Sapphire Radeon PULSE RX 5500 XT OC 8GB Video Card Review

by

We are influencers and brand affiliates.  This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.

Sapphire Radeon PULSE RX 5500 XT OC 8GB Video Card Review

The biggest and the best video card is not always in everyone’s budget, sometimes you have to save a few bucks and make it work but is it worth it?  With that, the most common gaming resolution people play at is 1920×1080 and a card that handles more than that sometimes might be overkill but of course it is not a bad thing.  Today’s review will be on the budget friendly Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB OC.

Let’s check out all of the specs and features of this card.

  • Based off of AMD’s 2nd Gen 7nm process RDNA architecture
  • 1540Mhz Base clock
    • Boost Clock of Up to 1845Mhz
    • 1737Mhz Game Clock
    • Robust VRM Cooling
  • 8Gigs of 256Bit GDDR6 RAM
    • 14 Gbps Effective Memory clock speed
  • 1,408 Stream processors
  • Dual UEFI BIOS Support
    • Dual-X cooling Technology
    • Fuse Protection: External Fuse built into the circuit of the external PCI-e connectors
    • Quick Connect Fans
    • Two Ball Bearings
  • Requires 2 slots
    • Dimension: 233 x 121.8 x 39.6 (mm)
  • 1 x HDMI
    • HDMI @ 4096×2160@60Hz
  • 3 x Display Port 1.4 HBR3 w/DSC (lossless encoding)
    • Max of 4 concurrent displays
      • DisplayPort 1.4 5120×2880@60Hz
    • Supported Features
      • TriXX Boost
      • Radeon Boost
      • AMD Compute
      • PCI Express 4.0
      • Streaming up to 8K
      • Asynchronous Compute
      • Radeon Rays Audio and True Audio Next
      • Radeon Image Sharpening
      • Fidelity FX
      • Radeon Freesync 2 HDR
      • Radeon VR Ready Premium
      • Updated TriXX Boost feature to get maximum performance
      • Dual BIOS’
      • Fuse Protection
      • DirectX 12 Optimized
      • HDR Ready
      • Radeon Relive
    • Requires a minimum of 450Watts, recommended 500
    • Requires 1 x 8-Pin PCI Connector

I know the specs are not exciting, but they are important.  Now let’s check out the unboxing.

The first thing we see, is the Sapphire Graphics Card Quick Installation Guide.  Good information, but you won’t need it since I will show you how to install the card in this review.

The weird one, the manufacturers sheet is needed when purchased in Germany.

And then we have the card itself, the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB OC.  Now that we have gone over everything, I know, not a ton but we are safe to jump into the next chapter of the review, A Close look at the card.

Continue on to: A Close look at the card

[nextpage title=”A Close look at the card”]

The Pulse series from Sapphire is the more budget friendly version of the Nitro+, saving you a few dollars by getting rid of the glitter and glam of the Nitro+ series.  By Glitter and Glam, they remove the lighting features, and the larger heatsink so if you are trying to save money and don’t care about the RGB LED’s and the larger heatsink, this is the card for you.  I will get into the heatsink in a bit.

The card measures 9.17 inches in length

It is 4.80 inches in depth.

And 1.55 inches in width, a relatively small card perfect for tighter fits and smaller cases.  The card will only require 2 PCI-e slots, even though it is physically installed on 1 PCI-e slot.

This card provides 3 x Display ports with a specification of 1.4 and 1 x HDMI Port.  The HDMI port provides resolutions up to 4096 x 2160 and the Display port provides resolutions up to 5120 x 2880, you can use all 4 at the same time.

The card comes with no additional adapters, for example a DVI or VGA to HDMI or Display port, so make sure your monitor supports these ports.  If it does not, you can use a DVI to Display or HDMI or a VGA to Display or HDMI adapter.  The fact that the card does not include it, helps the card stay at a better price point, would be pretty worthless to include them if you didn’t need them, right?

Laying the card down, we expose the rear part of the heatsink.  We can see it’s not too large, I wonder what that will mean for thermals… no worries we will find out here.  We can see what looks to be a PCI-E connection, let’s turn the card a little more.

