RX 5700XT Best Model (Sapphire Pulse, Nitro+, Gigabyte)

[Katarn]

I am looking into buying an RX 5700 XT.

 

The three models I have in mind are the ones mentioned in the title:

- Sapphire Pulse

- Sapphire Nitro+
- Gigabyte Gaming OC Windforce 3x

The retailer from whom I order has informed me that they are "around the same price."

 

So I want to know:

 

Which one is the best of the three?

Provided they are all the same price, which one should I get?

If prices are different, what kind of difference would justify buying one model over the other?

 

From what I've seen, it seems as though the Sapphire cards are the go-to AMD picks, but even so, that still leaves the question of the Pulse vs the Nitro+.

 

 

Thanks

[GrockleTD]

check out Gamers Nexus reviews of all the different 5700XT cards, that should give you the desired answer

[Epimetheus]

The Nitro+ is definitely the nicer out of the bunch, but the pulse is pretty good too. Don't know much about the gigabyte one but the Sapphire ones should be the absolute best (maybe the 5700xt red devil compares? dk)

[Mathieu9836]

The Nitro+ as the best thermals

[Katarn]

How much more expensive should the Nitro+ be (compared to the Pulse) in order to make the Pulse the better deal?

[melete]

8 minutes ago, Katarn said:

How much more expensive should the Nitro+ be (compared to the Pulse) in order to make the Pulse the better deal?

It's really just up to you. They both perform very similar to each other. Main difference is Nitro+ can perform the same while being quieter.

[BigDamn]

I would recommend against Gigabyte cards, personally. If you're buying AMD, Sapphire is going to be your best bet. The Nitro+ is going to provide better thermals, as it sports a triple fan cooler as opposed to the dual on the Pulse. However! IMO, the Pulse cards have always been the better looking of the bunch if you're asking me. Just look up the Nitro+ RX 590 if you don't believe.

 

Tl;dr the Nitro+ will be quieter and run cooler, while the Pulse will (likely) be a bit cheaper and perform the same.

[Katarn]

On 9/28/2019 at 12:07 AM, BigDamn said:

I would recommend against Gigabyte cards, personally. If you're buying AMD, Sapphire is going to be your best bet. The Nitro+ is going to provide better thermals, as it sports a triple fan cooler as opposed to the dual on the Pulse. However! IMO, the Pulse cards have always been the better looking of the bunch if you're asking me. Just look up the Nitro+ RX 590 if you don't believe.

At present, I am stuck in another conundrum: "thanks" to Tech Deals' new video, I've been introduced to the 2060 Super as a viable alternative that might be better for work. At this point the Gigabyte Gaming OC RTX 2060 Super is also a competitor.

 

And as of this afternoon, there is also the MSI Radeon Gaming X.

 

PS: I looked up the 590 Nitro+, and it is an ugly card indeed. I don't care much for hardware aesthetics, but DAYYYM! that's a bad-looking card

Quote

 

Tl;dr the Nitro+ will be quieter and run cooler, while the Pulse will (likely) be a bit cheaper and perform the same.

How about the clock speeds? Will they affect in-game performance?

 

It looks like the Nitro+ might be ~$60 more expensive.

Is that too much of a price-difference, i.e. is it worth the extra coolness/silence?

[BigDamn]

6 hours ago, Katarn said:

It looks like the Nitro+ might be ~$60 more expensive.

Is that too much of a price-difference, i.e. is it worth the extra coolness/silence?

Definitely not worth that much extra.

[Anomnomnomaly]

I've never had much luck with Gigabyte stuff... my current Aorus B450 board has been a constant pain and refuses to work with 3200mhz ram... and even at 3000mhz it still randomly boots up and resets the bios.

 

Updated it to F42a 2 weeks ago and still not fixed, still won't run the memory any higher.... Be glad when I upgrade to a B550 board when they come out and this one can be relegated to my mediaserver as that needs an upgrade.

 

So if their vid cards are as flaky as their boards... I'd avoid them.

 

I have however just picked up a 5700XT Pulse after having the RX580 Pulse for a few years... and it seems solid so far, performance is good thermals are good and it's boosting to 2000mhz rather than the 1925 advertised and staying within 20mhz of that target whilst gaming.  So far I've boosted the memory from 1750 to 1900 too... and will continue to tweak in the coming days.  My old 580 Pulse wasn't great on core OC (only got about 70 extra, but the memory would happily max out @ 2250 up from stock 2000.

 

So at this point... I can recommend the sapphire pulse, and it's a fair bit cheaper than the Nitro... although that may vary depending on country... UK here, so we get screwed.

