RX 6500 XT news
AMD launches the Radeon RX 6500 XT, Features
AMD has released the Radeon RX 6500 XT, a budget mid-range graphics card that, as we mentioned at the time, generated a lot of interest as it was set to become the closest direct equivalent to the Xbox Series S GPU, although that graphics card I had everything to be much stronger, despite the difference in active computing entities.
In the end, there were no surprises. The Radeon RX 6500 XT has fulfilled each and every one of the hopes that had been generated, and it also confirmed the dire predictions that arose after it was known that it was going to use a PCIE Gen4 x4 working platform, and it is that, as happened with the Radeon RX 6600 and Radeon RX 6600 XT, both limited to PCIE Gen4 x8, when used with a PCIE Gen3 motherboard, a significant loss of performance is generated.
We'll talk more about this later, but we'll tell you about it now in our analysis of the Radeon RX 6600.
The first Radeon RX 6500 XT units we saw have a careful design and quite good build quality, so much so that in some cases it is difficult to believe that we are looking at a standard quality budget model.
As regards your information, nothing has changed compared to the clarifications we have provided you in recent weeks. These are its specifications:
- Navi 24 XT GPU in 6nm.
- 1,024 shaders at 2.2GHz-2.81GHz, regular and turbo mode.
- 16 ray tracing acceleration entities.
- 64 texturing entities.
- 32 raster entities.
- 2,610MHz-2,815MHz GPU continuity, regular and turbo mode.
- 16 MB unlimited cache.
- 64-bit omnibus.
- 4GB GDDR6 at 18GHz.
- FP32 capacity: 5.76 TFLOPS.
- Bandwidth: 144 GB/s.
- 107 watt TBP.
RX 6500 XT news 2022 – Performance:
How does AMD's latest position you?
TechPowerUP! has announced of the best analyses we have been able to read to date, so I am going to share with you the most essential information we can obtain from it.
At 1080p resolution, the Radeon RX 6500 XT is located practically at the same level as a GTX 1650 Super, a graphics card that was standard quality in its time.
This tells us that AMD's solution can run recent games at 1080p, but in much more rigorous situations We will not be able to configure them always to the limit if we want to enjoy good fluidity.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a prime example, recording averages of 26 FPS at 1080p and maximum quality, though to be fair it also There are other less rigorous titles that work perfectly. at 1080p and maximum quality on the Radeon RX 6500 XT, such as Resident Evil Village, Death Stranding and DOOM Eternal, to name a few.
Those games also run very well at 1440p, a resolution that is a bit too much for the Radeon RX 6500 XT, thoughand this also does not mean that it is not a possible alternative if we adjust the level of graphic quality.
All in all, this graphics card delivers its best performance at 1080p, and that's its sweet spot, no doubt about it.
We forget about 4K directly, logically, although By pulling FSR we could find acceptable performance results in certain cases.
Regarding their equivalents in high resolutions, we observe that the Radeon RX 6500 XT falls below the GTX 1650 Super at 1440p, and below the RX 570 when we go up to 4K.
That performance drop as the resolution increases is a consequence of the Radeon RX 6500 XT's design, which uses 16MB of L3 cache to compensate for its low bandwidth.
In ray tracing, the Radeon RX 6500 XT achieves some spectacular results, even surpassing, in some cases, the Radeon RX 6600 XT, at least according to the data collected by the source of the analysis, although Generally their performance with that technology is very poor and is located, with a few (and strange) exceptions, well below the RX 6600.
For example, in Deathloop the Radeon RX 6500 XT achieves an average of 13 FPS, while the Radeon RX 6600 achieves 43.4 FPS (1080p).
The Radeon RX 6500 XT is not a graphics card with high consumption, in fact in the TechPowerUP! tests it was around 101-112 watts, but despite this the working temperature it reached was somewhat high, since with the standard BIOS it reached 72 degrees, and with the fans at low noise level it went up to the 80 degrees.
If we use the Radeon RX 6500 XT on a motherboard that is limited to PCIE Gen3, Performance is reduced, on average, by 13% under 1080p and 1440p resolution, and a 18% in 4K. Things would be worse if we connected it to a PCIE Gen2 slot, since the performance loss would be 34% in 1080p, 29% in 1440p and 45% in 4K.
AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT – Final Notes:
The Radeon RX 6500 XT is what we expected, but not what it should be
As I mentioned earlier at the beginning of the product, the Radeon RX 6500 XT has strictly met each and every one of our expectations as it fully matches the leaks we have been observing, but unfortunately it is not up to what we would have liked, and it is not what it should be, that is, It is not the successor to the Radeon RX 5500 XT that we were all waiting for.
I do not speak without foundation.
It is true that the Radeon RX 6500 XT uses a much more advanced architecture, and that it has hardware intended for ray tracing, but Its performance is inferior to that of a Radeon RX 5500 XT of 4 GB (the difference is small at 1080p, but noticeable at 1440p), it has a major shortcoming derived from the use of a PCIE Gen4 x4 working platform and also comes without AV1 hardware decoding.
Putting all of the above together and combining it with its poor ray tracing performance, we realize that the Radeon RX 6500 XT has nothing that makes it worthy of being the successor to the Radeon RX 5500 XT.
Its suggested price is 215 euros, but I fear that, due to the inflation that the graphic sector is experiencing, it will be impossible to achieve it for that money.
However, if you can find it for less than 250 euros, and you urgently need to upgrade your graphics card, It wouldn't be a bad purchase, more than anything because of the situation in the countryside today.