Sapphire updates Pulse line-up with smaller RX 5600 XT

Sapphire has launched a new variant of its Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse in the form of the RX 5600 XT Pulse BE. It's a smaller version than the original card and its price should reflect that too.

The Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse BE is 23.05 cm long and 12.25 cm tall compared to the original card's 25.4 cm length and 13.5 cm height. As well as that, it's a slightly thinner card at 4 cm making it ever so slightly less than 2 slots thick, compared to its predecessor's 4.65 cm thickness which made it just over the coveted 2 slots thickness. On paper, none of this sounds a lot but it's visibly smaller and sure to make a difference where case space is at a premium. The Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse BE is reportedly based on the board design of the RX 5700 series of Pulse cards.

Elsewhere, there are a few other tweaks. Notably, while the two fans of its Dual-X cooling solution are unchanged at 100 mm, the heatsink underneath is noticeably slimmer. There's also the matter of the PCB being shorter in length than the cooler itself. Both these factors, predictably, mean that it looks somewhat different to other Pulse cards. Also, there's no dual-BIOS nor do the fans have a Quick-Connect feature for when you want to clean the heatsink underneath. 

Where it most counts, however, the Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse BE is mostly pretty effective. It keeps to AMD's OC specs for the RX 5600 XT and matches its larger predecessor. That means 2,304 stream processors, a game clock of 1,560MHz with a boost clock of up to 1,620MHz. Alongside those clocks is 6GB/192 bit GDDR6 memory. Output wise, there are two DisplayPort 1.4 ports and two HDMI 2.0 ports.

So, effectively, this is the same card as the Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT Pulse but with a few tweaks to make it more practical and appealing for those with smaller cases. The card is available for purchase now at retailers for £280.