It is arduous to not discover the launch of the brand new AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT a bit miserable. This can be a card born of the nightmarish panorama of the present graphics card market, and simply highlights the predicament of any PC gamer hoping to improve their outdated GPU at a time the place pricing has gotten method out of hand. That is the primary finances graphics card of the most recent era from both AMD or Nvidia, and as such a brand new $199 GPU must be trigger for celebration, however that value will probably be ephemeral at greatest, and as a contemporary graphics card it seems like fairly weak sauce.
What it’s, claims AMD, is an inexpensive GPU improve for the 47% of players nonetheless utilizing graphics playing cards which are slower than an RX 570 or GTX 1650. And that is an viewers which has been starved of choices on this newest era of GPUs. With ever extra high-end playing cards getting launched with ever larger value tags, the finances finish of the market has been a barren wilderness, with inventory of even the traditional older playing cards having lengthy since dried up within the face of a resurgent crypto mining business.
RX 6500 XT specs
What are the RX 6500 XT specs?
The RDNA 2 structure that resides inside the brand new 6nm Navi 24 GPU is doubtless a step up by way of design in contrast with both the GCN or Turing architectures of these older playing cards, and has allowed AMD to be relatively parsimonious with the silicon that it has dropped into the RX 6500 XT.
The facility of AMD’s newest Radeon structure signifies that it wants simply 16 compute models, and due to this fact only one,024 stream processors—and a bodily GPU footprint that is lower than half the scale of the 14nm chip nestled within the ol’ RX 570—to have the ability to supply an improve over the getting older graphics playing cards of that enormous share of PC players.
The Infinity Cache characteristic of the RDNA 2 design additionally permits AMD to make use of a 64-bit reminiscence interface to associate with its 16MB of magic cache reminiscence. Which means you get an efficient bandwidth of 231.6GB/s from the paltry 4GB of GDDR6 VRAM onboard the RX 6500 XT.
The RX 6500 XT is barely providing something new, definitely not by way of uncooked graphical efficiency
It additionally signifies that, like the remainder of its RX 6000-series brethren, this GPU can clock like an absolute beast. The bottom Recreation Clock AMD has marketed the RX 6500 XT with is a reasonably astounding 2.6GHz; “the quickest clocks on a gaming card,” says AMD. That enables the cardboard to supply 5.77 TFLOPS of single precision compute energy from a really slight GPU.
Which does, nevertheless, all put it considerably behind the closest GPU within the Radeon RX 6000-series stack, with the following step up, the RX 6600, providing 1,792 RDNA 2 cores, twice the quantity of Infinity Cache, reminiscence, and dimension of aggregated reminiscence bus.
It is also important that for those who take a look at the final two generations of AMD’s sub-$200 4GB graphics cards—the RX 5500 XT and RX 480/580—the RX 6500 XT is barely providing something new, definitely not by way of uncooked graphical efficiency.
What AMD does level to, although, is that the ecosystem surrounding the RDNA 2 structure can assist the weaker {hardware} and push it additional than both the first-gen RDNA card or the traditional GCN GPU. With options comparable to Sensible Entry Reminiscence, FidelityFX Tremendous Decision (FSR), and Radeon Anti-Lag the newer card ought to have the sting. Although, because of AMD’s common backwards compatibility benevolence, the Polaris-based playing cards and first-gen RDNA playing cards will all play good with the final two options anyhow.
| AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT | AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT | AMD Radeon RX 480 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Launch date | January 2022 | December 2019 | June 2016 |
| Shader Cores | 1024 RDNA 2 | 1408 RDNA | 2304 GCN |
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 |
| Texture Models | 64 | 88 | 144 |
| Reminiscence | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR6 | 4GB GDDR5 |
| Reminiscence bus | 64-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit |
| Reminiscence bandwidth | 144 GB/s | 224 GB/s | 224 GB/s |
| Processing energy | 5.77 TFLOPS | 5.20 TFLOPS | 5.83 TFLOPS |
| Board energy | 107W | 130W | 150W |
| Value | $199 | $169 | $199 |
FSR is AMD’s open response to Nvidia’s Deep Studying Tremendous Sampling (DLSS) characteristic, although is not tied to the {hardware} because the GeForce tech is. It is not fairly as sharp as DLSS, however nonetheless provides players larger body charges in appropriate video games with restricted affect on general constancy ranges, particularly in movement. In brief, it is fairly damned nice, although does want developer implementation to work. However there may be Radeon Tremendous Decision on the best way in a forthcoming driver launch, which will probably be a driver stage model that must work on any recreation in your library.
