PSA: DON'T Buy The RX 6500-XT (Unless There's LITERALLY Nothing Else)

[r.linder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFpuJqx9Qmw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArW4-mkGHSw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmE8iZWaLWE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5_oM3Ow_CI

Right out of the gate, the RX 6500-XT is being outperformed by the RX 580, a 5 year old refresh of a 6 year old GPU architecture. It can sometimes win against the 580, but it loses battles against it more than it wins, and there's just other issues with the card, like the fact that it only uses up to 4 PCI-e lanes out of a x16 PCI-e slot, and lacking some encoding support like HEVC.
AMD seems to have intentionally stripped down the 6500-XT, I guess to cut cost, but the MSRP is still basically around the same as what the RX 580 was, and that number doesn't mean anything anymore because of scalpers, that card is probably still going to be scalped even though it's terrible, which makes it even worse for people who might end up buying a scalped 6500-XT.

In my opinion, don't buy the 6500-XT, you're much better off paying more for a GTX 1660 SUPER or RTX 2060. If the 6500-XT sells out, it'll only show AMD that their shady design choices are a-okay with us, but it shouldn't be, this is absolutely disgusting that a 4 year old GPU is still consistently faster than their latest. And don't give me that "well the RX 580 was the top end of Polaris" crap, they've released the RX 590, which is even faster, than the 5500-XT, which was slower than that, and now the 6500-XT, which is basically the same GPU but actually worse in some aspects. The 580 was always a mid-range GPU in actual performance when it launched, now it's just barely above entry level, this isn't acceptable.
I don't really recommend buying Radeon GPUs at all at this point. AMD is starting to become more like Intel and NVIDIA and they're doing it wrong, they're making it too obvious that they're flipping their budget users off. At least their competitors are a lot more subtle about it.

[r.linder]

ZeekAncient a écrit :

尺.ㄥ丨几ᗪ乇尺 a écrit :

https://youtu.be/DC3Bky7Qccw

Thank you for playing this video. It was entertaining, as well as informative.

And now I have to retract an earlier statement I had. I had said in one of my earlier posts that I had never seen Nvidia, let alone AMD, release a GPU as bad as the 6500XT. At least not one branded as a current gen GPU that is good for gaming. Well, the release of a GT 430 as a GT 730 looks like that is the worst GPU release I have ever seen. How dare you Nvidia?

But at least the GT 730 wasn't heavily marketed as a good gaming card, or given GTX branding. But still, it is still a horrible product. Just as I believe that this 6500XT is a horrible product. But AMD is also marketing it a lot differently than how Nvidia marketed the GT 730. So, again, how dare you AMD?

So, I hope this is a lesson. All these companies, Intel, Nvidia, or AMD can all be scummy from time to time. At the end of the day, they only care about the bottom line, which is the bottom dollar, and they don't care about the consumer, let alone a budget minded consumer who is looking to purchase a decent "budget" card.

Here is an article explaining that the 3050 will be crap for mining and probably better than the 6500XT for gaming. Unfortunately, the price of the 3050 has already universally been jacked up. Unless, of course, you are lucky enough to live near a Microcenter.

So, unfortunately, it is really a bad time to build a gaming PC. At least, if you want to buy all the parts individually and build it yourself. I got lucky last August and was able to buy an EVGA RTX 3070 Ti pretty much at MSRP, but it took me over 3 months of waiting, searching, Newegg Shuffle, and praying. And I was still really looking for the 3080, so at the end of the day I didn't get what I want. But I am glad I jumped on the 3070 Ti when I did because I wouldn't want to have to play that game again to get a GPU at MSRP.

https://www.pcgamer.com/good-news-everybody-nvidias-rtx-3050-appears-to-be-rubbish-at-mining/

Yeah the problem with the GT series now is that OEMs like to toss it into systems and call them gaming PCs because of the shortage

[Monk]

UserNotFound a écrit :

I wish a mod would lock this stupid thread, it's going nowhere. OP obviously dislike AMD for whatever reason, he basically took the launch of this card to trash AMD. He'd changed the thread title, but from the original thread title, it's obvious he'd created it with an agenda. I'm done with this thread, and OP has made it to my ignore/block list.

He's, ran and for years until a few months back when he swapped to Intel / nvidia.

