I'd expect far more silicon in the GPU itself, a larger aggregated memory bus, and more system memory. Make it 8GB of GDDR5 and we'd still be happy, it wouldn't have to be GDDR6 down at this end of the market. For those of you using a PCIe 3.0 system, which again will be most looking at buying a budget GPU, the new 6500 XT is going to be no faster than the old RX 570 in this game. One potential reason for this shaky performance is that AMD has opted to include just four PCIe lanes with the RX 6500 XT, compared to the more usual eight or 16. That makes sense with modern PCIe 4.0, where each lane can deliver an impressive amount of bandwidth, but what happens when you use the 6500 XT on a PCIe 3.0 system where bandwidth per lane is halved? Meanwhile, in many of the AAA tests we ran, the Radeon RX 6500 XT was only able to stay competitive with Nvidia's last true launch in this tier, the GeForce GTX 1650 Super. Whether in Red Dead Redemption 2 or Far Cry 5, we saw regular shootouts and win exchanges between those two GPUs. Most were photo-finishes, or close to it, regardless of the tested resolution. a b c d Goslin, Austen; Sarkar, Samit (October 28, 2020). "AMD announces Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs". Polygon . Retrieved January 22, 2021.

The Shadow of the Tomb Raider results paint quite the picture. Unlike Assassin's Creed Valhalla which was tested using the medium quality preset, Shadow of the Tomb Raider has been tested using the highest quality preset as this is quite an old game now. The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT model we tested runs at just 107 watts, while certain OC options will push that to 120 watts. The model we tested required one six-pin power connector lead from the PSU. That x4 connection is the equivalent of a x8 PCIe 3.0 slot, which is more than enough bandwidth for 1080p gaming. Cutting that in half, however, might be more of an issue. So, while this might be an affordable upgrade (at MSRP) for a new GPU, it may necessitate a complete PC platform change to get anything like a decent level of performance out of it.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 vs. AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT: The Basics

You're also limited to just two display outputs, which could be a deal breaker for some. But most importantly, this was not a limitation on much older products such as the RX 480, for example. For desktop PCs, AMD announced the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT and Radeon RX 6400 graphics cards, designed to make incredible 1080p gaming experiences for popular AAA and esports titles accessible to more gamers. The Radeon RX 6500 XT really shows the world everything that's wrong with the current state of the GPU market. The chip itself is very small, which should help reduce prices, and it cuts out several potentially useful features, all in the name of cutting costs. And then it launches with an official MSRP equal to the previous generation RX 5500 XT 8GB card — a card that's often quite a bit faster than the RX 6500 XT. AMD provided an extensive list of its own testing that showed the RX 6500 XT outperforming the RX 570 4GB by an average of 24%. We overlapped on five of the seven games in our test suite ( Flight Simulator and Forza Horizon 5 being the two extras), but we tested with a different CPU, RAM, motherboard, and our settings didn't match up in every case, either. Just looking at those five games, AMD showed the 6500 XT leading by 25%, while our results showed the RX 6500 XT leading by 20%, which is close enough given the other differences in testing procedures and hardware. We re-ran this test and got the same data each time. So either this is a driver issue, or just a weakness of the Navi 24 design, but as it stands the 6500 XT is well down on where you'd expect it to be, typically hovering around the same level of performance as the 5500 XT.

Unless otherwise noted within the frame, all performance and cost savings claims are provided by RobeyTech and have not been independently verified by AMD. Performance and cost benefits are impacted by a variety of variables. Results herein are specific to RobeyTech and may not be typical. GD-181 The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a performance-segment graphics card by AMD, launched on January 19th, 2022. Built on the 6 nm process, and based on the Navi 24 graphics processor, in its Navi 24 XT variant, the card supports DirectX 12 Ultimate. This ensures that all modern games will run on Radeon RX 6500 XT. Additionally, the DirectX 12 Ultimate capability guarantees support for hardware-raytracing, variable-rate shading and more, in upcoming video games. The Navi 24 graphics processor is an average sized chip with a die area of 107 mm² and 5,400 million transistors. It features 1024 shading units, 64 texture mapping units, and 32 ROPs. The card also has 16 raytracing acceleration cores. AMD has paired 4 GB GDDR6 memory with the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which are connected using a 64-bit memory interface. The GPU is operating at a frequency of 2310 MHz, which can be boosted up to 2815 MHz, memory is running at 2248 MHz (18 Gbps effective). We've tested at 1080p and 1440p though most of our focus will be on 1080p results. Let's get into it... BenchmarksTo make matters worse, the PCIe interface limits you. It only occupies four PCIe lanes, while most graphics cards, including the RX 580, occupy the full 16. It’s not a problem on PCIe 4.0, but that’s only available on the most recent AMD and Intel platforms. The vast majority of people will use the RX 6500 XT with PCIe 3.0.