Only $299? Sapphire RX 6700 10GB Tested

Sapphire RX 6700 10GB Pulse
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

There are plenty of Black Friday PC hardware deals going on right now, and PC gamers will probably be most interested in the Black Friday graphics card deals. This one might fly a bit under the radar, but we've received the Sapphire RX 6700 10GB Pulse graphics card for review and have finished most of our testing.

It's an interesting card in its own right, taking the Navi 22 GPU used in the RX 6750 XT and RX 6700 XT but trimming down a few of the specs. It's also on sale right now and that may not last, so we thought we'd give you a quick performance preview.

Sapphire RX 6700 10GB Pulse: now $299 at Newegg

Sapphire RX 6700 10GB Pulse: now $299 at Newegg (was $349)
If you're concerned 8GB VRAM might not be enough and want a bit more muscle under the hood, this Sapphire RX 6700 10GB card performs admirably and currently has a $30 promo code (VGAEXCAA338).

Overall, the RX 6700 10GB does quite nicely at 1080p ultra, coming in 12% behind the RX 6700 XT while shaving $50 off the price. It's also 25% faster than the Nvidia RTX 3060 and currently costs 11% less, and it's just a few percent slower than the RTX 3060 Ti at a price that's 21% lower. In terms of overall value, about the only GPUs that currently rate higher than the 6700 10GB are the RX 6650 XT and the RX 6600.

Sapphire's card isn't substantially faster, but the extra VRAM, bandwidth, and compute does give it a 9% lead on the 6650 XT and a 30% advantage over the vanilla 6600. It costs about 20% more than the cheapest 6650 XT and 58% more than the 6600. It's also 11% faster than the Arc A770 16GB and 24% faster than the Arc A750, at least in our standard (non-ray tracing) test suite.

Ray tracing doesn't do AMD's RDNA 2 architecture any favors, as usual. The gap relative to other AMD cards remains similar, though it does extend its lead a bit over the Navi 23-based RX 66xx-series parts. It's also only 10% slower than the RTX 3060, though it still beats the RTX 3050 by a healthy 28% margin. Intel's Arc A770 meanwhile delivered 34% higher performance and the A750 also beat the 6700 10GB by 19% — all of these DXR results are at 1080p medium, which is about as high as you'll want to go with ray tracing on AMD's midrange parts.

Overall, there's plenty to like with AMD's RX 6700 10GB card. We can't help but wonder what took so long, but so many things were wonky in the world of GPUs last year that we'll likely never know for sure. If you're looking for a good card that can mostly handle 1440p in standard games and cruises along at more than 60 fps with maxed out settings at 1080p, give the RX 6700 non-XT some thought.

Jarred Walton

Jarred Walton is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on everything GPU. He has been working as a tech journalist since 2004, writing for AnandTech, Maximum PC, and PC Gamer. From the first S3 Virge '3D decelerators' to today's GPUs, Jarred keeps up with all the latest graphics trends and is the one to ask about game performance.

  • Exploding PSU
    I didn't know RX 6700 XT doesn't have a RX 6700 proper version. This is interesting..
    Reply
  • There was a proper version of this card.

    AMD or its AIBs silently released an non-XT variant of this GPU long back, a mid-range graphics card SKU positioned between the Radeon RX 6650 XT and the RX 6700 XT, the new RX 6700 (non-XT). It doesn't seem like the RX 6700 was an OEM-exclusive designed to get rid of silicon after all.

    Some pictures also surfaced of Sapphire and PowerColor branded custom-design cards, complete with box-art designed to woo customers in stores, around June 2022 I suppose.

    Seems like a decent price/performance ratio card, and this is definitely going to be much faster than my good 'ol AMD RX 480 GPU. But I'm more interested to grab a new card from the 'green camp' instead. But sometimes I'm torn and confused between choosing which model would be the best upgrade, an 8GB VRAM or 10GB or 12GB of VRAM card ?

    Some new AAA games do require more VRAM, depending on the game, especially on a 1440p screen. I just want the card to be a bit more future proof as well. So it's a matter of personal needs. But 300 USD seems like a good deal for this non-XT SKU though.

    Right now I'm on a 1080p screen, the 165 Hz model from BenQ.

    MOBIUZ 24.5" 165Hz FHD 1080p 1ms IPS Gaming Monitor | EX2510S | BenQ US .
    Reply
  • King_V
    @JarredWaltonGPU - is this thing still in the testing process? I'm curious as to things like noise and power draw.

    It was a little weird because, as I recall, the Sapphire version claims it's a 210 or 220W card, but the PowerColor version I think claims it's a 170W card. If the latter is accurate, then I'm impressed with the "better performance for less power consumption" aspect of it.

