so tiny they can squeeze a lot of them on a wafer and flood the starved market with "meh" products. Which will, of course, sell, but it's like selling putrescent food during a famine. Hence "meh".
 
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Are those +27c for Hotspot normal? (sorry I'm asking again) It's just that it seems pretty high? :fear:
 
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Are those +27c for Hotspot normal? (sorry I'm asking again) It's just that it seems pretty high? :fear:
That's what I measured. I can retest it, but I've already reassembled the card, so thermal paste will be different
 
It's basically the same performance as an RX5700
You've made this claim twice now, yet the average performance graphs from this review put it ahead of the 5700 XT, and way ahead of the 5700. I'm not sure what your angle is, but it's hard to argue with the objective data from an article you're commenting on. It's basically on par with an RTX 2080 at 1080p and an RTX 2070 Super at 1440p. That's still some pretty high performance, and it's genuinely impressive from a perf/watt point of view. And I very much doubt that 2080/2070S-tier performance will be "garbage" at any time during the next couple of years. That's just BS, frankly. Many people will be happy with that degree of power for a long, long time to come.

It doesn't change the fact that it's overpriced and the ray tracing performance sucks, but people can never take a level-headed view of things and have to start spewing nonsense about every facet of the product. It's a pretty good GPU at a pretty bad price point.
 
That's what I measured. I can retest it, but I've already reassembled the card, so thermal paste will be different
I have a 6700xt strix and the Hotspot temps were around +30-40c over the Edge temp (65c edge/95-105c hotspot) out of the box. I have since opened the video card up and saw big spots of zero thermal paste (mostly in the middle) :cry: so I replaced the thermal paste to NT-H2 and I'm getting around (64c edge/78-85c hotspot). :toast: So that might be the issue with that card?
 
It's basically the same performance as an RX5700 which is really not exciting for a new 400$ card - even if you don't consider that buying it for twice the MSRP will be very unlikely. As for the PCI-e, I wonder how many people building new systems will opt to get such a weak GPU, so it will most likely be a PCIe 3.0 x8 card in most cases, which is more suited to low end and laptop GPUs. Price will probably not come down before mid-late 2022, maybe even 2023, and at this point this performance will really be garbage-tier.

This thing exists only because the die is so tiny they can squeeze a lot of them on a wafer and flood the starved market with "meh" products. Which will, of course, sell, but it's like selling putrescent food during a famine. Hence "meh".

Lets ignore the current price/market situation for a moment.
In that case ppl on a budget would buy this card or cards around this performance level, even if building a brand new system now.

I know I would, I have zero interest in anything high end and always bought budget-entry mid range cards.
After all I'm still using a RX 570 since later 2018 and for the most part I'm doing alright with it so I'm not sure if this performance would be garbage tier in 1-2 years. 'talking about 1080p single player gaming here or E sports'

I have no issues with the performance of 6600 XT nor 3060 for that matter, I have an issue with the prices obviously but otherwise I would easily buy cards in this performance range for the next ~3 years cause I ususally keep my cards for that long. 'my 570 will be 3 years old in 2 months'

The x8 PCIe thing does bother me tho, Doom Eternal showed that it can in fact cause issues in PCIe 3.0 Mobos like mine and who knows how it will react to new games in the next 1-2 year or later, thats a risk I'm not sure I would want to take.

Aretak
And I very much doubt that 2080/2070S-tier performance will be "garbage" at any time during the next couple of years. That's just BS, frankly. Many people will be happy with that degree of power for a long, long time to come.

It doesn't change the fact that it's overpriced and the ray tracing performance sucks, but people can never take a level-headed view of things and have to start spewing nonsense about every facet of the product. It's a pretty good GPU at a pretty bad price point.

Yeah I also wonder this, I guess on tech forums/sites like this some ppl tend to forget that majority of the users are running weaker systems just fine on a daily basis and would be more than happy to even have this kind of performance.
All those ppl still rocking 1060/RX 400-500 serie since their launch day would definitely feel the upgrade and use it for quite some time.

I would also love to upgrade to something in this range but not at these price points thats for sure.
 
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CAD prices (but outa stock)




then add shipping and 13% sales tax

ya nope
 
and the Hotspot temps were around +30-40c over the Edge temp
30-40 is definitely too high and an indicator of some issue. usually thermal paste, uneven mounting pressure or lose screws
 
All those ppl still rocking 1060/RX 400-500 serie since their launch day would definitely feel the upgrade and use it for quite some time.
I agree, this card would (average) double the FPS numbers, but the sad thing is: those cards are already 5 years old, and it is expected to cost the same as those cards 5 years ago and not paying (minimum) +50-60% more money for them.

If this card would cost 280$/€ retail as its (5600XT) predecessor did, i would say, ok i'm buying it, but currently it's way overpriced even at MSRP.
 
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