OcUK RX6500XT review thread

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Asus

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/asus-radeon-rx-6500-xt-tuf-gaming/
https://www.wepc.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt/

Gigabyte

https://www.kitguru.net/components/dominic-moass/amd-rx-6500-xt-review-ft-gigabyte-eagle/
https://www.sweclockers.com/test/33...ming-oc-en-alldeles-for-nedskalad-grafikkrets

MSI

Powercolor

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/radeon-rx-6500-xt-review,1.html

Sapphire

https://www.eteknix.com/sapphire-pulse-radeon-6500-xt-4gb-review

XFX

https://www.club386.com/amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt-review/
https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Rade...view-Benchmarks-Hashrate-vs-RTX-3050-1387328/
https://www.wepc.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt/
https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt-review-xfx

Group tests

https://www.profesionalreview.com/2022/01/19/asus-tuf-gaming-rx-6500-xt-oc-review/

PCI-E Scaling

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt-pci-express-scaling/

Looking at the performance data generated by this review I suspect that even at PCIe 4.0 x4 there's a significant performance loss for the RX 6500 XT. My estimate would be around 6-10%, which isn't huge, especially in this segment, but it's still performance that could have been easily be achieved for a minimal cost increase. If the cost difference was substantial, everybody would have slimmed down their PCIe interfaces for a long time.

Averaged over our game test suite, we found a 13% loss in performance when switching from the PCIe 4.0 interface to PCIe 3.0. This will happen to you when running the Radeon RX 6500 XT on an Intel platform that's older than Rocket Lake (10th generation and older). On the AMD side PCIe 3.0 is the fastest option when using first generation Zen processors, or when using lower-end motherboards with cheaper chipsets.

I also ran a full batch of tests for the RX 6500 XT operating at PCI-Express 2.0 mode, which is a fairly unlikely scenario. I doubt there's still PCs used for serious gaming with that bus speed. It's still an interesting data point for science. Here the performance loss is another 21% vs PCIe 3.0, and 34% in total when compared against the PCI-Express 4.0 baseline.

Linux review

Video reviews

Hardware Unboxed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5_oM3Ow_CI

Gamers Nexus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFpuJqx9Qmw

LTT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYp6pEDm4E8

Hardware Canucks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArW4-mkGHSw

eTeknix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpko3K7EoL0

KitGuruTech

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmE8iZWaLWE

 

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Worst GPU: Radeon RX 6500 XT Review, Corner Cutting Edition

It's awful!

 

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TPU tests over a dozen games with different PCI-E link speeds:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt-pci-express-scaling/

Looking at the performance data generated by this review I suspect that even at PCIe 4.0 x4 there's a significant performance loss for the RX 6500 XT. My estimate would be around 6-10%, which isn't huge, especially in this segment, but it's still performance that could have been easily be achieved for a minimal cost increase. If the cost difference was substantial, everybody would have slimmed down their PCIe interfaces for a long time.

Averaged over our game test suite, we found a 13% loss in performance when switching from the PCIe 4.0 interface to PCIe 3.0. This will happen to you when running the Radeon RX 6500 XT on an Intel platform that's older than Rocket Lake (10th generation and older). On the AMD side PCIe 3.0 is the fastest option when using first generation Zen processors, or when using lower-end motherboards with cheaper chipsets.

I also ran a full batch of tests for the RX 6500 XT operating at PCI-Express 2.0 mode, which is a fairly unlikely scenario. I doubt there's still PCs used for serious gaming with that bus speed. It's still an interesting data point for science. Here the performance loss is another 21% vs PCIe 3.0, and 34% in total when compared against the PCI-Express 4.0 baseline.

 

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If you have pcie4.0 it's not *that* bad but I feel most people that will buy these won't...very pleased with the 6600 I got from the b Grade section now

How much was that??

 

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£200.

Wow!

 

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Indeed, bought a vega 64 from there that wasn't fulfilled so I offered £200 (which is what the vega 64 was listed at) and was amazed that it was accepted! Might be one off with the nature of them not being able to fulfill my order.

Good going!

 

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No wonder it has disabled media encode features,look at the power draw:
https://tpucdn.com/review/asus-radeon-rx-6500-xt-tuf-gaming/images/energy-efficiency.png







This is really bottom barrel silicon being used!

 

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They threw the power budget (of going to 6nm) at the 1ghz clock increase as making it a 40w part would kill the performance.

The spike was more concerning to me - not sure how its doing that. The RX6600XT seems to be more consistent. I honestly think an XBox Series S looks more and more of a fantastic deal for a budget gamer!

It is saying a lot about 6nm and 5nm to come.. Now we know why next generation is going to be a bigger power hog.. In todays climate sadly £180 is a good deal on a new card with these sorts of specs. Next generation pricing is clearly going to be threw the roof and power use, heat generated by these new cards.. Say bye bye to the rumoursed 2x-3x performance increase to 7900xt over the current 6900xt, same for 4080 will be 20-30% increase if we are lucky at a more ridiculous msrp from the start.. Sad times for the GPU market.

