The testimonials are in: AMD’s mining-averse RX 6500 XT also is not wonderful at gaming

When AMD announced its finances-helpful RX 6500 XT graphics card at CES early this thirty day period, the organization proposed that the solution had been designed with limitations that would make it unappealing to the cryptocurrency miners who have been exacerbating the ongoing GPU scarcity for more than a year now. But now that reviews of the card have commenced to strike, it’s crystal clear that its gaming effectiveness is the collateral damage of people constraints.

Assessments from Tom’s Hardware, PCGamer, TechSpot, Players Nexus, and a litany of other Computer system gaming YouTube channels are unanimous: the RX 6500 XT is regularly outperformed by previous-era graphics cards, and it comes with other caveats over and above efficiency that restrict its attractiveness even further more. (Ars has not been supplied with a evaluation unit.)

The main of the trouble is a 64-bit memory interface that limitations the quantity of memory bandwidth the card has to get the job done with. Moreover, the card has only 4GB of RAM, which is commencing to be a restricting aspect in contemporary games, in particular at resolutions over 1080p. Many exams observed the RX 6500 XT outperformed by the 8GB variant of the RX 5500 XT, which released at the tail end of 2019 for the very same $199 (and you could in fact discover and obtain it for that cost).

The components restrictions also make the GPU’s assist for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing almost useless. Tom’s Hardware says that in the titles that are playable at all with ray-tracing enabled, the configurations have to be turned down minimal adequate that game titles really don’t in fact seem that a lot greater. The RX 6000-series’ ray-tracing functionality lags powering the Nvidia RTX 3000 sequence throughout the lineup, but it really is specifically disappointing in this article.

The card’s four-lane PCI Categorical 4. interface also poses a dilemma. When it has a PCIe 4. connection to get the job done with, the RX 6500 XT appears to be great, and even high-stop playing cards really don’t frequently need to have all the bandwidth that the typical 16-lane link offers. But it brings about difficulties for PCs that use PCI Express 3. TechSpot’s review identified that making use of a PCIe 3. connection with the RX 6500 XT knocked off 10–15 percent of the card’s by now lackluster efficiency. And PCIe 3. programs are not historic record: Intel’s 10th-era Main chips, any Ryzen processors however running in a 300- or 400-series motherboard, and the Ryzen 5000G processors with integrated graphics all use PCI Specific 3. and are still being bought at most merchants. These are particularly the varieties of more mature and more cost-effective PCs that spending plan-minded gamers are much more possible to be utilizing, limiting the RX 6500 XT’s attractiveness amongst what ought to be its target audience.

Even for persons who really don’t enjoy video games, the RX 6500 XT cuts some corners that make it much less valuable. The GPU only supports a total of two displays, down from the a lot more standard 4. The GPU’s video clip encoding and decoding capabilities have also been slice down—the card are unable to decode AV1 online video streams, which implies it will not likely be capable to tackle 4K video clip streams from a rising quantity of streaming services (AV1 support is one challenge at the heart of the modern Roku-Google dust-up). And the card can’t encode possibly H.264 or H.265 online video streams, features that support reduce the load on your CPU if you happen to be streaming stay movie.

By way of clarification, an AMD staffer has indicated that the Navi 24 GPU at the coronary heart of the RX 6500 XT was intended for use in laptops, exactly where reduce amounts of VRAM, 64-little bit memory interfaces, and other restrictions are nevertheless prevalent these laptops also nearly constantly include things like an Intel- or AMD-built-in GPU that could tackle the lacking video encoding and decoding abilities. But Navi 24 was retooled for release on desktops, the place its limitations have become extra apparent.

Unfortunately, the realities of present day GPU market place are these types of that an RX 6500 XT at its $200 listing price could nonetheless be a respectable obtain for an individual on a budget or a person who can dwell with mediocre efficiency right up until the GPU sector cools down (whenever that is—the GPU makers by themselves have provided incorrect estimates about the situation so many occasions that it really is crystal clear no a single really is aware for confident). Nvidia’s a long time-aged, reduced-stop GeForce GTX 1650 goes for around $300 when you can come across it, and the RX 6500 XT beats it by a fair margin most of the time.

It is, of course, at present extremely hard to find an RX 6500 XT at its retail cost except if you stay in the vicinity of a Micro Middle or some other brick-and-mortar retail outlet that won’t promote GPUs on line. So it goes.