Power and Temperature
To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data. We use GPU-Z sensor data to record the results. We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data. For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU or Package Temp) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.
The Total Board Power of the reference Radeon RX 7600 XT is 190W. For the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT it is 192W according to SAPPHIRE. In our testing, while gaming, GPU-Z reported the Board Power at a maximum of 207W in Cyberpunk 2077. This means the GeForce RTX 4060 OC is much more efficient using 41% less power than the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT. When overclocking the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT power increased by 18%, which is way more than the 7% performance increase we got from the overclock.
The SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT uses SAPPHIRE’s Dual-X Cooling Technology, and even pulling 207W of power it does a good job keeping the GPU temps cool. At 68c it is slightly warmer than the ASUS Dual RTX 4060 OC video card, but both are rather close in terms of GPU edge temperature. Overclocking the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT increases the GPU temperature by 4% without changing fan speeds at all, so the overclocked temps are with the fan speeds set to automatic control. This isn’t bad for the slim form factor of the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT.
The Hot Spot temperatures are, however, another story. The SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7600 XT ran very hot at 90c compared to the ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 4060 OC video card at 76.9c. Overclocking increased this by two degrees at 92c. Now, again we do have the fans set to automatic control, we are not applying a custom fan profile or increasing the fan speeds. However, 90c does seem a bit warm for the Radeon RX 7600 XT GPU. In other partner boards we’ve tested based on the Radeon RX 7600 XT, this is the hottest GPU Hot Spot temperature we’ve recorded for this GPU. If overclocking, we would actually suggest running faster fan speeds based on this temperature.