Here we can see the card only has 1 x 8Pin PCIE connection and yes, it needs to be connected.  We can see a little more of the heat sink and we can see the big old “SAPPHIRE” logo, looks nice doesn’t it?  There is another little opening over the Sapphire logo.

The opening is the slot for the BIOS select switch.  This switch switches the card from low powered silent mode off to the left (closest to the IO) and as shown here on the right for Performance mode.  Low Powered Silent mode, reduces the clocks and the voltages on the card keeping the card a little more silent and reducing the heat it generates.  Performance mode, raises the voltages and GPU/Memory speeds for gaming, which of course causes a little more noise and heat to generate.

We will go over all of this in this review.

Here we can see the top of the card, showing off the SAPPHIRE PULSE logo in all of its glory, and the GPU retention mechanism keeping that GPU firmly on that heatsink.  You will also notice there is a metal backplate on this card with a few cut outs throughout the card.  This helps the card exhaust heat into the system which would be sucked out through the rear case fan and depending on your system setup, through the top of the case as well.

 

The rear of the top of the card has a few more cutouts to help push more heat out, through the fins on the heatsink.

The bottom of the card, shows the connectors that would slide into the PCI-e slot, a few stickers with the part number, serial number and then we can also see the heatpipes.

The bottom of the card, we find the Dual ball bearing fans with the Pulse logo’s on them and a few designs along the shroud itself.

Here we find the IO portion of the card.  Here as we mentioned earlier, you will find 3 x Display ports and 1 x HDMI port.  You will also notice the cutouts here exposing the heatsink fins.  This will also help to exhaust some air.

Lastly, we find the card installed into a machine, but how’d it get in there?  No worries my friend, in this next chapter we will go over Installing the Sapphire Radeon PULSE RX 5500 XT 8GB OC Card.

Continue on to: Installing the Sapphire Radeon PULSE RX 5500 XT 8GB OC Card

[nextpage title=”Installing the Sapphire Radeon PULSE RX 5500 XT 8GB OC Card”]

We all at some point didn’t know how to install a video card, and some of still don’t know but this page will help you get that confidence to install it on your own.  Generally, the process is the same with all cards, just a few little differences, but we go over everything here.

In this video, we go over installing the card, but we also go over how to remove your old card without damaging it or your motherboard.

Pretty easy right?  If you noticed, in that video, I don’t only show you how to physically install the card, but I also show you how to remove your older drivers using DDU and then how to locate and install the newer drivers.

For this card, I utilize the latest and greatest drivers which at the time were very buggy for many people.  Using DDU to first uninstall the older drivers first (NVIDIA or AMD), not using the Control Panel or the cringe worthy Device Manager method I have NEVER had issues with drivers.  I hope this helps you so that you never have issues again.

OK, now that the card and drivers are installed, you want to see how it performs right?  Well, on this next page we will go over benchmarks, performance, temperatures and power consumption.  A little later on, we will go over a new portion I am adding to the reviews, so stay tuned.

Continue on to: Benchmarks, Performance, Temperatures and Power consumption

[nextpage title=”Benchmarks, Performance, Temperatures and Power consumption”]

So that you know what I am working with and to compare performance with your own system, here are my system specifications.

Here are the specs on the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB OC.

I used GPU-Z to gather temperatures of the card.  Since the 5 series was released, AMD has added a new temperature sensor, the (Hot Spot) temperature, I will include both readings on my findings now.

The differences, Hotspot is the single max point of temperature on the chip underneath the heat spreader, while GPU temp, also known as Edge temp is the outside of the heat spreader.  Not sure why 2, to me a GPU is a GPU, it should point out and read the single hottest point on the GPU.  Since people are very sensitive about their temps, it might have been done to not freak people out on higher temps but if you are looking for the temps, it’s because you want to know the real temps.

Most if not all programs will show you only the GPU Temperature and will omit the HotSpot. Not sure if this is because it is not relevant or that this sensor is just too new, but I felt I should report it to you.

To measure wattage, I used the Kill A Watt by P3 International, it works great and is very affordable.

Here are the games and programs I use for benchmarking.

  • FutureMark’s 3DMark Fire Strike
  • FutureMark’s TimeSpy
  • Metro Exodus
  • Assassin’s Creed Odyssey
  • Shadows of the Tomb Raider
  • Far Cry 5
  • Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands

Alright, let’s get started.