Gigahertz don’t maketh the GPU
Such neat upscaling tech is nice for low-end {hardware} such because the RX 6500 XT, and ought to present it a little bit of a leg up by way of body charges going ahead, however is a crutch relatively than a bonus characteristic. Radeon Anti-Lag is not about body charges, however is aimed toward driving down enter lag in aggressive video games, particularly these titles that are GPU sure and due to this fact graphics drivers can have a real affect.
Sensible Entry Reminiscence, nevertheless, is restricted to the RDNA 1 and a pair of architectures, and is the tech which permits AMD CPUs to entry all of the reminiscence constructed into an AMD GPU, delivering slight efficiency beneficial properties if you’re operating a wholly AMD-based gaming rig. Nonetheless, slight beneficial properties are higher than no beneficial properties.
The cardboard we’re testing right here is the Gigabyte RX 6500 XT Gaming OC and is probably going consultant of the types of choices you’ll be able to count on as soon as the preliminary inventory of reference-priced playing cards inevitably runs dry. Which means, whereas AMD has listed the MSRP of the RX 6500 XT as $199, the Gigabyte model is ~$300.
For that more money you get a flowery triple-fan cooler, which does a powerful job of maintaining issues all the time beneath 55°C, and whisper quiet. You additionally get a neat manufacturing facility overclock which ensures this nominally 2.6GHz Recreation Clock GPU just about continuously runs at over 2.8GHz beneath load.
That is critically fast, however gigahertz don’t maketh the GPU…
RX 6500 XT efficiency
How does the RX 6500 XT carry out?
We’ll spare you death-by-benchmark graph for this one, as we solely really want to supply numbers for the 1080p gaming efficiency of the RX 6500 XT. It could’t address the highest settings at that commonplace decision so stepping as much as 1440p or, heaven forbid, 4K is an excessive amount of for the poor Navi 24’s 4GB body buffer.
It is price trying out the comparative efficiency between the RX 6500 XT and the last-gen, and last-last-gen sub-$199 graphics playing cards. There’s not lots in it.
1080p gaming efficiency
GPU efficiency benchmarks
Final-gen 1080p gaming efficiency comparability
RX 6500 XT evaluation
How does the RX 6500 XT stack up?
The decrease finish of AMD’s RX 6000-series graphics playing cards have been GPUs of diminishing returns. The place the RX 6800 XT is likely one of the best graphics cards we have ever had the pleasure of jamming into the check bench, a GPU that pushed Radeon tech additional than ever earlier than, the RX 6600/XT playing cards from late final yr made it appear to be nothing had modified because the launch of the RX 5700 XT from 2019.
This RX 6500 XT appears worse than that. In all honesty it is arduous to have a look at this as any type of improve from the RX 480 and RX 5500 XT 4GB playing cards from years in the past. These have been each equally priced from an MSRP standpoint, actually the RX 5500 XT 4GB was a $170 GPU.
And on the time AMD was even recommending gamers look beyond 4GB. How occasions change…
Positive, in contrast with an RX 570 or GTX 1650, the RX 6500 XT is a efficiency improve, however solely actually in the identical method an RX 580 was again within the day. The GTX 1650 and RX 570 playing cards have been $150 and $170 playing cards respectively at launch, so that you’d hope all these years later a $199 GPU would supply extra efficiency. And personally I might be hoping for much more efficiency than this.
I dipped into the efficiency numbers Jacob and I grabbed from the outdated RX 5500 XT and RX 580 playing cards in a earlier life and so they do not appear to be nice studying. Successfully you are getting RX 580 efficiency, generally decrease due to having half the VRAM.
