Sapphire teases dual-fan RX 9070 XT GPU — may be the smallest custom RX 9070 XT
Most RX 9070 Series GPUs (and GPUs generally) seem to be trending larger, so Sapphire's Pulse cooler is a welcome addition.
Sapphire teased a new AMD Radeon GPU on Twitter. The graphics card, which features the classic dual-fan Sapphire Pulse cooler design, is likely a Radeon RX 9070 or RX 9070 XT.
If this will indeed be an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, recent benchmarks (if they are accurate) of real-world raster performance seem to indicate a card highly competitive with Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 Super, so seeing it in a more reasonable dual fan configuration is nice.
Narrowing our focus back on the Sapphire Pulse GPU specifically, some things can be approximated based on the imagery. Besides being a standard dual-slot, dual-fan GPU, unlike the other AIBs we've seen, the actual GPU length also seems quite conservative and more compact to fit into your typical mini-ITX case.
Of course, bulkier AIB GPUs like Asus' various triple-fan RX 9070 and 9070 XT models are better suited for larger cases that can accommodate them, at least theoretically. We'll have to wait for benchmarks before determining the final differences between these AIB GPUs and how their cooler designs may impact performance and overclocking ability.
The new Sapphire Radeon Pulse design looks nearly identical in terms of visual design. However, the color scheme for this particular series of GPU cooler designs has evolved over the past few generations. This is mainly due to removing many white accents that used to come with Sapphire Pulse GPUs, like the Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5600 XT. Now, the design is much more streamlined around blacks with red highlights, as on the last-gen Sapphire Pulse RX 7900 XT.
These design changes are noted and probably blend better into more PC builds, but fans of the classic Sapphire Pulse GPU color scheming may be a little sad to see Sapphire's visual language fall more in line with other AIB-making black-and-red GPUs.
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Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.
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Pierce2623 I’ll probaby buying the Pulse depending on pricing and benchmarks. It seems Sapphire doesn’t put much effort into binning their better chips to higher models anyways.Reply -
Gururu I think the LE comes in at about 10.5" based on google search, which I can swing. nVidia loses me with the RX 5080 however at what looks like 12".Reply -
Taslios Reply
I miss the days of the Toxic being a specially binned card that really challenged even the Titan.. alas.. perhaps when UDNA comes out.....Pierce2623 said:I’ll probaby buying the Pulse depending on pricing and benchmarks. It seems Sapphire doesn’t put much effort into binning their better chips to higher models anyways. -
Joseph_138 I'm more interest in the power consumption, than the size of the cooler. It would be really, really nice, if AMD could make a decent card that uses 200W or less, instead of always being 20-30W higher than Nvidia.Reply -
Pierce2623 Reply
Always being higher than Nvidia? Rdna3 might’ve been less efficient but rdna2 killed Ampere in efficiency.Joseph_138 said:I'm more interest in the power consumption, than the size of the cooler. It would be really, really nice, if AMD could make a decent card that uses 200W or less, instead of always being 20-30W higher than Nvidia. -
systemBuilder_49 Reply
Let me explain why thats not going to happen. Radeon's brand strategy is to use the previous generation of VLSI and an efficient design to offer better value in every way EXCEPT energy consumption. Its basically impossible for them to compete on power consumption if they are using an old VLSI node ... The older, larger transistors use more power to switch at the same speed ...Joseph_138 said:I'm more interest in the power consumption, than the size of the cooler. It would be really, really nice, if AMD could make a decent card that uses 200W or less, instead of always being 20-30W higher than Nvidia.