The overall score on UL’s 3DMark FireStrike 1.1 was 12,432 and the hottest the card reached was 61°C and 74° on the Hotspot.  During this test the card consumed on average 166 Watts and peaked at 253Watts.

This is a budget card, but here we can see the card scored 67% better than all other results.  Let’s see who this handles DX12 on TimeSpy.

TimeSpy roughed it up a little, showing that the Pulse 5500 XT was only 37% better than all other results.  Clearly this card is not meant for 4K gaming but is touted to be a card that takes care of 1920×1080, currently the most popular resolution.  The overall TimeSpy score was 5,147 and heated up the GPU to 63°C and the HotSpot to 81°C while consuming an average of 206Watts, peaking at 290Watts.

I would say though, after watching these for hours, they are boring movies, I would rather play a game.  With that, I want to jump over to the gaming benchmarks.  We will start off with Deep Silver’s Metro Exodus.

For all games in this review, I keep all the settings the same, changing only the resolution.  I raise the settings to Ultra or the highest possible changing only the resolution from 1920×1080 to 2560×1440 and finally to 3840×2160.

Here are the results from all 3 resolutions benchmarked.

At 3840×2160, Metro Exodus is unplayable at the Ultra preset.  The Pulse 5500 XT came in at 18.58 FPS, consuming an average of 252 Watts heating up the card to 81°C.  At 2560×1440, the game still unplayable, came in at 29.83 FPS, taking up 234 Watts on average and keeping the PC toasty at 76°C.  At 1920×1080, you guessed it, still unplayable at 37.31 FPS consuming 246Watts and keeping up the heat at 77°C.

The 5500 XT is meant to be a budget card, Metro being a card kill shows now mercy on it either.  We will get a little more into that later in this review.

So, let’s jump over and see what Laura has for us in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Again here, I keep the settings the same, changing only the resolutions.

At 3840 x 2160 we could scratch together an average of 21FPS, drawing 210 Watts on average and toasting up the card to 82°C.  At 2560 x 1440, things got better but still unplayable at 42 frames and still a bit toasty at 80°C and consuming on average 208 Watts, a 66.67% improvement over 4K.  At 1920 x 1080, the frame rate increased 41.51% at 64 FPS and the temperature dropped 3.73% at 79°C and with that increase of performance, allowing the card to do what it does, consumed on average 223Watts.

I wonder how Laura would love through the artifact’s left behind in Assassins Creed Odyssey?  Who cares about that, let’s see how it performs?

Assassins Creed Odyssey is another GPU killer, at 3840×2160 we received a slide show at 20 FPS, drawing 218 Watts on average, keeping things warm at 77°C.  At 2560×1440, performance rose 51.85% to 34 frames per second, sadly still not playable.  At 1920×1080, the frame rate increased 21.05% over the 2K benches coming in at 42 FPS at 73°C, consuming 230 Watts on average.  It seems for the budget cards the Ultra preset is really kicking it.

Alright, now that we are done in the past, let’s step back into today and see how Far Cry 5 performs.

Far Cry 5 did a bit better, it takes it a bit easy on the GPU. At 4K, we reached an average of 28 FPS at 79°C consuming 243 Watts on average.  At 2560 x 1440, we get a pretty decent and playable 56 frames per second, 66.67% better than at 4K while coming in 3° cooler at 76°C consuming on average 238 Watts, 2.08% less power than at 4K.

At 1920 x 1080, this card hit 82 frames per second, 37.68% faster than at 2K and 246 Watts on average hitting 75°C.  1080P is the sweet spot here.  Mind you, 56FPS on 2K is still nice, especially being on the Ultra preset, but we want to pass 60FPS here.

Let’s visit our old friend Tom Clancy and see what Ghost Recon Wildlands has in store for us.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wild Lands didn’t fare so well at 4K as you would have expected, reaching only 19.18 frames per second and hitting 82°C consuming on average 238Watts.  2K didn’t improve the frame rate much at 36.56FPS, 53.83% coming in at 59.86 FPS a 47.78% improvement, consuming 218 Watts on average and hitting 76°C.  At 1080P, we got close at 47.61FPS, 26.27% above 2K cooling down 6° at 70°C and consuming 216 Watts on average.