There’s a likelihood, nevertheless, that the PCIe 3.0 interface of my MSI Z490 motherboard is holding issues again in my testing. Not solely is the precise GPU and reminiscence silicon of the RX 6500 XT pared again, the precise PCIe interface is, too. It is operating on a x4 PCIe 4.0 interface, which is not a problem in a contemporary motherboard with a PCIe 4.0 setup, which has double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0.
That x4 connection is the equal of a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot, which is greater than sufficient bandwidth for 1080p gaming. Slicing that in half, nevertheless, could be extra of a problem. So, whereas this could be an inexpensive improve (at MSRP) for a brand new GPU, it could necessitate an entire PC platform change to get something like an honest stage of efficiency out of it.
We have carried out somewhat testing with an Alder Lake platform, with loads of bandwidth to spare, nevertheless, and whereas there’s a efficiency profit to the later ranges of the PCIe spec, the constructive distinction is fairly slight.
However that is 2022, and GPU beggars can’t be GPU choosers. There aren’t any mainstream graphics playing cards left from the outdated days—even the second hand market has been cleaned out by the miners—and so the mere promise that new $199 playing cards may truly begin to hit the cabinets is a few type of bonus for PC players determined for some type of graphical improve for his or her outdated system.
That $199 price ticket, nevertheless, is perhaps a little bit of a misnomer as a result of past the primary quarter-hour of availability I might doubt you will ever see an RX 6500 XT promoting for that value as soon as the preliminary inventory sells via. Producers are given rebates to encourage them to promote MSRP variations into retail—and I do know on day one there have been some accessible—however retailers would a lot choose to have the upper priced editions, such because the overclocked Gigabyte Gaming OC card we have examined right here.
In any case, if all of your GPUs are promoting regardless of the value, you’d relatively have inventory of pricier playing cards than the cheaper options. Capitalism is a harsh mistress.
As soon as the rebates have executed their launch job the motivation for producers to make the MSRP variations goes away, and as such I might count on these ~$300 variations of the RX 6500 XT will change into the norm for those who do handle to catch sight of 1 in-store, with the $199 pricing however a distant reminiscence.
Then there’s the efficiency. This can be a resolutely 1080p card, however even then the 4GB body buffer makes it a extremely poor possibility in 2022. Positive, you’ll be able to nonetheless get respectable 1080p gaming efficiency from dropping the in-game settings—we will not all be enjoying at Extremely Insane settings in each recreation—however if you’re spending ~$300 on a brand new graphics card you’d wish to really feel such as you’re getting one thing that might nail 1080p at an honest stage.
With trendy video games, and their high-res textures and broad, open worlds, that 4GB restrict comes into play extra usually than you may assume. And when a recreation has to dip into the slower system reminiscence it does not matter that your GPU itself is operating at 2.6GHz—or 2.8GHz as this Gigabyte card is commonly doing—your body charges are going to endure.
RX 6500 XT verdict
Do you have to purchase an RX 6500 XT?
Noooooooooooooooope. The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a card that might by no means have existed on this type have been it not for the present state of the GPU market. And it is arduous to seek out it something aside from a relatively cynically specced chip. It isn’t potential to in any other case purchase some other finances GPU, so there is no such thing as a incentive to make this newest one any extra highly effective than the GPUs that it launched years in the past.
Had been issues totally different I might have anticipated the RDNA 2 era’s $199 card to considerably outperform the equivalently priced variations from the first-gen RDNA structure and the traditional GCN days.
I might count on much more silicon within the GPU itself, a bigger aggregated reminiscence bus, and extra system reminiscence. Make it 8GB of GDDR5 and we might nonetheless be blissful, it would not must be GDDR6 down at this finish of the market.
The RX 6500 XT hasn’t moved something alongside, and that is as a result of it has completely no must. All of the playing cards will probably be offered to players determined for some type of GPU improve even when miners will steer clear because of that weak 4GB reminiscence capability. It nearly does not matter what our response to the cardboard is, it would possible nonetheless promote in quantity by advantage of the easy truth it exists. And that anti-mining factor, AMD is looking {that a} characteristic. Making it so weak that miners will not purchase it’s a real technique for getting GPUs into the arms of players. It is simply that it additionally makes the RX 6500 XT fairly weak for gaming in 2022 as properly.
