Sapphire RX 6600 XT Pulse Review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire RX 6600 XT Pulse3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. 1080p Game Benchmarks7. Clock Speed8. GPU Temperatures9. Acoustics10. Noise-Normalised Temperatures11. Power Consumption12. Overclocking13. Closing Thoughts14. View All Pages

Following on from our first RX 6600 XT review yesterday, today we are back with a look at the Sapphire RX 6600 XT Pulse. Having reviewed plenty of Sapphire's Nitro+ cards this generation, this is our first look at a Pulse model since the launch of the RX 5600 XT. With just a $20 price premium over AMD's baseline MSRP, what does the Pulse have to offer potential customers?

The Sapphire Pulse series has garnered a lot of praise over the years, with the cards designed to offer a ‘no frills' experience, for those who just want solid build quality, strong cooling performance and a capable VRM. If you like a few extra features, such as on-board ARGB headers, dual-BIOS and quick connect fans – Sapphire will point you towards its more expensive Nitro+ series.

With the RX 6600 XT Pulse, Sapphire is offering a factory-overclocked core, an emphasis on low noise levels and a clean design aesthetic. Let's see if they have got it right.

	RX 6900 XT	RX 6800 XT	RX 6800	RX 6700 XT	RX 6600 XT
Architecture	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2
Manufacturing Process	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm
Transistor Count	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	17.2 billion	11.1 billion
Die Size	519 mm²	519 mm²	519 mm²	336 mm²	237 mm²
Ray Accelerators	80	72	60	40	32
Compute Units	80	72	60	40	32
Stream Processors	5120	4608	3840	2560	2048
Game GPU Clock	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 1815MHz	Up to 2424MHz	Up to 2359MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2105MHz	Up to 2581MHz	Up to 2589MHz
Peak SP Performance	Up to 23.04 TFLOPS	Up to 20.74 TFLOPS	Up to 16.17 TFLOPS	Up to 13.21 TFLOPS	Up to 10.6 TFLOPS
Peak Half Precision Performance	Up to 46.08 TFLOPS	Up to 41.47 TFLOPS	Up to 32.33 TFLOPS	Up to 26.43 TFLOPS	Up to 21.21 TFLOPS
Peak Texture Fill-Rate	Up to 720 GT/s	Up to 648.0 GT/s	Up to 505.2 GT/s	Up to 413.0 GT/s	Up to 331.4 GT/s
ROPs	128	128	96	64	64
Peak Pixel Fill-Rate	Up to 288.0 GP/s	Up to 288.0 GP/s	Up to 202.1 GP/s	Up to 165.2 GP/s	Up to 165.7 GP/s
AMD Infinity Cache	128MB	128MB	128MB	96MB	32MB
Memory	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Bandwidth	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	384 GB/s	256 GB/s
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit
Board Power	300W	300W	250W	230W	160W

As a spec recap, RX 6700 XT is built using the new Navi 23 GPU, a physically small die, measuring just 237 mm². It houses 32 Compute Units (CUs), with 64 stream processors per CU, giving a total of 2048. RX 6600 XT features a fully populated Navi 23 GPU, but we can expect a cut-down version to appear with the rumoured RX 6600.

RDNA 2 houses one ray accelerator per CU, so there’s a total of 32 with the RX 6600 XT. Four texture units per CU gives a total of 128, while there’s also 64 ROPs. Clock speed remains at the lofty heights that we saw from the RX 6700 XT, as the 6600 XT's rated game clock of 2589MHz is 8MHz above that of the RX 6700 XT. Sapphire has added a factory overclock, but the boost clock is only 2593MHz, so it's not much of an increase over reference spec.

As for the memory configuration, AMD has opted to use a 128-bit memory interface paired with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. Using 16Gbps modules, total memory bandwidth hits 256 GB/s, lower than even the last-generation RX 5600 XT . RDNA 2 GPUs, however, have the benefit of AMD’s Infinity Cache, but even that is reduced, with just a 32MB cache used here.

Lastly, total board power (TBP) is rated at 160W, a reduction of 70W, or almost 30%, compared to the RX 6700 XT. 

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