Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 XT Pulse Custom Gaming Card Springs To Life
One of the first retail listings for a custom Navi card has appeared, which also gives us a glimpse of Sapphire's first non-reference model among the Radeon RX 5700 series. The card in question is Sapphire's Radeon RX 5700 XT Pulse, and it appears on a retail site in the UK priced at £428.99 (which converts to around $521 in US currency).
The card is not actually available to purchase or preorder yet, though. Instead, the listing at OverclockersUK says, "This product is available soon!" That could mean as early as next week—AMD has gone on record saying custom cards from its hardware partners will start appearing around the middle of August.
Sapphire's Radeon RX 5700 XT Pulse model kicks the blower-style cooler to the curb and replaces it with a cooling shroud that has two axial fans. Blower-style coolers do a good job of forcing hot air directly out of a case, but axial fan solutions are preferred by some because they generally result in lower GPU temps, and are sometimes quieter to boot.
The listing does not indicate if Sapphire is factory overclocking this variant or sticking with reference specs, at least for the GPU. As it pertains to the memory, the listing indicates stock speeds, with 8GB of GDDR6 memory running at 14Gbps.
We do get to see the card from several angles, though. One of them shows the backplate design. In keeping with the "Pulse" theme, there is a red line on the backplate in the form of a heartbeat reading. As far as backplates go, this one is pretty nifty.
One other thing to note. This model draws power from 8-pin and 6-pin PCIe connectors (one each) rather than dual 8-pin connectors. If it does sport a factory overclock, it will probably be a conservative one, though that has yet to be seen.
