Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600 XT review

Sometimes simple is better.

The Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics cards we’ve reviewed so far—the $550 Asus ROG Strix, and the $419 XFX Speedster Merc 308—represent the pinnacle of those manufacturers’ lineups, bristling with heavy-duty coolers and fancy extras like dual-BIOS switches and glittering lights. And yes, both designs impressed. But the $399 Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600 XT takes the opposite tack, cutting out the fat to focus solely on delivering good performance and good cooling at a good price. (In theory, at least, since the crippling GPU shortage means graphics card prices skyrocket the second they hit store shelves.)

Don’t let that fool you, though. Even though the Sapphire Pulse lacks fanciful hardware luxuries, it manages to pull ahead of those pricier Radeon RX 6600 XT models in our benchmark tests—and it’s because of software. Sapphire has spent years honing its “Trixx Boost” feature, which marries slight image upsampling with AMD’s Radeon Image Sharpening technology to fantastic performance-boosting effect. Activating Trixx pours on extra frames, and to a large enough extent that the Pulse delivers solid 1440p gameplay in titles that can give other Radeon RX 6600 XT models some fits.

So yes, the hardware is only part of the story for the Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600 XT. Let’s dig in.

Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6600 XT specs, features, and design

Be sure to check out our original Radeon RX 6600 XT review for a deeper discussion around this GPU’s setup. It’s worth the time if you’re a chip nerd. AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture helps the Radeon RX 6600 XT sip power and hit sky-high clock speeds, but technical details about how this GPU’s Infinity Cache was implemented—and paired with a tiny memory bus—means it is better suited for ultra-fast 1080p gaming than stepping up to 1440p. (Sapphire’s Trixx Boost tech makes that less true for the Pulse, at least for today.)

For this review, we’ll just plop a chart below that shows how the Radeon RX 6600 XT’s key specifications stack up against last generation’s $279 Radeon RX 5600 XT and $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT. They’re apt comparisons, because while the new card might carry the 5600 XT’s lineage, it also comes in at the 5700 XT’s higher price tag.