Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2019
I'm not going to post more numbers, if you are looking at this card, you've done your homework and know that it's a mid-range card that can run any game at 1080p on ultra & 144hz (maybe faster) and most games at 1440p at 144hz (with caveats). I don't know what people are talking about, this is not a noisy card. To start, I think you need to know what i'm dealing with:
HAF912 case with 2x200mm fans (front&top), 1x120mm fan venting out back. the 140mm fan on my evo cpu cooler makes more noise at rest. (2600x, 16GB 3000CL15, Gigabyte Aorus MB, 750W)
I mention this because, unlike most "beauty/display" cases with glass sides, mine is full of holes...literally. Lots of air is flowing in and out; 200mm fans push so much air at lower frequency that my case temps never exceed 35'C. As you can imagine, the latent/standing air is relatively cool compared to gpu&cpu temps and heat exchangers have access to cooler air.
During demanding gaming sessions, the Pulse will ramp up and hit ~72'C and the fans will kick in and sustain at 80%, but fan noise is less my old GPU (my GTX980 caps at 84'C all the time and with smaller fans going at 100%=more high pitched whine). Not that any of that matters since most gamers have headsets and can't hear their computer.
Honestly, I can still hear enemy footsteps on my mediocre (but very good value) mpow eg8 headset. Granted my computer is on the floor so sound has to travel a bit and bounce off some surfaces before it hits me in the head.
I'd add a photo (cuz the red 'sapphire' looks good with my red led fans, cpu cooler and mb) but for some reason, amazon isn't accepting any of my photo formats.
Games i play: overwatch, destiny2, gears of war5, apex (1440p, med/high, 144hz)
ps. if you are having issues: update your mb bios, radeon driver, windows 10
UPDATE: 4weeks later. I did have an issue. I was playing overwatch and it crashed...hundreds of hours playing on my 980 and I've never had a game crash. Anyway, updated AMD drivers and after >40hrs of play, it looks solid. Updates are great; very subjective observation, but images look sharper. Will update again in 2020.
UPDATE: This update is earlier than i said but i had to share my experience as i just upgraded to 27" 1440p 144hz Acer monitor. Just awesome, overwatch just became a lot easier. Those snipers wayyyyy out there...i can see them now! Wow. If i had known what a difference more pixels would make,i would have updated earlier! The Pulse is keeping up just fine, no lag, no tearing, no issues but i do play on medium settings, 144hz, 1440p. Now,when i watch movies that are 720 or 1080, sometimes i can see lines in static scenes (is it my new monitor or gpu...i dont know), anything with motion is awesome. I also tried watching 4k videos at 144hz and those didnt look too hot either. Gaming good, im soo happy!
UPDATE: 12.19.19: well, things are going south fast. my love affair with all things AMD is now over...with the recent update to 19.12.2, i'm getting monitor failure during routine use (web browsing/Netflix). when I swap out my sapphire pulse rx5700xt for my old and trusty gtx980, no problem. but the recent update is causing a ton of "no signal detected" issues from GPU. failure with hdmi and dp cables that work fine on gtx980. thought it might have been monitor (Acer 27" gaming monitor (ED273UR)), but swapped that out for my old msi 27" and same signal failure :( sooooo, now I've dropped the rating from 5 stars to 1. I'm starting communications with Sapphire Tech; obviously this failure happened outside the return window.
UPDATE: 12.20.19: updated to radeon driver 19.12.3 finally, all that "no signal detected" messiness and black screen stuff is gone. I was 'this close' to buying an RTX2070S...and to be honest, if I had known I was going to encounter these kind of crashes every time AMD tries to optimize the GPU drivers for 'this game' or 'that game', i'd have stayed with Nvidia (even though I really, really, really hate their pricing model). Another thing i've noticed is that the RX5700XT isn't tracking with the RTX2070S...it used to when it was first released and everyone who had one was dropping it into a hot gaming rig, but with the advent of 3rd party/custom GPU's, test data from Userbenchmark and Passmark have the RX57000XT more on par with the 2060S/2070. Either that or the driver updates for the 2070S are doing much better for that product line. I've cautiously upgraded to 3-stars, and my advice is: if you are on a budget for a GPU that can handle your gaming on high/ultra on a 1440p/144hz monitor this is a decent card (per GPU-Z: my card never exceeds 83'C (hot spots), GPU ~80'C max temp). if you can find it for under $379 (as of 12/20/19), that's good value. if you can afford it, go 2070S/2080S and you'll never look back.
UPDATE: 12/23/19. Finally figured it out...it was the AMD Radeon Adrenalin 2020 App, so don't install it! It was causing black screens during games, freezing game, disconnecting from monitor. Uninstalled it and all that goes away, in fact, GPUZ says my 'hotspot temp' dropped a couple degrees. Only load up latest Radeon drivers, Windows and BIOS; don't touch any AMD add on apps (ie. Adrenalin or Ryzen Master crap). I still have buyers remorse, I should have stayed Nvidia and got a RTX2070S :(
UPDATE: 3/10/20. I did it. I bought an EVGA RTX2080Super; I know...for the price of the Sapphire Pulse and the EVGA 2080S, I could have bought a RTX2080Ti, not my first stupid mistake, but it's the last time I buy an AMD GPU. I'll try to resell the Pulse RX5700XT to recoup some of the cost. I'm sure it's a great graphic card for some ppl for what they want, but it keeps crashing on the games I like to play...right in the middle of comp games, so I'm very sorry AMD; you make great CPU's and I think the GPU hardware is good but the drivers are unstable when a game or application push your GPU -->black screen/freeze/bsod, take your pick. All those artifacts on my screen that I thought were incompatibility issues -gone- I can now view 4k/120hz video on my 2k monitor without any stutter or lag. If I sound bitter, I am, this experiment cost me over $1200 and I never want to see another AMD GPU again!! This is me signing off, best of luck.