Sadly, Wild Lands was very unplayable at any preset at Ultra, and we will go over this again but now lets see how the 5500 XT Compares to the 5700 and 5700 XT in Comparing Performance, but I will spare you the rest and only show you 1920×1080, since that’s what it was meant for.

Continue on to: Comparing Performance

[nextpage title=”Comparing Performance”]

Here, we will be comparing the differences between the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT, Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5700 and the Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ 5700 XT.  It will be easy to know before we see results which will be the fastest, but this is to give you an idea on what the performance differential difference will be.

We will start off with 3DMark FireStrike, and we will only be providing the over GPU temperature, not the HotSpot, I did not notice the Hotspot till it was too late for the 5700 and 5700XT.

There is a lot of detail, but I will break it down by only the general 3DMark score, but all the rest of the info is here in case it is important for you.  The Nitro+ 5700 XT received 22,809, 5700 received 20,214 and the 5500 XT reached 12,432.  Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was a 12.06% difference, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 47.68% difference.  Let’s see the prices as well, at the time of this review being written, prices will fluctuate of course.

Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 5700 XT 8GB: $465.42

Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5700 8GB: $409.99

Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB: $229.99

Between the Nitro+ 5700 XT and the Pulse 5700 XT, we can see also a 12.66% difference in pricing.  Between the Pulse 5700 XT and the 5500 XT, we can see a larger gap, in your favor at 56.25%.  Speaking in performance to value, the 5500 XT is a steal but still, is it worth it?  We will keep up this evaluation when grading this card throughout the review.

Let’s move on to 3DMark TimeSpy.

A little less detail so a bit easier to read, for this test we will use the overall 3DMark score.  The Nitro+ 5700 XT received 9,251, 5700 received 8,116 and the 5500 XT reached 5,147.  Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was a 13.07% difference, a larger gap than in the prior test, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 44.77% difference a smaller gap this time, the 5500 XT again pulling up ahead but the pricing still seems on par.

Let’s see what the bruiser known as Metro Exodus has to say here.  Again, we will only be going over 1920×1080 scores, though it might seem a little silly for the Nitro+ 5700 XT and the Pulse 5700, but it is to keep things in context.

Adding to the tests, being that this is a budget card I felt the need to include the High Preset along with the Ultra preset.  A budget card cannot in anyway be compared to it’s more expensive and costly piers and is a great way to present price versus performance.

Going over 1920×1080, we can see a pretty big difference but I would say more on presets.  The Nitro+ 5700 XT was able to pull in an impressive 70.74FPS, 5700 received 62.88 at 17° lower and the 5500 XT pulled in a sad 37.31FPS though at 2° lower.  Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was a 11.76% difference, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 51.04% difference though in favor of the 5500, the 5500 XT again pulling up ahead but the pricing still seems on par.

Outside of that, on the High Preset, we can see the card increased over itself by 19.89% at 45.55FPS.  Sadly, this was still not very playable showing yet again, what a bear Metro can be on your system with its beautiful graphics.  The card also increases 6° though consumed 9.28% less power than its ultra-preset test.

Let’s see how Laura takes to these cards.

Going over 1920×1080 for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, again a difference.  The Nitro+ 5700 XT was able to pull in an impressive 121FPS, 5700 a still impressive 103FPS at 15° lower and the 5500 XT pulled in a perfectly playable 64FPS, 6° lower to boot.  Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was a 16.07% difference, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 46.70% difference, the pricing here is even more accurate.  So far, the 3 are priced well to performance.

On High, once again we can see a great improvement on performance, coming in 15.83% higher in performance over its Ultra preset though a 31.46% decrease over the 5700.  Between itself in presets, there was a 12.38% decrease in power necessary though an 11° increase in heat, the card got to use itself properly and increase its workload.

Let’s see what Assassins Creed Odyssey looks like.

At 1920×1080 on Assassin’s Creed Odyssey the Nitro+ 5700 XT performed at 77FPS, 5700 a very playable 65FPS at nice 22° lower and the 5500 XT pulled in a sad 42FPS.  Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was a 16.90% difference, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 42.99% difference.  At the Ultra preset, the 5500 XT couldn’t stand a chance here.