And how warning people off a product the entire tech space has pretty much condemned as awful gives him an agenda.

While you can buy cards second hand, there is zero reason to buy this thing.

I do love how you announcing you are blocking someone should make anyone give a flying monkeys left hairy testicle about it, just do it.
Frankly I never block anyone regardless of any disagreements we have or how wrong I see them as being as they may one day have the answer to the problem I am having.

As for hardware jesus, aka gamers nexus 'steve', he's one of the more advanced tech tubers who does alot of proper in depth testing of kit and has been around for years, despite his smaller channel size, he's widely known as one of the big tech tubers and very knowledgeable overall.

[UserNotFound]

Monk a écrit :

While you can buy cards second hand, there is zero reason to buy this thing.

I do love how you announcing you are blocking someone should make anyone give a flying monkeys left hairy testicle about it, just do it.
Frankly I never block anyone regardless of any disagreements we have or how wrong I see them as being as they may one day have the answer to the problem I am having.

LOL, this is very good advice, and I like it so much, it's done! :p

[Monk]

UserNotFound a écrit :

Monk a écrit :

While you can buy cards second hand, there is zero reason to buy this thing.

I do love how you announcing you are blocking someone should make anyone give a flying monkeys left hairy testicle about it, just do it.
Frankly I never block anyone regardless of any disagreements we have or how wrong I see them as being as they may one day have the answer to the problem I am having.

LOL, this is very good advice, and I like it so much, I did it to you too! :p

I'm so lucky, I'm living rent free in this guys head so much he has to announce he's blocking me!

What ever will I do?


Anyway...

[Illusion of Progress]

Monk a écrit :

I'm not saying amd is worse, I'm more saying amd is no better, and by on top, the athalons and phenom's were superb chips overall at a great value, then came bulldozers bs 8 core when their prices shot wayyyyyy up despite not gaining any real performance but fools bought them anyway.

Okay, fair enough on the "I'm not saying AMD is worse" part since you did actually say "they are just as bad as Intel and nVidia" so I'll concede interpreting your claim as a bit more emphasized than it was (with all the broad shade being tossed towards AMD in the thread, it was... somewhat easy to do, but that's not an excuse and I apologize nonetheless), but I'd honestly still question the claim about the same because historically Intel and nVidia do seem to have worse track records in my opinion. Not that it matters to me I guess, since I don't particularly care more or less about either of these companies. It was mostly the "AMD is back to being AMD, and is just as bad" paired with all the distaste being thrown at AMD that piqued my interest as to your reasoning, is all.

Anyway, it's pleasantly interesting hearing you state that as your opinion on the Phenom (that it was great for being a value alternative to Intel's offerings at the time) when you seem give Zen 2 such a hard time for being such a poor choice, despite it fitting that description even better than the K10 lineup did IMO. So it surprises me you'd state that.

Monk a écrit :

Frankly, I'm done, anyone who defends this rubbish card is looking to either cause an argument or is fanboying, simple as that, no one should buy it and no one should recommend it.

I didn't defend nor recommend the 6500 XT though.

You made a statement and I poked you for your reasoning on it. Nothing more. I like to have discussions with people to understand their reasoning for things. If you take that as people wanting to have arguments or as only having a disagreement with you because THEY are the one with the bias then I'm not really sure what to tell you.

In a thread that's been rife with distaste towards AMD in general and beyond just the 6500 XT being bad, it's intriguing to see the discussion attempted to be steered only towards discussing how it's bad whenever any other statement is questioned.

[xSOSxHawkens]

尺.ㄥ丨几ᗪ乇尺 a écrit :

emoticorpse a écrit :

尺.ㄥ丨几ᗪ乇尺 a écrit :

It's not a contest measuring which corp is more screwy than the rest, this isn't about what Intel and NVIDIA have done, it's strictly what AMD has done right now with the 6500-XT and why it's just an all around poorly designed card taking advantage of a delicate situation with the market. They're spitting on people who can only afford their weakest GPU, likely quite a bit more than NVIDIA is going to with the 3050.

Regardless of price, if you're buying the next gen low end GPU, it should at least be better than the last generation's low end card... which it isn't.

