PC Gamer: RX 6500 XT looks worse on paper than AMD's $199 GPU from six years ago

[JediFragger]

and let's not do anything to upset our overlords by giving their cards a bad review.

Agreed, SHUSH!!!!

 

[Joxeon]

There have been very few cards released in the last 15 years, my memory since being an enthusiast, that have been worse than the 6500XT. It is worth mentioning.

Has any other card that's released in that time been slower than the SKU it replaces even on pcie gen 4.0 and has less features while costing more?.

 

[Twinz]

I Iistened to a lot of the reviews and this card is pretty bad. The card is particularly crippled for what has to be the majority of its target market. (People with older hardware -PCIe 3.0- looking to upgrade.)

I generally try not to worry about a company's inner workings when it comes to the value of their products.

1)How does it perform?

2)What is the price?

Since it has been brought up though, I just searched "AMD earnings report":

https://ir.amd.com/news-events/pres... (GLOBE NEWSWIRE),earnings per share of $0.75.

AMD Reports Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results
— Revenue increased 54 percent year-over-year —
— Gross Margin grew more than 4 percentage points year-over-year to 48 percent —

I think this card really is just a laptop part repackaged for the desktop market.

 

[Grim5]

I Iistened to a lot of the reviews and this card is pretty bad. The card is particularly crippled for what has to be the majority of its target market. (People with older hardware -PCIe 3.0- looking to upgrade.)

I generally try not to worry about a company's inner workings when it comes to the value of their products.

1)How does it perform?

2)What is the price?

Since it has been brought up though, I just searched "AMD earnings report":

https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1027/amd-reports-third-quarter-2021-financial-results#:~:text=26, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE),earnings per share of $0.75.

AMD Reports Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results
— Revenue increased 54 percent year-over-year —
— Gross Margin grew more than 4 percentage points year-over-year to 48 percent —

I think this card really is just a laptop part repackaged for the desktop market.

You don't have to think it, an AMD engineer has already confirmed that Navi24 is a laptop GPU on the AMD forum

 

[TheRealDeal]

The card is literally crap but so is the whole market. Still would have been nice if it was faster than it's predecessor. The whole market is depressing but i do feel the 6500xt is a card of the times and would not have came to pass if covid and mining was not a thing. I have not been keeping up to date as i usually do as it's depressing but this card is literally unchallenged if buying new is it not?

 

[Hotwired]

What's the market price for this card? Higher than MSRP

What's the status of better price/performance cards? Imaginary or Used.

What's the market price for something with better performance New, oh, loads more


AMD's fault every single one of those


If it was any better... and this is advanced thinking... it would cost more

 

[Calin Banc]

Wow, what an AMD defence.

Your argument seems to be on the basis let's assume AMD are correct and let's not do anything to upset our overlords by giving their cards a bad review.

Never in a million years would you write such a post in defence of Nvidia or Intel. In fact you decide to hypothesise some random BS about nvidia in the very same post to make them sound bad, when this thread isn't even about anything they have done.

There have been very few cards released in the last 15 years, my memory since being an enthusiast, that have been worse than the 6500XT. It is worth mentioning.

Is even more funny when you look at other PC components and see their prices being decent, considering the times - DDR4 modules are actually significantly cheaper than when I've bough, if my memory serves me right.
Even their own Ryzen CPUs have gotten cheaper.

Thing is, so far, only GPUs are "printing" money (ergo the prices) and they (nVIDIA + AMD), are loving it.

 

[KompuKare]

You have to remember Sony turn a profit on the ps5 disc version which uses a die that's 3X the size of the 6500XT which they have to buy from AMD the middleman who no doubt takes a cut, they also use 16gb of GDDR6, a larger more complex PCB and cooling solution, more IO with wifi etc, 850mb gen 4 nvme, a blue ray drive, an intergrated power supply, all housed in a case and also comes with a top notch controller. Then there is the box size and weight which adds to shipping costs etc so I don't buy that a GPU of this calibre can cost anywhere near $200 to produce and I would guess the margins are close to 100%.

