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These sound results are not overly precise as I work in an area with high ambient noise levels. As such, don’t take these results as gospel truth, but more as a general indication of overall noise levels.
We take our measurements with the decibel meter on the top and middle section of the case, overhanging the side panel (power supply side, not motherboard tray side) by exactly 1 inch to avoid any airflow pressure coming from the exhausting AIO cooler.
I measured the sound floor to be 38 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in and all CPU and system fans have a fixed fan speed (25%) completely isolating them from any changes in temperature across the system.
Noise levels were measured after 5 minutes of load under three scenario: Furmark, Fire Strike and desktop idle in sequential order with 2 minutes downtime in between each test.
The Sapphire Pulse cards are some of the quietest I've tested, with the aftermarket cooler putting the reference RX 480 design to shame.
The card also idles completely silently thanks to its passive fan mode.
Good review as always! ;D
Great review thank you. So this card is most likely using up Sapphires remaining 480 chips hence the poor OC the card got or you just got a card that lost the chip lottery. lol
My nitro 480 is rock stable @1415/2050. So probably bad sample or issue is somewhere else.
It’s just the silicon lottery – we can rule out Sapphire re-using a 480 as the 580 is manufacturered with a modified 14nm process so the chips aren’t exactly the same. But it is still the same, overall Polaris architecture.
Yea probably just a bad sample Sapphire is a good company I own 2 TrI-X cards and they have been very solid cards and the Tri-X coolers used on their cards are very well built for sure.
Yep most likely 100% true just the Silicon Lottery and nothing else.
In a nutshell, its about as fast as a overclocked GTX980, pretty decent. Don’t forget folks that RX480/580 actually tends to OC better with lower voltages. The reasoning for not attempting a memory OC is pretty weak though, memory OCing on graphics cards is very easy and not time consuming.
You mention a £239.99 retail price but when I follow your link the card is £449.99 so almost twice this price : any thoughts on that inflation in less than a year ?