On High, once again we can see the FPS Counter came up 2FPS higher than on the 5700 Pulse.  Comparing it to the 5700, there was a 4° increase but a 20.26% decrease in average power consumption.  Pretty impressive that it did beat out its bigger brother, though with a decrease in presets but a great thing to see that it did pull ahead of itself with an Ultra preset though of course to be expected.  This increase of right now has been the best among the comparisons.

At 1920×1080 on FarCry 5 the Nitro+ 5700 XT rocked at 131FPS, 5700 an uppity 120FPS at nice 19° lower and the 5500 XT sailed smoothly 82FPS.  Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was an 8.76% difference, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 37.62% difference.  Here is where the value of the card starts to get a little tighter, Not on the 5500 XT, but the Pulse 5700.  The 5500XT is starting to show a little more value even in a segment it’s not meant to be in.

At High, it only come up 7.06% higher on the FPS Average counter at 88FPS.  The temps went up 4°C though on average consumed the same amount of power.

Finally, let’s see the comparison in Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildLands.

At 1920×1080 on WildLands the Nitro+ 5700 XT performed at 73.86FPS, the 5700 a very decent 65.57FPS at nice 18°, the highest in the group and the 5500 XT pulled in another sad 40.29FPS.

Between the 5700 XT and the 5700 there was an 11.89% difference, between the 5700 and the 5500 XT a 47.76% difference.  At the Ultra preset, the 5500 XT couldn’t stand a chance here.

Yet again, the High preset presents itself in a better light (obviously it would) than its Ultra run coming in 57.16% faster at 72.50 on high vs 40.29 at ultra.   The card, while performing better kept its same temperature at 70°C but consumed on average 4.52% more power.  From totally unplayable at Ultra to extra playable at High.

While some games work out fine at the Ultra preset, many did not but you have to ask yourself here, with this more budget friendly card, will you actually expect Ultra presets?  So being that this is the more budget friendly card, I decided to add a new level to this review, the High preset.  Let me know what you think about adding the high preset to all test, a bit more work on my side but I felt it added a different and needed depth to my review.

This is just default performance but you might wonder if we could squeeze out a little more performance with overclocking and more, well we can and I will show you how in this next chapter, Performance with TriXX and comparing it with overclocking as well.

Continue on to: Performance with TRIXX Boost and Overclocking

[nextpage title=”Performance with TRIXX Boost and Overclocking”]

Coming from yesterdays thought, overclocking is the only way to get a performance increase, sometimes though its about under 10% or so, not too much.  Today we have TRIXX boost which actually allows us to get more performance without the need to overclock.

Overclocking is fun, since you have to challenge yourself and be incredibly patient.  It can take days to hit that perfect overclock without any stability issues, artifacting and perfect fan curve to combat overheating.  Well, we will try both and see which one is better… one might be considered cheating, but we will get into that a little later.  First, you may already know what overclocking is, but do you know what TRIXX Boost is?

Let me show you.

OK, now that I have shown you TRIXX Boost, I think we can get a little into the performance comparison between the 2.  I will mention, prior to the 5 series card, you would need to use TRIXX, MSI Afterburner or even AMD Drivers themselves utilizing WattMan, but not so much anymore.  AMD’s latest drivers have.

Before we get into the overclocking tests, I wanted to provide to you the GPU-Z clock readings.  On the left is what the clocks were prior to the overclock and on the right the overclocked results.  Here are my overclocked settings utilizing AMD’s latest driver at the time of this review.

For reference, these are the overclock settings I came up with, you are free to use them but please know, they will not work for all.  Overclocking is not a one size fits all thing, you and I may have the same card, but yours might overclock better or worse than the one I was testing with.  Please also note, I do not claim to be an authority in overclocking, but I am providing you with the results I have.

Please note, when you over clock on this software, whenever you make a change, be sure to save your profile.  If you run into any issues with the overclock, the drivers will reset themselves to stock and you will lose any progress you have made.

I want to also mention, I ran into zero issues with these drivers (19.12.3) and I state that because many people claim to have had issues.  The reason I have not run into any issues is because I used this procedure, follow it and you will notice results.