Since financials were already mentioned (in #503 above), I would really love to see the figures of what Sony - and to a lesser extend Micorsoft - are being charged.

Since AMD's financials are at record highs (for them, 48% margins is still way below what Nvidia (65%) or Intel (56%) achieve) and the share prices is high, no analyst is going to question what kind of a deal the console have.

AFAIK, both consoles and EPYC (which should have, well, epic margins even if big cloud customers are getting huge discount) are grouped into semi-custom and they don't break it down. Last quarter had semi-custom at $1.35 billion and what was up 5% over the quarter and a massive 286% over the year. However, operating income (I assume profit after all costs) for semi-custom was $277 million.

For Compute and Graphics, it was $2.1 billion (up 7% for the quarter and 46% for the year), and operating profits were $420.

No I don't follow this that much, but:
420/2100 = 20.0%
277/1350 = 20.5%

So almost the same. So much for EPYC having epic margins, or the consoles are dragging the overall way down. Like I said, while the shareprice is high, margins are up and projections are high, no anaylist is going to question things, but I think the console makers - especially Sony - got a sweetheart deal. Wouldn't be surprised if the cost of all those poor yields of PS5 (which were possibly driven by Sony upping the clocks before release rather paying for a large SOC in the first place) didn't come out of Sony's pocket. Claiming they were already at profit with the PS5 so early must have gone down well at AMD.

 

[pieman109]

The card is literally crap but so is the whole market. Still would have been nice if it was faster than it's predecessor. The whole market is depressing but i do feel the 6500xt is a card of the times and would not have came to pass if covid and mining was not a thing. I have not been keeping up to date as i usually do as it's depressing but this card is literally unchallenged if buying new is it not?

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ This, spot on

 

[Alan McFall]

The card is literally crap

Enough said

 

[Grim5]

The RX550 has been put back on sale, for just $155! No yes I know this price is bad, but it makes the 6500XT look good in comparison and it's just a coincidence that the RX550 has been resold now

https://www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/japanese-aibs-revive-amds-ageing-radeon-rx-550-for-dollar155

 

[Tired9]

The RX550 has been put back on sale, for just $155! No yes I know this price is bad, but it makes the 6500XT look good in comparison and it's just a coincidence that the RX550 has been resold now

https://www.tomshardware.com/amp/news/japanese-aibs-revive-amds-ageing-radeon-rx-550-for-dollar155

If you need to buy this low, just grab an XBOX ONE X, 250 quid at CEX or 190 from Cash Converters, does 4K 30 all day and night and even 60 FPS in same games at higher res too.

That console has been a great addition with my PC for exclusives.

 

[humbug]

Since financials were already mentioned (in #503 above), I would really love to see the figures of what Sony - and to a lesser extend Micorsoft - are being charged.

Since AMD's financials are at record highs (for them, 48% margins is still way below what Nvidia (65%) or Intel (56%) achieve) and the share prices is high, no analyst is going to question what kind of a deal the console have.

AFAIK, both consoles and EPYC (which should have, well, epic margins even if big cloud customers are getting huge discount) are grouped into semi-custom and they don't break it down. Last quarter had semi-custom at $1.35 billion and what was up 5% over the quarter and a massive 286% over the year. However, operating income (I assume profit after all costs) for semi-custom was $277 million.

For Compute and Graphics, it was $2.1 billion (up 7% for the quarter and 46% for the year), and operating profits were $420.

No I don't follow this that much, but:
420/2100 = 20.0%
277/1350 = 20.5%

So almost the same. So much for EPYC having epic margins, or the consoles are dragging the overall way down. Like I said, while the shareprice is high, margins are up and projections are high, no anaylist is going to question things, but I think the console makers - especially Sony - got a sweetheart deal. Wouldn't be surprised if the cost of all those poor yields of PS5 (which were possibly driven by Sony upping the clocks before release rather paying for a large SOC in the first place) didn't come out of Sony's pocket. Claiming they were already at profit with the PS5 so early must have gone down well at AMD.