You have a point - 6NM might not be as great as we expect,either WRT to power draw or yields!

 

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The PCI-E 2.0 scenario isn't that far fetched. Until last year I was still running a Gigabyte MA770-UD3 and an athlon x2 unlocked to quad core phenom 2 x4 equivalent. With my GTX 970 it was still giving me playable 1080p settings in many games. The CPU was rarely the main bottleneck once you turned settings up.

Stick one of these in and you are in single digit FPS territory on that system in a few games. There are still very few cross platform games where a Phenom 2 limits you to worse settings then a PS4 or Xbox One. This card would be an utter disaster in such a system.

I agree as lots of budget gamers are older systems and older CPUs,which is why I really wish more articles followed up on performance using older systems.

Yeah budget gamers deserve better than this.

But,but....reasons! I still remember when people used node cost excuses for when we saw the Geforce Titan start at nearly £1000,when the previous generation top end was £500(which was the start of the massive upward trend in the fortunes of Nvidia).

Expect to see these in laptops/desktops at reasonable prices but DIY buyers get screwed over. It makes less and less sense to build a gaming system nowadays. Like I have mentioned before I have seen RTX3050/RTX3060/RTX3060TI/RX6600/RX6600XT dGPUs in prebuilt desktops and laptops at reasonable prices over the last couple of months.

In all seriousness, for the health of PC gaming, we could all do with an affordable card in this price bracket that will run new games with the settings set at roughly on par with an Xbox Series S at 1080p. That, at least, would help build enough of a user base to make it worth developer's time and resources making games for PC.

This is not that card.

Because the only way is to save up and get a whole system. The reality is that these companies and AIB board partners realise that those who build their own systems,are willing to either stump up more because they are miners or enthusiasts who are obsessed with their hobby. Basically the PC enthusiast who self built their own PC has gone from the most discerning customer to the biggest set of mugs and whales in a decade. Basically throw any amount of money they can.Sadly as the hobby has become less niche,people have entered the fray who don't do any research at all. Heck,there are people paying £300+ for a Ryzen 5 5600X right now.

So whilst idiots were paying £500+ for an RTX3060/RTX3060TI,you could get laptops/desktops for £900~£1000 with a similar dGPU,and decent specs off the shelf without having to even bother building it yourself,with a warranty.

Plus the other alternative is to get one of the consoles - the XBox Series S didn't get scalped in pricing. Even the XBox Series X and PS5,with the reseller market was getting less of a markup than an RTX3060 series dGPU for example(whilst those dGPUs were probably not even that much better).

 

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I know costs are higher than before. But this card is a 64 bit memory bandwidth card, small die, and 2 memory modules. Yes that costs more than it did 5 years ago. But that doesn't come anywhere near explaining it unless TSMC, Samsung, Micron etc. have increased their prices several multiples since then.

The only people this makes sense for is people with no pre-existing hardware which will be a very small minority of current gamers. Yes kids buying new systems will need something.

Here is the TUF card which is more premium. $200 even for this premium version?

The RX6500XT is really an RX560 successor by specifications.

 

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It appears not only has computerbase.de been refused a review sample,so was Tech YES City:
https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx1uYHpoGJnP1vW1U_a97aFpZ-2GAuoy_2

 

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AMD continue to take lessons from Nvidia...

Apparently!

 

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Looks like Igorslab and PCGH didn't get review samples either:
https://www-igorslab-de.translate.g...tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

So that is probably most of the major German review websites!

 

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https://twitter.com/x/status/1484346550142726146

Proving some of the reviews are just drama created for clicks and some fake results.

https://twitter.com/tekwendell/status/1484346550142726146?s=20

I think its more like his review is desperate to show the RX6500XT in the best light possible. Considering that its quite clear AMD hasn't sampled a ton of websites,I expect a number are a bit concerned about being a bit too negative. It's happened with Nvidia.

Also the reality is the RX5500XT itself,can be noticeably faster in a number of games,not just in its 8GB model,but even the 4GB one. There should no cases where the RX6500XT 4GB losses to an RX5500XT 4GB,considering its a new design based on the same uarch. People criticised Nvidia heaps for stuff like the GTX960 on here which was something similar over the GTX760,so the criticism is entirely fair on the RX6500XT.

AMD shouldn't get a pass when Nvidia would be racked over coals for this. The RTX3060 got slammed by the same websites. The RTX2060 12GB got slammed. The RTX3070TI and RTX3080TI were also mocked.

The GTX1650 got taken to bits.When the RX6600/RX6600XT got slammed too people were then criticising the same websites.