The fact that AMD rolled back on their anti-4GB claims just hurts their credibility, no matter how you slice it.

the fact that you edited the post and took out "Ft. AMD Fanboys" hurts your credibility.

You missed the part that they were angry AMD fanboys, not just AMD fanboys.

As if I'd even care what half of the people on the Steam forums have to say about me and my credibility, most of the users giving tech support only have 3 key troubleshooting techniques:
DDU, Reset CMOS, Reinstall Windows. Once those options are used up, good luck finding your solution.

There are some knowledgable users here, but at least half the forum have little knowledge or experience, and just parrot common solutions from google or other users.

Also OP marks as answer to main post (my bolding for emphasis of certain parts):

Monk a écrit :

I'm not saying amd is worse, I'm more saying amd is no better, and by on top, the athalons and phenom's were superb chips overall at a great value, then came bulldozers bs 8 core when their prices shot wayyyyyy up despite not gaining any real performance but fools bought them anyway.

Frankly, I'm done, anyone who defends this rubbish card is looking to either cause an argument or is fanboying, simple as that, no one should buy it and no one should recommend it.

Meanwhile 100 posts ago...

xSOSxHawkens a écrit :

尺.ㄥ丨几ᗪ乇尺 a écrit :

Mods can lock the thread, AMD simps and sympathisers are only focusing on the fact that I'm not happy with AMD's decisions with this card and not WHY I'm not happy with AMD about their decisions with this card.

I kinda hope they do. This thread seems in no way started as a conversation, it seems to have been started as your fun place to rant on why you dont like the card. No where in this was there discussion or interest in changing your mind. Its set. This whole thread is just you espousing your views and then either getting echo-chambered by others or calling anyone who disagrees a fanboi regardless of their level of logic or discussion intended while hurling insults their way like calling them "simps". At least thats how it seems having watched 13 pages of it over the past few days.

Good popcorn fodder, bad tech thread.

Kinda stand by as that being both an accurate descrip of how the thread has turned out and also a current running theme from the looks of it from other commenters.

_______________________

As for valid tech discussion vs critique of this whole threads collapse...

尺.ㄥ丨几ᗪ乇尺 a écrit :

carl a écrit :

It is AMD's first 6mm GPU so that may warrant the name.

Yeah and just like the Radeon VII, it was a flop for their first x nm GPU.

The VII was far from a flop and you should know this. While it might not have sold like hot cakes it did well enough, and more importantly it allowed AMD a test run through 7nm to iron out 7nm before using the process on Ryzen to great success on Ryzen 3000. It doesnt take rocket scientist minds here to see that they used a well understood architecture on a not well understood design fab rather than trying a new fab and new acrh at the same time. Result was glorious for the next hop (ryzen-3k). Though its less obvious here with the 6nm node, maybe they are doing that again, though I suspect this is more about limits on fab line capacity more than anything, but who knows outside AMD.

HHH33 a écrit :

"this graphics card has the fastest sustained gpu clock rates ever"
they are good at lying without breaking the law. but let's keep an eagle eye out. we might catch them fibbing.

Umm... Fewer cores = Faster cores. This is pretty common knowledge. So I think AMD is likely right when they say it has the highest sustained GPU clock rates ever (for an out of box product) considering it runs at 2.6Ghz out of the box. For comparison that is faster core speed than either my RX6800 or 6900 both of which top out around 2500Mhz, and much much faster than many overclocked CPU's from others (have a buddy with a high end asus 3080 that runs at like 2.3). Now if you want to make the argument that core speed is a bad raw comparison of power go ahead, that argument has been in play since the Ghz warz 20-25 years ago, but their claim is likely not wrong.

Illusion of Progress a écrit :

Monk a écrit :

And makes some great cpu's, but, their gpu's leave something to be desired

Yeah, I can't speak for AMD's GPUs since I haven't used one in a long time (the last one I used was technically ATI so maybe never).

As for reply, to offer a contrasting opinion that can speak from AMD use recently and historically their GPU's are not nearly as bad as they get made out to be. I have three of their upper end modern cards (6900xt, 6800 (non-xt) and a Vega 64) along with some legacy cards such as the HD7870, HD5770, and HD3850 AGP, all of which have been used in recent years with either windows 7 or 10, with the vega and up seeing daily use.