Yes the operating income and revenue is the difference between the sum total of what it cost them to get the product in your hands and what they were paid for that in return. material costs, staff wages, energy bills...... all that.

So you have just worked out AMD's margins, Compute and Graphics is Ryzen CPU's and Radeon cards, they have 20% margins on those, so an example would be it cost them $160 to get a $200 GPU in your hands. Or to get a $300 Ryzen CPU in your hands it cost them $240.

Obviously its not that simple, higher end GPU may have higher margins than lower end, Ryzen CPU will probably have higher margins than GPU's, i'll say it again, i don't think AMD are making a penny on these and i think its the last $200 GPU we will ever see because people like Steve Walton and Steve Burke are using this crappy situation to make hyperbolic "Lets rant at AMD because it gets views and we wouldn't dare treat Nvidia in the same way but we have to do it to someone for the views" videos.

If $200 GPU's are a thing of the past you know who to thank for it.

AMD always do this to themselves, they should just copy Nvidia for a more profitable, quieter life. Yeah?

 

[KompuKare]

Yes the operating income and revenue is the difference between the sum total of what it cost them to get the product in your hands and what they were paid for that in return. material costs, staff wages, energy bills...... all that.

So you have just worked out AMD's margins, Compute and Graphics is Ryzen CPU's and Radeon cards, they have 20% margins on those, so an example would be it cost them $160 to get a $200 GPU in your hands. Or to get a $300 Ryzen CPU in your hands it cost them $240.

Obviously its not that simple, higher end GPU may have higher margins than lower end, Ryzen CPU will probably have higher margins than GPU's, i'll say it again, i don't think AMD are making a penny on these and i think its the last $200 GPU we will ever see because people like Steve Walton and Steve Burke are using this crappy situation to make hyperbolic "Lets rant at AMD because it gets views and we wouldn't dare treat Nvidia in the same way but we have to do it to someone for the views" videos.

If $200 GPU's are a thing of the past you know who to thank for it.

AMD always do this to themselves, they should just copy Nvidia for a more profitable, quieter life. Yeah?

Well, my comment was more about Sony making a profit on the PS5.
Basically, the consoles (which should be AMD's lowest margin product) are lumped in with server CPUs (which should be AMD's highest margin product).
And the net / gross profit figures do mostly support that: EPYC is hiding consoles low margins.

 

[humbug]

Well, my comment was more about Sony making a profit on the PS5.
Basically, the consoles (which should be AMD's lowest margin product) are lumped in with server CPUs (which should be AMD's highest margin product).
And the net / gross profit figures do mostly support that: EPYC is hiding consoles low margins.

Yes, its the same reason AMD lump Ryzen and Radeon together, Ryzen is hiding low Radeon margins, when AMD are charging £100 to £400 less on the MSRP vs Nvidia its makes a difference on their bottom line, a huge one.

 

[RavenXXX2]

DF calls it a sleazy release.

https://youtu.be/ieLn5gSYSN0?t=1586

 

[Harlequin]

DF calls it a sleazy release.

https://youtu.be/ieLn5gSYSN0?t=1586

Digital Shilleries, employed by Nvidia, call a rival product a sleazy release *shocker*

 

[Grim5]

DF calls it a sleazy release.

https://youtu.be/ieLn5gSYSN0?t=1586

well thought out reply in depth, they said it well and compared it to previous Nvidia duds that did the same thing. The 6500xt deserves a rubbish bin, call it what it is

 

[rare]

Digital Shilleries, employed by Nvidia, call a rival product a sleazy release *shocker*

They aren’t wrong.

 

[Alan McFall]

Digital Shilleries, employed by Nvidia, call a rival product a sleazy release *shocker*