You can't have it both ways. Either these websites are anti-Nvidia or anti-AMD according to many here,when its quite clear they have called out so many of these useless releases.

This is not the first or last time entire generations have had rubbish. Have people forgotten the entire ATI HD2000 series,or literally every dGPU under the 8800GT of the same generation,like the useless 8600GT?

People need to stop trying to salvage diamonds out of a heap of turds. This generation after January 2021 has been a heap of turds. The releases have been utterly overpriced and underperforming.

When a £250 console probably is going to be no worse than this release in any meaningful way, and is an entire system with 8 Zen2 cores an NVME SSD,its a sad day to be a budget/mainstream PC gamer. PCMR my backside more like PC-lets-see-how-much-we-can-rip-you-off.

The useless Nvidia/AMD dGPU cartel with their own AIB partners are more concerned with miners and consoles than the people who actually made them what they are(especially Nvidia).

Let's see them all of suddenly "valueing" gamers if mining falls through the roof even for a brief period,like the previous two times. Three times so far this has happened with mining and three times games/general consumers have been thrown to the wayside. People should learn this lesson for the 3rd time - don't give any of them any benefit of the doubt.

 

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All cards get tested with the same settings, it's called having controlled variables and is the correct way to produce comparative results.

This. Why is it always when an AMD card gets dunked on,the reviewers are not testing it properly?

But when the same reviewers dunked on the GTX1650 4GB(saying an RX570 4GB was better),GT1030 4GB, the RTX3060,RTX2060 12GB,RTX3070TI,RTX3080TI,etc were all considered overpriced jokes nobody was making the same defence?

Most of those reviewers have had barely had anything good to say about any dGPU since January 2021.

 

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I'm guessing he's just running at settings for 60fps min. Best case settings for the card.

How come none of the Nvidia cards get the same treatment? I find it really weird people are finding outlier reviews and trying to big up this card,and starts criticising reviewers. But the same reviewers which dunked on EVERY Nvidia dGPU release for the last year where applauded for their criticisms. It was the same with AMD jacking up pricing with Zen3 - massive defence of that. But when Intel does it - everyone rightly had a go at them.

Despite record dGPU sales,they are mostly diverting supplies to miners,then allowing AIB partners to charge what they want,and then also diverting silicon supply to other areas such as laptops and consoles.

So all we get is rejected scraps which nobody really wants. If people keep accepting rubbish like this and the general rubbish pricing have none of here learnt the bitter lesson? Even if supply improves,mining is less of an issue,etc they will maintain the high prices.

Some of us warned people against the doubling of prices with the Geforce Titan. A number even back then defended it because "TSMC 28NM cost more". Then we had Turing which people bought despite doing the same,and AMD joining and rebranding its Polaris replacement.

Now every release since January 2021 from both of them have idiotic RRPs,and even worse street prices. Things have gotten even worse than the Turing generation.

 

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I'm neither in favour of or against the 6500XT, it neither totally terrible or great, it's just at a crappy price. So what's new really, aren't all graphics cards, AMD really should have released this with an MSRP of £139 or less, but we knew that was never going to happen.

If you buy one at £199+ then you are basically telling them it's ok to release cards like this, at this price, but then again what choice do you have unless you want to buy an RTX 3060 from Franks Computer Scalping Inc. for £600+

The 4x PCI-E thing is a bit irksome, especially if you are dropping this in a PCI-E 3.0 based system, but at the same time it is faster than a GT1030 which I've seen for sale for £195.

Basically all the people I know who needed a full system upgrade since last year,I have told them to get a prebuilt system. It was the only easy way to actually get a dGPU such as an RTX3060/RTX3060TI/RX6600/RX6600XT close to RRP(outside the first week) unless you waited for an FE drop or got lucky with the odd "reasonably priced" drop from some retailers(well one retailer). My main concern is if mining slows down for a bit,and we get more supply for dGPUs will both companies decide to just keep the price higher for the next generation,and rely on the desperation so people buy it anyway?

Oh, I was posting it just to give an example of a smaller channel releasing something with more real world usage examples, doesn't change the fact that it's a sack of ****

The big issue is that anyone with a dGPU above £120~£140 from 2016 onwards its not going to see much of a big upgrade,and most systems are on PCI-E 3.0 which drops performance even more. Literally everyone I know who buys dGPUs in the sub £250 market already has gotten a Polaris class or Pascal equivalent dGPU. Even an RTX3050 isn't going to be much of an upgrade and certainly will be also incredibly overpriced if after one day the RX6500XT is now £230.

 

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Who gives a flying fig about what DF says - they only care about raytracing,or DLSS and they still apparently fudged some of the comparisons.

