Overall and Final Verdict
It’s interesting just how much a few changes can make a big difference when it comes to how different the Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pulse and the Sapphire RX 7700 XT PURE. They have nearly the same shroud and backplate design, even the line drawings are the same. But with the RX 7700 XT PURE being bright white and all of those accents changing from red to grey I like the RX 7700 XT PURE’s styling a lot more than the Pulse. It is also exciting to see Sapphire finally fully embracing the white PC build, a lot of the “white edition” models from other companies are limited runs and ask for a premium, I’m not expecting that to be the case with the RX 7700 XT PURE. The only downside aesthetically for me was the red up on top of the card as well as the lighting being red. White or RGB would better fit the white card, but the way the lighting lights up and in some areas glows through the white card looks great. Having lighting that covered the entire top would look better, however, not just a hotspot in the middle.
The RX 7700 XT PURE didn’t have as large of an overclock as we saw with the XFX QICK 7700 XT Black but with its mid-range overclock it held its own in our testing, coming out on top compared to the other RX 7700XTs more than it should. That means of course that the RX 7700 XT PURE outperformed the 4060 Ti 8GB in nearly every test by a big margin and even outperformed cards like the RTX 3070 Ti as well. This translates to great 1440p performance and at least some capabilities at 4K. What impressed me more than anything was how well the RX 7700 XT PURE performed in our cooling tests, its mid-range overclock combined with a capable cooler had it running cooler than almost any other card tested. Its noise results were great as well, especially in our under-load test that replicates what you can expect in heavy game use. Like with the other 7700 XT the RX 7700 XT PURE did struggle in our Blender benchmarks and still has room to improve when it comes to ray tracing performance compared with Nvidia. The RX 7700 XT PURE uses standard PCIe power connections, so you can avoid having to use an adapter or having to upgrade your power supply which can save some money if you already have a PSU.
For pricing, Sapphire has the RX 7700 XT PURE priced at $469. The base MSRP of the RX 7700 XT is $449 and the premium for an overclocked card with a larger cooler isn’t too bad at just $20. The big problem however is just how close the RX 7700 XT and the RX 7800 XT are pricing-wise with the 7800 XT’s base MSRP at $499. This makes it hard to justify the 7700 XT and even harder as the prices get closer to the 7800 XT MSRP. Hopefully, this will be adjusted in the future, especially with the RX 7700 XT PURE because it is an amazing card. The RX 7700 XT PURE is the sweet spot 7700 XT with the looks, cooling and noise performance, and is overclocked.
Live Pricing: HERE
