Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 OC review: Good 1080p performance in a pint-sized package

The name "Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC" is a bit of a mouthful, but it represents a solid graphics card that delivers fantastic performance for 1080p gaming. This pint-sized graphics card packs plenty of power to keep a 1080p monitor well-fed with enough frames for an enjoyable experience across a variety of modern AAA titles. It also competes in the no-man's land of the budget GPU segment with almost little-to-no competition from Nvidia.

This GPU — just like many other AMD graphics cards — is not very good at ray-tracing, but it's hard to argue against the value it brings to the table, particularly for those who are buying a sub-$300 graphics card for gaming on a budget.

About this review: This graphics card was provided by AMD for the purposes of testing, but the company had no input on this review.

Pricing, availability, and specs

The Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC launched on May 25, 2023, along with the other RX 7600 partner cards. It's been on the market for quite some time, and is readily available to purchase for $270 right now from various retailers like Amazon. It doesn't have much in the name of competition in Nvidia's 40-series graphics card family, as even the most affordable RTX 4060 models will cost you $300. AMD's new RX 7600 XT stands as a solid alternative in the best budget GPUs segment, but even those models go for $330, which is considered a significant price difference in this budget category.

Design and features

Small form-factor and clean design

The first thing you will notice about this particular RX 7600 model from Sapphire is how small it really is. It's easily one of the tiniest graphics cards I've used in a while, and it looks comically small compared to the likes of RTX 4080 Super and the 4070 Ti Super GPUs that we reviewed here at XDA not too long ago. It's not as small as the space-saving Sapphire Pulse RX 6400 model that you may have seen with a single fan, but it's small enough to fit inside most PC cases. With dimensions of 240 x 107 x 44mm, I had absolutely no issues getting this dual-slot RX 7600 GPU to fit inside the ASUS Prime AP201 MicroATX case.

The Sapphire Pulse lineup has some of the best-looking cooler designs for AMD graphics cards, and this one is no different. It provides great airflow with its dual-fan design and large cutouts on the plastic case, and it's also built well and looks good for the price it's being offered. The I/O panel at the back is home to a single HDMI 2.1 and as many as three DisplayPort 2.1 ports, and the aluminum back plate also features cutouts that make the graphics card look stylish while offering good airflow.

The Sapphire Pulse lineup has some of the best-looking cooler designs for AMD graphics cards, and this one is no different.

Installing the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC GPU is fairly simple as its lightweight design doesn't demand a GPU support bracket, and it also uses a single 8-pin connector, which minimizes cable clutter. The black and red colors look great on this graphics card for the most part, but I believe it would have looked even better with some lights.

Performance

A great GPU for 1080p gaming

The Radeon RX 7600 GPU comes with all the latest technologies AMD has introduced with the RDNA 3 generation of graphics cards, and it maxes out the "Navi 33" silicon with 32 RDNA 3 compute units, 32 Ray Accelerators, 64 AI accelerators, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. You are looking at about 2,048 stream processors, and the RX 7600 graphics card comes with 8GB GDDR6 VRAM across a 128-bit memory bus, running at 18GBps speeds.

Compared to the RX 6600 GPU, the new RX 7600 graphics card brings a modest set of upgrades while keeping the same memory. The improved performance metrics have resulted in higher power levels, but the built-in fans and the heat sink handle thermals very well. The limited amount of VRAM doesn't make it look as exciting as the RX 7700 XT that I tested recently, but this Sapphire Pulse model is also on the cheaper side. It's just a more viable option for casual gamers building an entry-level gaming PC for the first time.

I used a test bench with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, 32GB DDR5-6000 RAM, and a 1TB M.2 SSD to benchmark this particular graphic card, and I was able to get pretty good performance out of it across all the titles and tests I ran. To my surprise, the compact heat sink on this GPU did a surprisingly good job of keeping things cool as I cranked the benchmarks.

Compared to the 3DMark scores that I was able to record with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3050 Twin Edge OC GPU, which was priced at $290 at Amazon at the time of this review, it's safe to say that AMD's RX 7600 GPU pushes way ahead with a better score. The performance uptick seen here should give you the kind of improvements you can expect to see while upgrading from a relatively old GPU that favored 1080p gaming. I've also added the benchmark numbers scored by the ASRock Challenger Radeon RX 7700 XT OC graphics card to give you a better understanding of where this particular graphics card stands at the moment.

Many of these title can be enjoyed with high to max-graphics settings at 1080p, even without the FSR upscaling.

I had my expectations in check while testing an entry-level graphics card with 8GB VRAM, but the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 OC GPU was able to deliver some great results. Even modern titles like Avatar Frontiers of Pandora and Cyberpunk 2077 run well at 1080p resolution. In fact, many of these title can be enjoyed with high to max-graphics settings at 1080p, even without the FSR upscaling, which is great. I say that because the image quality produced by upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR isn't particularly great.

Temperatures and fan noise

Low temps and fan noise make it a reliable option

I was able to record a peak power draw of 182W while running benchmarks and playing games to test the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 OC, at which point it was running surprisingly cool. The two ball-bearing fans attached to this graphics card prioritize a low-noise operation, and they completely stop spinning when the GPU idles. What's more impressive is that I was only able to record a peak temperature of about 66 degrees Celsius with the fans spinning at around 1300PRM, which is great for those who like to be around PCs that don't make too much noise.

I was only able to record a peak temperature of about 66 degrees Celsius with the fans spinning at around 1300PRM.

Also, the fact that the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC graphics card was sitting at around 66 degrees Celsius inside a MicroATX case in an ambient room temperature of around 25 degrees Celsius is quite commendable. That means there's probably more room for this GPU to spread inside the thermal envelope.

Should you buy the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 7600 OC GPU?

You should buy the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC GPU if:

• You are looking for an entry-level graphics card in 2024 for 1080p gaming.
• You want a small and compact graphics card that also runs pretty quiet.
• You want a relatively affordable graphics card to get started with 1080p gaming.

You should not buy the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC GPU if:

• You can afford to spend more on your purchase (consider upgrading to something like the RX 7600XT or the RX 7700 XT if you have the budget).
• You want to play games at 1440p resolution.

The Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC graphics card is an excellent value for money pick that offers great entry-level 1080p performance. It also runs quieter than most GPUs in its price range, and delivers better results than many of the competing cards from Nvidia, while running cool. The fact that you can run even some of the more demanding AAA games on this graphics card in 2024 makes it a viable option for economical shoppers and casual gamers.

The Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 7600 OC graphics card is an excellent value for money pick that offers great entry-level 1080p performance.

It may not be the graphics card to pick if you are chasing the absolute best performance and visual fidelity in games with ray-traced graphics, but it's easy to recommend it over something like the RX 7700 XT or the RTX 4060 Ti for those who are just looking to get started with an affordable gaming PC.