I will be testing with stock and overclocked settings on Ultra since we see that all (minus one) of the High tests were playable, with playable, I will stick to game averages, not synthetics. Let’s start it.

This is not totally unexpected, but we can see the base had the base level performance, the overclock slightly better and with TRIXX Boost the best.  The base is obvious as to why it has the base performance but we can see the overclock came in 14.08 degrees hotter than the base, and 1° cooler than with TRIXX Boost.

With power consumed, the Overclock actually performed consuming 6.67 Watts less than base and .87% higher than utilizing TRIXX Boost, that’s a bit interesting.  Lastly, the overclock performance 5.68% better than the base at 39.49 but the TRIXX Boost outperformed the overclock by 6.26%.

If you saw the video on TRIXX Boost earlier you can see how this would have performed better, lowering the resolution while keeping all the same presets but what is even better is that it did all of this without losing any of the image quality.

Let’s see how Shadow of the Tomb Raider does.

Closing in a little here, we can see a slightly smaller difference among the 3 scores, but still enough to mater.  While the 5500 XT Base came in at 64FPS, we can see the overclock outperformed it by 6.06% and the TRIXX Boost outperformed the overclock by double the difference at 12.41%.  Here we can see 1 of the reasons overclocking has its downfalls, the temperature on the overclock was 20.41% higher than the base 21.92% than the TRIXX Boosted scores.  Oddly enough the Base and OC shared the same average wattage consumed but the consumed 7.44% less power on average than the other 2.

TRIXX Boost here seems to be a great choice, but let’s keep checking out the rest of the games before we make a ruling here.

Proving true to previous results, the 5500 XT Base came in at 42FPS, Pulse 5500 XT overclocked our performance increased by 17.39%.  With that increase the temperature increased by 20.59% from 61°C on base to 75° on overclock and power consumption increased by a small 1.30%.  Coming over to TRIXX Boost, we can see a small bump in performance over the overclock by 3.92%. This did increase the power being eaten up by 3.79% from 233 on the Pulse 5500 XT overclocked to the TRIXX Boosted version.  While you would think more power means more heat, actually the temperature dropped 17.

39% just below the overclocked version.

TRIXX Boost again bested the overclock, which is great and while oddly enough it did consume a little more power the temperature decreased.

Let’s head on over to Far Cry 5 and see what performance Gems we uncover.

TRIXX once again seems to take the cake here, the 5500 XT Base came in at 82FPS which on its own is perfectly playable but the Pulse 5500 XT overclocked saw a 5. 92% increase in performance.  With that tiny increase, there was a larger increase in heat, by 10.53% on the overclock although a 1.64% decrease in power consumed.  On TRIXX Boost, we can see a nice increase in performance over the overclock by 13.90%, increasing the power being consumed by 6.4% and a decrease in temperature by 5.13%.  TRIXX is really showing how powerful it is.

Let’s see how WildLands performs under these 3 tests.

Well, it seems Tom Clancy’s Wild Lands was a little more rough on the cards.   At the Sapphire Radeon PULSE 5700 XT’s base clocks, the game was barely playable, but with the overclock there was a 6.32% increase in performance, sadly still unplayable at 42.95FPS.  From the OC to utilizing TRIXX Boost, there was a 6.64% increase in performance yet again to an unplayable 45.87FPS though.

From the increase on the base clocks, there was a 2°C increase in temperature as well as a 1-Watt increase in power consumption.  On TRIXX, there was a decrease in average power consumed compared to the OC by 6.64%.

In most games here, there were improvements on the TRIXX Boost over the overclock which is pretty cool.  On the overclock, this was the highest I could push this card, although you may be able to go higher, but TRIXX Boost wins this round.

This was on Ultra and Ultra may not be the best setting for gaming, as you saw when we tested on high the frame rate was much higher.

So aside from Performance, you might be asking yourself how loud does this card get, well funny you ask, I have a video just for you that shows that.

Now that we have the performance and the potential noise, I want to bring you my Gameplay and Final thoughts on the card.

