AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT review: the Digital Foundry verdict

AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT is a curious card. There are some redeeming features here - a 107W GPU that revs to 2844MHz is pretty cool - but there are missteps too. The decision to go with a PCIe x4 connection feels like an unnecessary cut to performance, especially with millions of potential customers still running older motherboards, especially on the Intel side. Meanwhile, the 4GB of VRAM feels more constricting in 2022 than it did when the RX 580 launched nearly five years ago. The lack of AV1 decode and H.264/265 encoding is also a real head-scratcher, and one that makes the card less flexible and future-proof than it ought to be. The rumours that Navi24 was meant to be a mobile GPU goes some way to explaining these decisions, but doesn't excuse the integrity of the final product as it appears on desktop.

Within those bounds, there are games where the 6500 XT can occasionally turn in a good 1080p performance, but they're unfortunately far outnumbered by games where the new GPU falls flat on its face. The RX 6500 XT is faster than the Ryzen 7 5700G APU we reviewed just recently, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. It's disappointing that this new budget GPU doesn't follow in the footsteps of the RX 570 and RX 580, which were fantastic AMD cards that you could legitimately recommend to pretty much anyone building an entry-level gaming PC.

The RX 6500 XT might still make sense for a very specific customer: a) someone running a modern CPU and motherboard that b) wants to game at 1080p, c) is willing to seek out optimised settings and d) finds the 6500 XT at a lower price than competing options. There are quite a lot of pre-requisites there, but it's something. We also have some praise for the PowerColor Fighter design, which kept cool and quiet throughout our testing.

I guess the one silver lining is this: the RX 6500 XT is a 6nm card - the first 6nm card - so it's at least not competing against AMD's existing 7nm offerings in terms of production. If that means that some small amount of GPU demand is sated, and the generally better RX 6600, 6600 XT and so on are slightly easier to find, then that's at least a small net positive for the world. Beyond that though, it's hard to find a compelling case for why the RX 6500 XT was worth releasing in the first place.

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT analysis

• Introduction and hardware analysis
• Doom Eternal, Control, Borderlands 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Game Benchmarks Part 1
• Death Stranding, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Game Benchmarks Part 2
• Metro Exodus, Dirt Rally 2, Assassin's Creed Unity - Game Benchmarks Part 3
• Control, Metro Exodus, Battlefield 5 - RT game benchmarks
• PCIe 3.0 vs PCIe 4.0 - How does bandwidth affect frame-rate?
• AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT - the Digital Foundry verdict [This Page]