None have had major issues. I did have one minor and highly specific bug that lasted about 1.5 years but has since been fixed. It required that you had a specific generation of GPU, that you had 3 or more screens, and that you had two or more refresh rates in use. I think it also may have needing differing rez on the screens cant remember. Would cause occasional driver hangs.

My biggest driver issue of note the past 12 mo? When I swapped my 6800 out and 6900xt in, then didnt bother to reinstall drivers and ran on the same install. Everything worked great but something was messed up despite no driver lvl changes with the tessellation settings or something that invalidated some of my 3dmark runs. A clean uninstall/reinstall using the drivers included clean install feature fixed all the issues, issues caused mind you by me being lazy not by the drivers being an issue. That is exactly why I generally do clean driver installs (and all you should too!)

I also run NV as well, though nothing super duper new anymore. Supported I have a mobile Quadro and a GTX-960 4GB, unsupported I have a GTX-670 4GB and a desktop Quadro. If I need specific or additional NV resource/benchmark/user review two of my close real life friends have and allow access to (or provide results of) benching more or less at my leisure (as I am their main computer repair friend) of a 1060-6gb, RTX-2060, or RTX-3080 (one also has a 4GB rx-580 in the mix).

Both AMD and Nvidia have driver crashes. I will admit that though both are infrequent the AMD are slightly more common. That doesn't mean they are bad, nor common at all, just *slightly* more so than Nvidia. That said, AMD handles failure with grace where NV pukes its guts. Most AMD driver hangs reset and resume usable ability of either 2d (windows) or both 2d and 3d within a few seconds. When an NV Driver hangs or fails you are lucky to get anything back to working even enough for a clean shutdown. If I have to take 99% stability with hard crashes or 98% stability with soft crashes, I know which I would prefer. Its better to at least be able to close things down and shut down.

ZeekAncient a écrit :

And now I have to retract an earlier statement I had. I had said in one of my earlier posts that I had never seen Nvidia, let alone AMD, release a GPU as bad as the 6500XT. At least not one branded as a current gen GPU that is good for gaming. Well, the release of a GT 430 as a GT 730 looks like that is the worst GPU release I have ever seen. How dare you Nvidia?

But at least the GT 730 wasn't heavily marketed as a good gaming card, or given GTX branding. But still, it is still a horrible product. Just as I believe that this 6500XT is a horrible product. But AMD is also marketing it a lot differently than how Nvidia marketed the GT 730. So, again, how dare you AMD?

Neither card were or are honestly misrepresented though.

Yes, the 430/730 sucked, but as you say they were not often marketed as gaming cards (outside of shoddy OEM's which sold them as such). From NV side of things most of those were meant to be graphics accelerators for video consumption or office use or other non gaming uses.

Likewise the 6500xt *is* a gaming card and is marketed correctly. The box itself markets the specific resolution it is meant for, 1080P gaming. At that rez, with settings reasonable for an entry level card, it will do its intended purpose quite well, especially on most windows 11 era machines which will all more or less run modern enough hardware for Gen 4 pcie. Even on older systems the performance wont be total crap provided you stick within what its marketed and quite open and established limits are. People can think its crap value all day long, but fact is its a card you can buy that *will* offer usable 1080p performance especially with lower to mid range settings. Lets, again, remember this is an entry level GPU that should not be seen as a maximum settings option. We can argue all day long over if the previous generations should dictate performance levels (and fwiw, I agree that it would be nice if this card performed better than its predecessor), but at the end of the day the entry level product gives entry level performance, and thats low-medium 1080p which is where the 6500 will do well enough.

Lets remember, its not like AMD is trying to pull a 3.5GB VRAM on us here... They have been pretty open about the limitations and the compromises they have made, even if you dont believe the reasons they have at least aired that the limits exist.

尺.ㄥ丨几ᗪ乇尺 a écrit :

You're getting a MUCH bigger bang for your buck from the 6600 because it doesn't have terrible memory bandwidth, doesn't run like crap on PCI-e 3.0, and actually competes well with today's hardware.

