final thoughts
The PULSE Radeon RX 7900 XT is a great entry in the Sapphire family. Thanks to the higher clock speed and board power, it can perform a little better than the reference card and is really quiet. In fact Sapphire offers his NITRO+ variant, I think this PULSE version is the best, but if he wants RGB he should go for NITRO+.
The only area where the AMD reference card showed better performance was actually thermals, but this was due to the aggressive fan profile of the reference card and the very conservative fans that shipped with the Sapphire sample. It’s by profile. If you’re willing to sacrifice some noise for lower temperatures, a simple fan curve adjustment (easily done in software) will get this right on your AMD card.
As for value, at the time of writing the PULSE RX 7900 XT was listed for US$849 after rebates (Newegg link). That’s $50 less than the initial launch price of AMD’s GPU, but $50 more than the $799 price tag. You can find the reference card. for these days. You’ll have to decide if the higher clocks and lower noise are worth the difference, but I personally would go with this card unless your build requires the smaller dimensions of the reference design.