    Or, maybe PowerColor and Sapphire clock them notably differently, and they perform different than each other, in which case I just throw my hands up in the air and say "WTF guys?!?"
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    King_V said:
    @JarredWaltonGPU - is this thing still in the testing process? I'm curious as to things like noise and power draw.

    It was a little weird because, as I recall, the Sapphire version claims it's a 210 or 220W card, but the PowerColor version I think claims it's a 170W card. If the latter is accurate, then I'm impressed with the "better performance for less power consumption" aspect of it.

    Or, maybe PowerColor and Sapphire clock them notably differently, and they perform different than each other, in which case I just throw my hands up in the air and say "WTF guys?!?"
    It's fully tested. This is "deals week" because that's what our corporate overlords demand. So I'm still trying to find the time to do a full writeup. Anyway, if you want more data...

    Noise: 36.8 dB(A) at 10cm.
    Power: 192W gaming; 194W FurMark

    Rasterization:1080p Medium: 158.6 fps avg; 124.5 fps 99th
    1080p Ultra: 93.8 fps avg; 75.5 fps 99th
    1440p Ultra: 68.3 fps avg; 56.4 fps 99th
    4K Ultra: 36.3 fps avg; 30.0 fps 99th

    DXR:1080p Medium: 51.8 fps avg; 39.2 fps 99th
    1080p Ultra: 32.4 fps avg; 25.9 fps 99th
    1440p Ultra: 19.6 fps avg; 15.3 fps 99th
    Reply
  • hannibal
    Not bad!
    In these days good sub $300 GPU are rare!
    Reply
  • SyCoREAPER
    For the price not bad blat all. For the card itself though, it's a bit underpowered. I'd just wait for the 6900 or 6950 to drop further
    Reply
  • PC Hardware Nerd
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    It's fully tested. This is "deals week" because that's what our corporate overlords demand. So I'm still trying to find the time to do a full writeup. Anyway, if you want more data...

    Noise: 36.8 dB(A) at 10cm.
    Power: 192W gaming; 194W FurMark

    Rasterization:1080p Medium: 158.6 fps avg; 124.5 fps 99th
    1080p Ultra: 93.8 fps avg; 75.5 fps 99th
    1440p Ultra: 68.3 fps avg; 56.4 fps 99th
    4K Ultra: 36.3 fps avg; 30.0 fps 99th

    DXR:1080p Medium: 51.8 fps avg; 39.2 fps 99th
    1080p Ultra: 32.4 fps avg; 25.9 fps 99th
    1440p Ultra: 19.6 fps avg; 15.3 fps 99th
    I love that you admit you're doing these at the demand of your corporate overlords. 😂😂😂
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    PC Hardware Nerd said:
    I love that you admit you're doing these at the demand of your corporate overlords. 😂😂😂
    Most hardware people have come to despise Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Prime Day (and Prime Day the Return!) You end up searching for deals to highlight that don't really feel like people read them, because they get buried in the onslaught.
    Reply
  • impetechz
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    It's fully tested. This is "deals week" because that's what our corporate overlords demand. So I'm still trying to find the time to do a full writeup. Anyway, if you want more data...

    Noise: 36.8 dB(A) at 10cm.
    Power: 192W gaming; 194W FurMark

    Rasterization:1080p Medium: 158.6 fps avg; 124.5 fps 99th
    1080p Ultra: 93.8 fps avg; 75.5 fps 99th
    1440p Ultra: 68.3 fps avg; 56.4 fps 99th
    4K Ultra: 36.3 fps avg; 30.0 fps 99th

    DXR:1080p Medium: 51.8 fps avg; 39.2 fps 99th
    1080p Ultra: 32.4 fps avg; 25.9 fps 99th
    1440p Ultra: 19.6 fps avg; 15.3 fps 99th

    Thanks for the information

    btw is there a test for single and multimonitor configurations on idle?
    Because the 6700XT had 7w for single monitor but 33w on multimonitor . I'd assume on multi to be less than that, but could you please add that when the review is up. It would be much appreciated to satiate my curiosity.

    :)
    Reply
  • PC Hardware Nerd
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    Most hardware people have come to despise Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Prime Day (and Prime Day the Return!) You end up searching for deals to highlight that don't really feel like people read them, because they get buried in the onslaught.
    I don't bother with any of these holiday sales anymore. It's a lot of time and frustration for very little reward. I'd rather pay slightly more or wait for prices to come down on a product at this point. I'm not in the hurry I used to be to get the newest, most shiny toy on the market. I still absolutely love reading about them and getting to play with them at work though. I guess that's why I keep showing up...and bills😂
    Reply