This I can agree with in spades, assuming both are at or near MSRP. Cats on the 6600 is what price is it? I have seen those as high as what I paid for my 6800 which is silly af. If one is choosing between a $270 Gigabyte Eagle 6500xt in stock or a 6600 at 460, well, thats a pretty big jump (both the cheapest current in stock listings on newegg). The 6600 is a much better card, but I am not sure its $190 bucks or more better, I guess it would mostly depend on the system and use case. Though I tend to think NV is a poor value if one were looking in the 350-400 range, depending on how it performs, the 3050 might be a great value. But from what we are already seeing on pricing it may come down to:

280-350 = 6500xt models
450-700 = 3050/6600
600-800 = 6600xt
900 = 6700xt
1000+ = 3060+/6700xt-6800+

Assuming one wants to buy new and/or current gen. (based on prices for purchasable goods on 01/24/22 on newegg.com)

_______________________

To wrap up, yeh, the 6500xt sucks and has lots (and lots) of compromise. Yes the 3050 will likely beat it. But for the right purchaser, and for the right budgets, and with real availability, its far from the worst someone could possibly do r/n.

[ZeekAncient]

xSOSxHawkens a écrit :

Yes, the 430/730 sucked, but as you say they were not often marketed as gaming cards (outside of shoddy OEM's which sold them as such). From NV side of things most of those were meant to be graphics accelerators for video consumption or office use or other non gaming uses.

Likewise the 6500xt *is* a gaming card and is marketed correctly. The box itself markets the specific resolution it is meant for, 1080P gaming. At that rez, with settings reasonable for an entry level card, it will do its intended purpose quite well, especially on most windows 11 era machines which will all more or less run modern enough hardware for Gen 4 pcie. Even on older systems the performance wont be total crap provided you stick within what its marketed and quite open and established limits are. People can think its crap value all day long, but fact is its a card you can buy that *will* offer usable 1080p performance especially with lower to mid range settings. Lets, again, remember this is an entry level GPU that should not be seen as a maximum settings option. We can argue all day long over if the previous generations should dictate performance levels (and fwiw, I agree that it would be nice if this card performed better than its predecessor), but at the end of the day the entry level product gives entry level performance, and thats low-medium 1080p which is where the 6500 will do well enough.

Regardless on how they are marketed, my opinion on these products still stand, they are very bad products. And my main problem with the 6500XT, is that AMD did not need to cut as many corners and could have released a better product. And still kept the $200 price tag. Read pretty much every review from every publication out there and they all concur. Having 4GB is one thing, but it has been hamstrung by the PCIE 4.0 x 4 interface. Anytime a game goes over that 4GB frame buffer, it will have to dip into system memory. That limited bandwidth will slow it down considerably. On PCIE 3.0 it can be almost crippling. You are almost forced to make absolute sure games don't exceed that 4GB memory buffer, which by AMD's own admission, can be nigh impossible in today's games. Even at 1080p on lower settings. So this all equates to a very bad product, one that will not perform how AMD claims it will perform, and potentially will leave many consumers of this product very disappointed.

The RX 6500XT is junk and should have been kept as a laptop GPU as it was intended to be. It does nothing to help the current landscape of the GPU market. But honestly, lol, I don't think any GPU release does at this point.

IMHO, this GPU should not even exist and I wouldn't buy it to be a paper weight.

[carl]

Monk a écrit :

UserNotFound a écrit :

Well, that's your opinion or take on the matter, what about the RTX 3050, isn't it a big money grab as well? As stated, when the RX 6500 XT is used for games at 1080P, a mix of low to med to high ingame graphics settings, it does pretty well. And given it's a new card from AMD, driver support would be forthcoming for years to come.

As for getting a used GTX 1060 (assume you'd meant the 6GB version) for 200 bucks, good luck with that! As for the GTX 980 at 200USD, that's doable.

The RX 6500 XT was never meant for high res, max ingame gaming at 1080P (perhaps only eSport titles), many reviewer even ran HD texture packs (just to cripple it more) and when running games at 1080P with reasonable settings (as long as one doesn't exceed the 4GB frame buffer, it does well enough (as was intended). That it cost close to what was considered mid range 3 years or so back is irrelevant as we can't be living in the past, COVID-19 has seen to that.

The 3050 isn't cut down nearly as much, but, yes, it's also pretty bland, but not as bad, and even the 1060 3FB will. Eat out the 6500.

'driver support for years to come' is such a bs way to defend this rubbish.

