The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT has half of the cores of the RX 6600 XT and half the video memory, though it runs a hair faster with clock speed. Its main issues are memory and PCIe bandwidth.
- RX 6500 XT: Core 1,023, Boost speed 2.8GHz, Memory capacity 4GB, Memory bandwidth 144GB/s, PCIe interface PCIe 4.0 x8, Power draw 107W
- RX 6600: Core 1,792, Boost speed 2.49GHz, Memory capacity 8GB, Memory bandwidth 224GB/s, PCIe interface PCIe 4.0 x4, Power draw 132W
- RX 6600 XT: Cores 2,048, Boost speed 2.59GHz, Memory capacity 8GB, Memory bandwidth 256GB/s, PCIe interface PCIe 4.0 x8, Power draw 160W.
As we all know that 4GB is not enough for gaming in 2022. The RTX 3050 comes with 8GB, and a step up to the RX 6600 will get you that same amount. The limited memory is squeezed through a microscopic bus, creating a nasty bottleneck that nearly halves the memory bandwidth of the RX 6600 XT.
For the PCIe interface, The RX 6500 XT supports PCIe 4.0, but it is limited to four lanes. The RX 6600 supports eight lanes without any issue, as does the RTX 3050. There is no reason to limit the RX 6500 XT to four lanes.
Radeon RX 6500 XT Gaming Performance
The RX 6500 XT is a laptop GPU with a cooler strapped on top, and that shows clearly when you use it.
Here all you need to know is that the RX 6500 XT feels horrible to use.
- RTX 3050: 3DMark Time Spy 6,749, 3DMark Fire Strike 15,060, Red Dead Redemption 2 52 fps, Fortnite 79 fps, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 55 fps, Battlefield V 92 fps, Cyberpunk 2077 47 fps, Control 58 fps
- RX 6500: 3DMark Time Spy 5,341, 3DMark Fire Strike 13,660, Red Dead Redemption 2 51 fps, Fortnite 70 fps, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 31 fps, Battlefield V 93 fps, Cyberpunk 2077 29 fps, Control 40 fps
- RX 6600: 3DMark Time Spy 8,071, 3DMark Fire Strike N/A, Red Dead Redemption 2 59 fps, Fortnite 98 fps, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 71 fps, Battlefield V 120 fps, Cyberpunk 2077 46 fps, Control 67 fps
- RX 580: 3DMark Time Spy 4,820, 3DMark Fire Strike N/A, Red Dead Redemption 2 35 fps, Fortnite 56 fps, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 42 fps, Battlefield V 74 fps, Cyberpunk 2077 N/A, Control N/A
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The results above are at 1080p with the highest graphics preset. The test was run with a Ryzen 9 5950X and 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory. This is supposed to be a 1080p graphics card, but even then, it still struggles.
The performance is rough, occasionally falling behind even the RX 580 that was launched nearly five years ago for the same price.
In Battlefield V, the models would flicker for a few seconds while they loaded in. In Control, the entire screen would flicker between white and black for about 20 seconds before launching.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is a prime example, at 1080p, the game called for 6GB of video memory, 2GB over what the RX 6500 XT has. Your frame rate in these situations is locked to how quickly the card can fill and flush memory, creating a bottleneck that locks your frame rate in a single spot.
The PCIe interface limits you only to occupying four PCIe lanes, while most graphics cards, including the RX 580, occupy the full 16. It’s not a problem on PCIe 4.0, but that is only available on the most recent AMD and Intel platforms.
RX 6500 XT Content Creation Performance
The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is terrible for content creation workloads, consistently falling behind the RTX 3050, and in some cases, even the RX 580. AMD cards are not well equipped for 3D rendering compared to Nvidia’s proprietary CUDA and Optix rendering APIs, which stacks on top of the limited performance of the RX 6500 XT.
- RTX 3050: Blender BMW 76 seconds, Blender Classroom 279 seconds, Blender Koro 227 seconds, Pugetbench for Premiere Pro 766
- RX 6500 XT: Blender BMW 151 seconds, Blender Classroom 293 seconds, Blender Koro 263 seconds, Pugetbench for Premiere Pro 553
- RX 6600: Blender BMW 86 seconds, Blender Classroom 167 seconds, Blender Koro 156 seconds, Pugetbench for Premiere Pro 605
- RX 580: Blender BMW 168 seconds, Blender Classroom 370 seconds, Blender Koro N/A, Pugetbench for Premiere Pro 603
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There isn’t a graphics card around the same price as the RX 6500 XT that does content creation well. The problem with AMD’s latest release is that it’s considerably worse than even the lowest performer.
The RX 6500 XT is a ray-tracing capable GPU, at least according to AMD. Based on my results, that claim is disingenuous at best, and downright inaccurate at worst. Not only does the poor performance of the RX 6500 XT push ray-tracing out of reach, but some games also may not even run with it turned on.
There are 10 games that support both at the time of this publication. For context, Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) shows up alongside ray tracing in 56 games. The recently announced Radeon Super Resolution (RSR) should provide an upscaling solution for any game, but it’s not available yet.
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