Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 5500 XT 4G, 4GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP, lite retail

AMD’s new Radeon RX 5500 XT makes a compelling choice for 1080p gamers in the all-important $200-$250 price range. The 5500XT can even handle a little 1440p gaming on slightly lowered settings or older games. There is a small amount of overclocking headroom which can be unlocked quickly with a few button clicks in AMD’s Radeon Software. Sapphire’s PULSE model gives us a very cool running card that stays silent, even under full load. Given the overwhelming majority of gamers run 1080p, the 5500XT should be one of your top choices for a budget-conscious build that can max settings at playable 60FPS+ frame rates or slightly lower settings if you prefer higher refresh rates.

...good cooling performance, a full-size aluminium backplate, and large 95mm fans that are wonderfully quiet at all times.

Sapphire's Radeon RX 5500 XT Pulse is built on the same philosophy as the company's RX 5700 XT Pulse, which had great success on the market: make improvements over the base reference where it matters without increasing pricing too much. For a $10 increase over AMD MSRP, Sapphire managed to include a factory overclock, a much better dual-fan cooler, idle-fan stop, dual BIOS, and even a backplate. Out of the box, the Pulse runs at 1737 MHz rated Game Clock. In reality, we measured an average clock frequency for 1080p gaming of 1833 MHz. Compared to the RX 5500 non-XT, which averaged out at 1795 MHz, that's a 2.1% increase in actual clock.