Sapphire RX 5700 XT Pulse bargain

[Anomnomnomaly]

Picked up an RX5700 XT Pulse today thanks to some credit I had as compensation from Amazon after they screwed up big time.

 

Let's go back a few months, during the sales I picked up an Eve mattress to replace my 11yr old memory foam one that wasn't very comfortable any more... Price is normally £558, I paid £368.

 

Mattress arrives a few days later... I unpack it and leave it to expand for the whole day... when it's done I discover that the 25cm thick mattress is only 20.5cm.  I give the company a quick email and ask if this is normal.  they respond and say no... 1cm +/- is the norm and it's defective.

 

Contact amazon... takes so long to make them understand the problem... But that's 'bob' with the thick indian accent for you. Eventually they agree to replace... Explain that I need the old one collecting at the same time and as I am partially disabled can't get it down stairs on my own.

 

About 5 days later.. new mattress arrives, but they have no clue about taking the old one away. Thanks to a neighbour we are able to get the old one of the bed and propped up against the wall half blocking the corridor and causing a trip hazard. Contact amazon... arrange to have it collected... no one turns up... arrange it again... no one turns up.  This goes on for 5 weeks. On the last time I actually see the driver pull up outside my house, take a look at his paper work and realise what he;s gonna have to collect... I grab my phone just in time to see him look at the house, look down again... then just drive off.

 

So I get on to amazon again... getting really pissed of at this point... Tell them if it's not collected in 24hrs it's being dumped outside and if it gets wet, it gets wet.... they tell me (and I recorded the call) that if it's not collected within 24hrs I can dispose of it.

 

No one turns up yet again... but I see the same white van and driver on my street the next day... so I do wonder if he's pulled the same laziness trick again.

 

So about 50rs later...we load it up and take it to the local recycling centre... I took pics of us getting rid of it.

 

A few weeks later... I think I've had my account hacked as more than £550 is taken from it without my knowledge.... I immediately report it to my bank who stop my card... Funny thing is that the payment was taken at exactly the same time as I was using my card in a store... literally within seconds of each other.

 

We eventually track down that it's amazon who have stolen that money... claiming it's because I didn't return the mattress.

 

I went ballistic at them... We were calling them out as thieves and fraudsters on twitter. we reported it to the police as fraud along with the bank.  I had proof of them telling me I could dispose of it and proof of us doing just that.

 

It took a week to get my money back... but they put me into an overdraft which cost me fees... so I demanded that they cover those fees.... which they begrudgingly did 'as a gesture of goodwill' rather than we're sorry we tried to steal from you and left with a very good case to sue us.

 

During this I'd cancelled all of my orders... including an XT Pulse.

 

The bank then said they wouldn't be charging me any fees because it obviously wasn't my fault and I would have been a few hundred in credit (it happened a few days before pay day) if not for the fraud... So I wait until that credit is on my account... and ordered my card using the credit.

 

So my Sapphire 5700XT Pulse cost me £325 and some change rather than the £442 it's currently on sale for (it's gone up from the £410 it was originally at)

 

So I saved £85... or if you use the higher price... £117.

 

Card is pretty damn good... just starting to tweak the clocks and run some benchmarks.

 

It's boosting to 2000mhz core normally rather than the 1925 is is sitting there pretty much constantly... dropping to 1980mhz from time to time. Temps are hitting 80ºC.

 

I've got the mem at 950 (1900mhz) up from 875 (1750) and the core is at stock... Gonna find the limit of the mem before I start on core speeds as I've found you get better performance that way.

 

As for gaming so far... Only had it for 12hrs and only run a few games to test with... ran some benchmarks in Shadow of the Tomb Raider @ 1440p Ultra settings and average high 70's to low 80's... I kept AA on highest but turn of the SMAA and so forth as that's not really needed... games look good enough regardless these days.

 

FarCry new dawn, same thing... 1440p @ max settings AA highest SMAA off... 73fps.

Just picked up Gears 5.. so will be trying that out tomorrow.

I know I could get more if I tweaked the settings a little more... But my monitors are only 27" 75Hz (2 Acer) and a BenQ 22" 60hz in portrait... So anything that gets me close to that figure is fine with me... and I've been struggling with a Sapphire RX580 Pulse for the last few years.

 

This is actually the first 'full' price video card I've bought in a decade.. Everything else was purchased through either Amazon warehouse deals or in sales and second hand... But I built a decent system at the start of the year and was waiting to see waht AMD launched to compete with nVidia and they've done a pretty decent job.

 

Anyone else got this card... how have you got on with tweaking?