[BigRom]

1 hour ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

I've never had much luck with Gigabyte stuff... my current Aorus B450 board has been a constant pain and refuses to work with 3200mhz ram... and even at 3000mhz it still randomly boots up and resets the bios.

 

Updated it to F42a 2 weeks ago and still not fixed, still won't run the memory any higher.... Be glad when I upgrade to a B550 board when they come out and this one can be relegated to my mediaserver as that needs an upgrade.

 

So if their vid cards are as flaky as their boards... I'd avoid them.

 

I have however just picked up a 5700XT Pulse after having the RX580 Pulse for a few years... and it seems solid so far, performance is good thermals are good and it's boosting to 2000mhz rather than the 1925 advertised and staying within 20mhz of that target whilst gaming.  So far I've boosted the memory from 1750 to 1900 too... and will continue to tweak in the coming days.  My old 580 Pulse wasn't great on core OC (only got about 70 extra, but the memory would happily max out @ 2250 up from stock 2000.

 

So at this point... I can recommend the sapphire pulse, and it's a fair bit cheaper than the Nitro... although that may vary depending on country... UK here, so we get screwed.

In my area the RX5700XT Pulse & Nitro has a RM300 (GBP60-ish) price difference, and this is on top of the same price difference for the RX5700 Pulse and its XT siblings. Strangely the reference blower Sapphire is only about 10 quid cheaper than the Pulse 

 

IMO Sapphire are charging the premium simply because they can for the Nitro+, the Pulse is just much better value tbh

[i_build_nanosuits]

that MSI card looks very quiet with those two big fans...this would be a card i'd like if it wasn't that i have a MSI 1080ti Gaming X Trio... but yeah, MSI gaming cards are very well built...good fans and bearings, good heatsinks etc.

[Anomnomnomaly]

5 hours ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

that MSI card looks very quiet with those two big fans...this would be a card i'd like if it wasn't that i have a MSI 1080ti Gaming X Trio... but yeah, MSI gaming cards are very well built...good fans and bearings, good heatsinks etc.

Gamers Nexus did a review of the MSI and found it was pretty bad for thermals. Some very poorly applied thermal pads that were too small and twice as thick as you'd want them to be.

 

So they replaced them with better ones and the thermals still weren't that great, they advised against buying an MSI one.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

Sapphire has best fan service

[i_build_nanosuits]

6 hours ago, Anomnomnomaly said:

Gamers Nexus did a review of the MSI and found it was pretty bad for thermals. Some very poorly applied thermal pads that were too small and twice as thick as you'd want them to be.

 

So they replaced them with better ones and the thermals still weren't that great, they advised against buying an MSI one.

which card specificaly are we talking about? can you link this video?

Are you refering to the MSI Gaming X Radeon 5700XT?

Cause MSI makes a lot of cards...and some of them are cheaper options with much lower quality...i was specificaly refering to the MSI Gaming X cards.

[Anomnomnomaly]

9 minutes ago, i_build_nanosuits said:

which card specificaly are we talking about? can you link this video?

Are you refering to the MSI Gaming X Radeon 5700XT?

Cause MSI makes a lot of cards...and some of them are cheaper options with much lower quality...i was specificaly refering to the MSI Gaming X cards.

I think it was the MSI XT Evoke, they pretty much said it's not worth buying, same with the XFX thicc II. The Sapphire Pulse & Nitro fared very well as did the Powercolor Red Dragon.

 

I've not seen any reviews on the gigabyte or Asus cards yet... I've only seen them up for pre-order... not even sure they exist in the real world yet... But my gigabyte experience recently is not a positive one which would stop me buying anything from them at this time.

 

Asus... I've had a lot of Asus motherboards and video cards without any issues what so ever over the last 10yrs... But the last Asus vid card I got was the R9 280X which had the fatal flaw in it's memory design. 1500mhz ram being run at 1600mhz with bad cooling on half of them. Which caused really bad artifacting in games at stock speeds. The solution was either strip down the card and install mini copper heatsinks on the exposed ram chips and/or modify the bios to reduce ram speed back to default 1500mhz.  I did the latter and it seemed to resolve the problem 99% of the time... only on really hot days with a hard pushed system did it reoccur. But I replaced it with an RX580 Pulse and stuck the 280X in my media server where it never runs at gaming specs anyway... and that's now going to be replaced with the RX580 which was removed for the 5700XT pulse.

 

I recycle most of my PC parts into my mediaserver... it's gone from 4GB DDR3 up to 16GB and when I rebuild my gaming rig with a B550 board.and 3900X.. will get my old B450 and 32GB DDR4 and a 2600X.