Sapphire RX 5500 XT Pulse 4GB Review

The Sapphire RX 5500 XT Pulse 4GB ships in a multi-coloured box, with prominent AMD Radeon branding visible on the front. There's no image of the card itself here.

Inside, the only two includes extras are a quick installation guide and a manufacturer's note.

Looking at the graphics card itself, this bears an immediate resemblance to the RX 5700 Pulse in terms of the overall shroud design and use of its dual fans. That said, I am appreciative of Sapphire's decision to remove a lot of the red and silver accents for this 5500 XT model, as the card is almost entirely black. This simply means you won't have issues using the Pulse in a colour-coordinated build, which may not have been the case with the 5700 Pulse.

As for the fans, these are dual ball bearing models, each measuring 100mm in diameter.

In terms of the overall size of the card, it's not huge, being a standard dual-slot thickness – full measurements are 233mm x 121.8mm x 39.6mm.

On the front side of the shroud, we can see the silver Sapphire logo sitting on the left-hand side. This is not an RGB zone, as there is no lighting anywhere on the card. Just above this logo, we can also see the dual-BIOS switch, which is a great feature for a card at this end of the market. By default, the card ships using the performance BIOS, but the secondary BIOS activates a ‘silent' mode if you prefer that.

It's also great to see a full-length metal backplate on the Pulse. It's again very colour neutral with just some grey lines running the length of the card, and there is the slightest bit of red showing in the Pulse logo too.

All RX 5500 XTs will require one 8-pin power connector, as is seen here, while display outputs are provided by 3x DisplayPorts and 1x HDMI.

Removing the cooler, we can get a look at the very short PCB used here – the cooler and backplate extend beyond the PCB by almost two inches. Still, the PCB itself is almost certainly AMD's reference design, with a 6-phase VRM for the GPU and single-phase VRM for the memory.

The 4x1GB memory modules are supplied by Micron, and each chip is labelled ‘9TA77D9WCW'. Lastly, the tiny 158mm2 Navi 14 GPU is also on show.

For the cooler, Sapphire has kept things simple but effective. There's a single fin stack and a total of three plate heatpipes. The GPU contacts with a copper core, while that is surrounded by another contact plate for the VRAM. Just off to the side, a secondary coldplate is also positioned for the VRM.

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