However,a £200+ RX6500XT cannot even convincingly beat an RX5500XT(which was panned at launch when it couldn't convincingly beat an RX480/RX580),and needs PCI-E 4.0 which most gaming systems won't have?? Do some of you really even understand budget systems?? These include people still on older Core systems and first generation Ryzen CPUs. Even Zen2 is not that old. I know more people on Zen2/CML CPUs than Zen3 CPUs or RKL/ADL.

That is six straight years of stagnant performance. What is the likelihood the reviewers who think the RX6500XT is decent,actually only game on high end cards and don't actually seem to understand how stagnant the segment has gotten since 2016?

Plus 2016 was preceeded by the GTX760/GTX960/R9 280/R9 380 stagnation for a few years before that if you were more budget limited. You could get R9 290 dGPUs for around £200 the year before the RX480/GTX1060 though so it was not as brilliant as people remember.

Do you think of any of us think an RTX3050 is going to be a "deal" either? Even at its "technical" £240~£250 RPP,it probably won't appreciably beat a GTX1660 Super which could be had for £200,and probably not a GTX1070 8GB which could be had for around the same price when it went EOL.

So after 6 years,is this how low the expectations on this forum has?? This is the problem when a bunch of you buy super expensive dGPUs,and then think any old rubbish is fine for lower budget gamers. I doubt any of you would even touch an RX6500XT or RTX3050 with a bargepole.

 

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Hold up....

I don't recall any "high end" Polaris were not high end but very capable... cards... I don't recall any low end GPU coming near a flagship in any lineup until around 4 generations later or so.

Closest card was the 750 Ti to the GTX 480 which still the GTX 480 beat it soundly.

The true low end of the 700 series though were the GTX 750 and GT 740.

The 650 Ti BOOST edition was even faster than the 750 Ti and did not beat the 480 but was right at it's heels, this BOOST edition is the earliest inception of a "Super" if I have ever seen one.

There was a stagnation period when the GTX760/R9 280 sorted of price matched each other. The GTX960 was not much faster,and the R9 285/R9 380 was in the same boat. However,for a few months the R9 290 pricing collapsed just before the R9 390 was launched to around £180~£200 for the best models,so if you could deal with the card,it was a better deal than a similarly priced GTX960/R9 285.

The RX480/GTX1060 sort of matched/beat the R9 390/GTX970 but the only issue is the UK exchange rates went a bit south in summer 2016(down 20%),so in terms of savings it wasn't as dramatic as the USD comparison was(for instance I remember a mate buying a Powercolor R9 390 for £240~£250 in 2015 and an AIB RX480 8GB was about the same price,but if exchange rates hadn't dipped than would have made the RX480 8GB £200ish over here).

But since then the performance improvements haven't been great. The GTX1660 Super was not too bad close to £200ish,and then there was the odd GTX1070 and V56 deal dropping down to there. There were a few RTX2060/RX5600XT/RX5700 cards which dipped under £300,but not that close to £200.

At least that is what I saw when helping mates out. YMMV.

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I doubt any of you would even touch an RX6500XT or RTX3050 with a bargepole.

I got one, and I'm about to try it with a i5 11400, 16gb 32000mhz ram and pcie gen 4 hopefully

But I don't see you trying to say its the best thing since sliced bread,and the issue is if this is your main dGPU its hardly an upgrade over previous generations. This is the dilemma I have with mates who have 2016~2018 GTX1060/RX470/RX480/RX580 dGPUs,basically nothing under £300 is really worth buying even at RRP.

 

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Oh its an absolute howler mate, the thing is, atm (3050 aside) its all there is if you wanna buy new at that price point, and also all s/h cards are more expensive/older. Bottom line as a part time pc builder, its a no brainer, PROVIDING the price doesn't go up too far ( fat chance of that happening with people's opinions as bad as they are of it). Oh and most importantly, a manufacturer's warranty is worth shedloads to me, offers protection for the buyer and me.
It does what it says on the tin, 1080p light gaming, medium settings, 60fps, job done. Most people I build for, want to spend as little as possible, but are quite happy with the results. They are not enthusiasts

Oh and did I mention its a dog?

Problem is that none of the RTX3060/RTX3060TI/RX6600/RX6600XT cards are that overpriced in many laptops or a number of prebuilt desktops. I have seen laptops with an 8 core cpu and an RTX3060 for £900 recently. Systems with a rtx3060ti or RX6600XT for under £1000. You can even configure the parts too. All these will have a full system warranty including RTB and a legit copy of an OS included. I would expect desktops/laptops with an rx6500xt/rtx3050 equivalent to be even cheaper.
It's why I basically have pointed everyone who needed a new gaming build in that direction now. Sure you can try for an FE drop, etc or hope there is a low priced AIB card but you need to be patient.

The pricing set by AIB partners, etc are really not competitive.Plus the issue is a console will be cheaper or faster than this DGPU or the RTX3050. This is another issue with casual gamers who might ask why their fancy new PC performs worse than their mates console!