RDNA2 Goes Low Profile With Sapphire's Pulse RX 6400

Sapphire Pulse RX 6400
(Image credit: VideoCardz)

We initially understood that the AMD Radeon RX 6400 would be an OEM exclusive graphics card, but it is looking more and more like it will become available to consumers. Today, a report and some images shared by VideoCardz cement that notion, if it were still in any doubt, and we got to see a milestone RDNA2 graphics card – the first to become available in low profile form factor. It doesn't require a power connector either, getting all its required power from the PCIe slot.

(Image credit: VideoCardz)

Above, you can see the Sapphire Radeon RX 6400 Pulse graphics card with its retail box. The card has a low profile (LP) bracket affixed, but an optional full-height bracket is shown next to it. Just two ports are present on the bracket, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4.

The box art confirms the Radeon RX 6400 specs, but they weren't a secret, and you can learn more from the official AMD product pages. For comparison, we have put the RX 6400's specs up against some of its close siblings below.

Swipe to scroll horizontally

Radeon model

RX 6400

RX 6500 XT

RX 6600

Cores

768

1024

1792

Ray accelerators

12

16

28

GPU clocks (up to)

2321 MHz

2815 MHz

2491 MHz

GDDR6 config

4GB on 64-bit bus

4GB on 64-bit bus

8GB on 128-bit bus

Bandwidth

112 GBps

128 GBps

224 GBps

TDP

53W

107W

132W

The new Sapphire Pulse RX 6400 graphics card won't have been difficult for Sapphire to put together, as it is very much like a minor rework of the Radeon Pro W6400 professional LP graphics card that launched in January.

Sapphire's new consumer card isn't going to attract droves of PC enthusiasts or gamers, most of whom will want something more powerful. Sapphire boldy claims it to be a 1080p FHD gaming design on the front of the packaging, though.

Even the next model up in the RDNA family has clearly failed to please gamers. After an all-round negative reception by the tech press, the Radeon RX 6500 XT quite rapidly earned the dubious honor of becoming the first graphics card to sell for less than MSRP in many months.

Though we can have a good guess at the performance of the RX 6400 from the specs, some benchmarks leaked at the end of last month. In short, indications were that the RX 6400 was  about 30% slower than the RX 6500 XT. For a cross-vendor comparison, you might expect it to go toe to toe with the GeForce GTX 1650.

At the time of writing, we don't have a release date or pricing for any Radeon RX 6400 cards to share.

Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

  • -Fran-
    So this is what the 6500XT could have been instead, uh?

    Sad I'm no longer in the market for one of these.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • vern72
    Now we just need a passively cooled model for an RX 6000 series cards.
    Reply