Cards using the diminutive Radeon RX 550 GPU are among the only AMD graphics boards available at prices near MSRP right now, thanks to the ever-escalating demand from cryptocurrency miners. Sapphire's latest Pulse Radeon RX 550 2GD5 and Pulse Radeon RX 550 4GD5 cards offer up 128 extra stream processors (SPs) on top of the 512 we've seen in previous Radeon RX 550 cards.

Sapphire didn't provide a ton of detail about the new cards, so we can't say for sure if they're built around the same Polaris 12 silicon as 512-SP Radeon RX 550 cards, or if the pair of 640-SP Pulse cards are using a chainsawed version of the Polaris 21 chip found in the Radeon RX 560. In any case, the GPU gears up to a 1071 MHz boost clock when thermal and power conditions allow. The pair of Pulse cards have 128-bit memory interfaces to their 2 GB or 4 GB pools of 6 GT/s GDDR5 memory. AMD's Radeon RX 550 product page lists reference boost clocks up to 1183 MHz and 7 GT/s memory speeds, so Sapphire's new cards are a bit low on both counts. The extra shaders probably make up for the reduced clocks, though.

Both cards have the same 6.2" length, 4.4" width, and 1.1" thickness (15.8 cm x 11.2 cm x 2.8 cm) and fit what Sapphire calls a 1.5-slot profile. The single PCI bracket has one DVI-D port, an HDMI 2.0 jack, and a DisplayPort 1.4 connector. The single axial fan blows air onto what appears to be a simple cast aluminum heatsink free of heatpipes or any other trickery. Sapphire recommends at least a PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and a 400 W power supply. As a reminder, AMD offers graphics driver updates for 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows 10, but users of Windows 8 and 8.1 are left out of the fun.

Sapphire didn't provide any pricing or availability information for the Pulse Radeon RX 550 2GD5 or the Pulse Radeon RX 550 4GD5, but we'd imagine they will land just north of the typical $110-135 trading prices of 512-SP Radeon RX 550s. Thanks to TechPowerUp for the tip-off.