Continue on to: Gameplay and Final thoughts on the card

[nextpage title=”Gameplay and Final thoughts on the card”]

Chances are, if have this card, you are not just buying it to surf the web, although it will do that fine, chances are you are gaming.  Benchmarks aside, you want to see how this card performs in games and we have that here.  I test 6 games for you here,

  • Assassins Creed Odyssey
  • Metro Exodus
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider
  • Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
  • Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wild Lands
  • Red Dead Redemption 2

All games were played at their medium presets.  Most games would have worked fine at High as you saw before, the more demanding ones need to go a little lower and to keep this uniform, I kept it at medium.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

As I mentioned in the video, I am using OBS here, so that did take a little performance from the card, but nothing too bad.

Final thoughts, let’s check out my review overview video and then go over what was mentioned here.

Continue on to: Final Thoughts

[nextpage title=”Final Thoughts”]

Comparing the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB OC card to the Nitro+ RX 5700 XT and the Pulse RX 5700 really helped me to not only understand the 5 series, but the pricing structure as well.  Pricing is key, as too high of a price and most won’t even look at it, but then we have performance and the line up tells that story just right.  During my testing I came to find the Pulse 5700 to be slightly too expensive between this 5500 XT and the 5500 XT slightly too high and I will explain what I mean in this confusing sentence.

At the top, of course you have the 5700 XT and as you can tell in the review, at the bottom we have the 5500 XT, pricing tells you that but there’s more than a price.  The Pulse 5700 doesn’t give the Nitro+ 5700 a lot of room to breath being that it’s so close in price but not so much in performance.  With the 5600 coming out, I feel like it will bump the Pulse 5700 out of the way or maybe it will make the pricing structure make that much more sense.

Before I go on, let’s go over the Pros and Cons of the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT.

  Pros

  • Tons of ports to fit almost any monitor (except DVI and of course VGA but you can buy adapters)
  • Supports 4 Simultaneous displays
  • FreeSync Support
  • Supports DX12
  • 0DB Fan mode
  • Quick Connect Fan Replacement
  • Dual BIOS support
  • Supports TRIXX Boost
  • Great performance from a budget card
  • Stylish Metal Backplate

Cons

  • Can get pretty hot
  • No RGB, but it’s a Pulse, not expect (Not included in final results but had to mention it)
  • Cost to performance, but is that a negative?
  • Does not include VGA or DVI adapters (but that may bring up the cost)

I get to all of this in the review here as well but in a video, check out my video review.

So yeah, it in-itself is a good card and I think the cost is just about in line with the performance but it get’s confusing with the help of TRIXX.  1920×1080 gaming, it’s got that covered but at Medium and High settings for this price, I am cool with that resolution but I am looking for Ultra but TRIXX makes a difference bringing up it’s average.

With TRIXX on High, the card makes up for its short comings and while it does bring down the resolution, it’s not noticeable as long as you stay above 88%.  As you saw in the results above, it actually bests the Pulse 5700 on some test’s at a lower price point, that of course is not to say that the Pulse 5700 can’t use TRIXX and do the same, but you get what I mean.

So with the Pulse 5500 XT, you can get along the same performance of the Pulse 5700 with a little tuning, not overclocking, just tuning and that’s easy enough.  While not all games will support it, most will and that’s a great thing but you can overclock and tune too and all games will support a stable overclock.

The heat, that seems to be a chipset thing across the board, but it can be controlled with some good case cooling.  With the heat comes the power consumption, but if you notice, the card reached a max of 306 Watts, that’s nothing and with the BIOS select switch can easily become a living room entertainment system, dare I say a replacement for a console?

Well, let’s get into my final ruling, the results.

[P_REVIEW post_id=1090398 visual=’full’]

With all that, the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT 8GB OC card get’s a solid 9.2, Editor Choice award.  Congratulations Sapphire.

The card is a solid card, a good overall card but just know that 1920×1080 (the most popular resolution) is what you can expect.  If you have a 590, or maybe even a 580 on the AMD side, you might want to stick with your card a little longer.  On the NVIDIA side, if you have a 1060 or a 1660, you may want to stay with that.  Mind you over these cards, the 5500XT will outperform them in many games but not by much.  If you are coming from onboard graphics or older cards, this is a solid choice.

Return to: Intro

We are influencers and brand affiliates.  This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.