Oh its not meant for high settings... So what? How is that a good reason to put out a cut down laptop gpu with lower specs than the 6 year old card it's based off of!?!?

I've said it many times, fanboying for any company is daft.

AMD is being scummy with this release.

I don't believe the 3050 will be the competition for the 6500 XT it will be in a higher performance tier (GTX 1660 Ti) and price tier effectively.

I think the low budget gaming end of the market has been starved for a long while. AMD have thrown some crumbs.

The real competition will be what Intel does with their budget offering Arc GPU. Allegedly their 96EU desktop card will come with 4GB video memory and 64 bit memory bus. The Intel card's performance, features and pricing will show if AMD called the market right.

The article linked below relates to Intel Mobile GPU but I have see in Youtube channels speculate the desktop versions will follow the same.
https://www.techspot.com/news/93103-leaked-slide-confirms-intel-arc-alchemist-memory-configurations.html

Will Intel be keen enough to take market share by under cutting the competition?

[carl]

Barely a week and I have seen the RX 6500 XT take a price cut in the UK market. I read that as it not flying off the shelves here. I've been watching it. Go below 150 and I might be interested. The budget gaming low end of the market has been starved for a while and AMD have thrown some crumbs.

Here's an angry AMD fanboy angry about AMD. Not everyone's cup of tea but he raises a laugh from me from time to time.
https://youtu.be/HH4foh0e1zc

[r.linder]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2NNegA77uA

RTX 3050 MSRP is 250$, but the subject of the review had a mistake on EVGA's part where they installed a vBIOS intended for the 330$ model, so performance benchmarks aren't indicative of the weakest 3050s.

It generally sits just below the 2060 KO, which back when EVGA released that model, was 300, so a 330$ card being slightly slower is just a little bit disappointing but not terrible if you can actually land one for a low enough price compared to a 2060. Compares well with the GTX 16 series cards and the 1070, so it's possible we won't see any more GTX series GPUs in the future.
On average it's at LEAST 30 to 40% faster than the 6500-XT, as I pretty much expected since NVIDIA learned their lesson a long time ago with the 9800-GT and 8800-GT and wouldn't make the same stupid mistake. No it's not an amazing value or anything, but it's still a lot better than the 6500-XT.

[Monk]

Yeah the ltt review showed it even being usable with raytracing, which, is very impressive.

But, only buy the base model of you have no better options, fancy versions are a total waste.

[carl]

Watched a few review videos where one describes the 3050 as pandemic card, i.e. anything sells.

DLSS is the selling point for me but I'm hearing initial stock at MRSP will be extremely limited where I am in the UK. Pricing is expected to go up afterwards, as much as £400 for upper estimate.

I paid £230 for a 1660 Super in 2020 and £400 for a RX 6600 XT in August 2021.

[Monk]

Yeah if it's not at msrp it's going to be a very bad value and like the 6500xt, the second hand market is your friend, I just sold a, 1080ti ftw3 for £400 as an example.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Monk a écrit :

Yeah if it's not at msrp it's going to be a very bad value and like the 6500xt, the second hand market is your friend, I just sold a, 1080ti ftw3 for £400 as an example.

People are acting like that would be a good deal. Dont get me wrong, in todays world that much raw power for 400 UK isnt bad, but...

https://store.overclockers.co.uk/sapphire-radeon-rx-6500-xt-pulse-gaming-4gb-gddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-39s-sp.html

Fact is its still 2x the cost for a used card that has no warranty.

The 6500xt is 100% a compromise card, but its targeted specifically at 1080p, at compromised settings not ultra or high, and at 60-120fps not high refresh. It does all these thing equally well to or better than comparably priced cards in the current market (1650 being worst case comparable in performance (gen3x4 comparible)).

Its available, its usable, and its better than an APU. Its up to the buyer if they think paying twice as much for twice the power on a used card (not nec yours, just any used higher powered card), or three times as much for twice the power on a new card. Those are the options.

[emoticorpse]

Monk a écrit :

Yeah if it's not at msrp it's going to be a very bad value and like the 6500xt, the second hand market is your friend, I just sold a, 1080ti ftw3 for £400 as an example.

A used 1080 ti vs a new 6600 xt? Same price? same performance? I'll take the 6600 xt.