Final Up to date: January 7, 2022 When AMD introduced the RX 6500 XT earlier this week, players had been leaping out of their seats to see a brand-new finances RDNA 2 graphics card get introduced. With a value level of simply $199, is the RX 6500 XT destined to be the finances GPU king that may lastly dethrone the 1050Ti? We’ll have to attend for critiques to seek out that out. Within the meantime, Tom’s {Hardware} lately reported that the RX 6500 XT solely runs at PCIe 4.0 x4. Which means that the precise quantity of knowledge that the cardboard goes to have the ability to switch within the slot is way decrease than its larger RDNA-2 primarily based brothers. The RX 6500 XT is tremendous bizarre What this finally means is that PCIe 4.0 tops out at round 8GB/s, which is an analogous price of knowledge switch that the SSD in your next-generation video games console will get. Fortunately, this isn’t an excessive amount of of a difficulty with a card that, frankly isn’t too highly effective, and is just aimed on the entry-level market. Regardless, 8GB/s might be present in a PCIe 4.0 slot, however what in case you don’t have a kind of? The cardboard may doubtlessly as an alternative run at PCIe 3.0 x4, which implies it’d solely run at 4GB/s, the place you would possibly theoretically run into some bother when working video games. If somebody is utilizing an older system or has a budget-conscious construct utilizing older platforms, this has the potential to spell bother. Along with this, the RX 6500 XT lacks the power for {hardware} encoding or decoding of H.264 and H.265, which will also be attributed to not solely the structure of the cardboard but in addition the best way that their dies had been developed and reduce. This may be attributed to the die-cutting course of that AMD has been utilizing for its playing cards prior to now. that means that the top-end ‘Massive Navi’ product is the flagship, and the remainder of the playing cards within the line such because the 6600XT are all reduce down from there. Nevertheless. Along with the numerous die-cutting that the 6500 XT has purportedly been topic to, we even have a brand new processing node to cope with. Enter everybody’s pleasant neighborhood chip producer TSMC. Earlier Massive Navi RDNA-2 desktop GPUs from AMD are all primarily based on one thing named a 7nm processing node, which is successfully the beating coronary heart of the merchandise themselves. The 7nm course of is one thing that at this level was properly tried and examined, with desktop CPUs, comparable to their line of extraordinarily well-liked Zen 2 and Zen 3 processors. So, why a 6nm course of on the 6500XT? Why the 6nm course of mattters It’s really a reasonably easy factor. We’re within the midst of a worldwide semiconductor scarcity, and AMD has already booked of their orders for 6nm nodes, as they’re planning to launch them for the Ryzen 6000 desktop processors. So AMD is sitting on a load of producing capability on the 6nm course of, which additionally occurs to be with the 7nm designs, besides. So, what to do apart from dedicate a few of this useful resource to producing a GPU that’s simply accessible to the mass market, on a budget, whereas additionally mitigating the operational prices of bringing the RDNA 2 structure over to 6nm anyway, since their Rembrandt APUs are all outfitted with them too. It simply is sensible, AMD has a possibility to manufacture desktop GPUs, and so they had been porting over RDNA2 with their laptop computer processors anyway, so it seems to simply be clear logic that they’re bringing over a few of that know-how, and plopping it over on the 6nm course of with the RX 6500 XT and 6400. AMD CEO: ‘There’s some overlap on the low-end’ Chatting with PCWorld in a redacted round-robin interview at CES 2022, that’s nonetheless accessible by way of the Wayback Machine, Paul Alcorn of Tom’s {Hardware} posited that Ryzen 6000 may doubtlessly cannibalize gross sales of low-end discrete GPU gross sales. As a response, Dr. Lisa Su pointed states the next: “We take a look at the roadmaps of the built-in APUs and discrete GPUs collectively as we’re creating the roadmaps for the subsequent three, 4, or 5 years. And, you recognize, there’s some overlap on the low finish, however I feel that’s pure, proper?” So, it’s possible that the discharge of the cut-down 6500 XT, on a brand new node that occurs to be shared with the 6000-series of APUs, isn’t any mere coincidence, however a calculated enterprise danger. GPU demand is increased than ever earlier than, why not deliver over the low-end, reduce down playing cards and promote them on a budget? There’s extra demand than there’s provide. However, it does deliver into query the worth of the Radeon RX 6500 XT, and the way it will finally examine to the RTX 3050, which is barely dearer but in addition has options comparable to NVENC, which is one thing that the 6500 XT is unable to do merely on a {hardware} stage. 6500 XT specs worse than RX 480 and upcoming RTX 3050 GPUAMD Radeon RX 6500 XTNVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050AMD Radeon RX 480Launch dateJanuary 2022January 2022June 2016Shader Cores1024 (RDNA 2)2560 (CUDA)2304 (GCN)ROPs324032Memory 4GB GDDR64GB GDDR64GB GDDR5Memory bandwidth144 GB/s224 GB/s224 GB/sMemory bus64-bit128-bit256-bitPCIe bandwidthPCIe 4.0 x 4PCIe 3.0 x 4PCIe 4.0 X 16PCIe 3.0 x 16Maximum PCIe bandwidth8GB/s 64GB/s16GB/sPrice$199$249$199 In the event you had been to instantly examine two of AMD’s sub-$200 choices, it doesn’t look good for the 6500XT, these RDNA 2 cores need to be one thing very particular certainly. We’re additionally assuming that we’re restricted to sure PCIe bandwidths, however regardless, it doesn’t look nice simply from the entire data that we are able to already verify. Is that this actually going to repay for AMD, or is that this an entire misfire of a card and chip? Look forward to our RX 6500 XT assessment Proper now, the RX 6500 XT is citing extra questions and compromises for all to see, however we’ve not but seen what efficiency would possibly appear to be on this card, which would require testing on a number of ranges, together with on each PCIe Gen 4.0 and three.0, with its 8GB/s and 4GB/s speeds respectively. Equally, to be sure you get the perfect worth on your cash, we’ll additionally examine the 6500XT over to its closest competitors, the RTX 3050 with the intention to just be sure you’re in a position to make the perfect buying choice attainable. Mainly, maintain off on pre-ordering this one for now, as there’s clearly extra investigating to be accomplished beneath the hood. We’ve written a complete load of reports round CES 2022, listed here are some highlights: