AMD RX 6500 XT is Worse Than 2016's GPUs: Benchmarks vs. GTX 1060, 970, 960, & RX 580

if you're on pcie gen 3 then uh i guess basically [ __ ] you [Music] today we're reviewing the xfx rx 6500 xt kick that's q-i-c-k we're not sure what they were trying to spell but whatever it was they didn't spell it this is the 6500 xt kick and uh it's a video card that's supposed to be 200 msrp we've benchmarked it in both gen 3 and gen 4 pcie for the motherboard in the platform because this card only has four pcie gen4 lanes it is not using the entire by 16 physical electrical wiring allocation that it could use and so instead has created a bit of a controversy for itself let's get started before that this video is brought to you by squarespace we use squarespace for our own gn store and juggle complex multi-piece orders all the time with it squarespace makes it fast for us to roll out new products with detailed pages full of galleries videos and descriptors it's also useful for your own resume sites for photographer or project portfolios or for starting your new small business idea there's never been a better time to try and start your new business than right now and we can vouch that squarespace makes it easy visit squarespace.com gamersnexus to get 10 off your first purchase with squarespace so absolute basics then we'll put a spec sheet on the screen we're not going to read through all the specs but it's supposed to be a 200 msrp card that puts it at the lowest run of amd's current generation offerings on the 6000 xt and non-xt lineup that puts it below the 6600 we previously reviewed and price-wise it's about equivalent to an rx 580 4 gigabyte from half a decade ago and uh it's also pretty similar to the rx 480 uh also four gigabyte from around one year before half a decade so have a decade plus one uh six years in other words we are also going to be looking at the gtx 1060 as a comparison with the gtx 970 and gtx 960 on several of these charts especially the gen 3 charts we know a lot of you are still using gen 3 systems that might have a perfectly fine cpu especially because gen 3 was all the way up until just about a year or two ago from intel and so you might only need to upgrade the gpu if you're still doing fine otherwise that's why we're looking at both three and four for the pcie generations on this but also including a bunch of the older cards because it was one of the most requested things we saw when looking around for comments uh talking about the 65 xt when it was announced so hopefully we can help some of you out with some older card comparisons as well now because this is probably going on sale the minute our video goes live we're going to help you out with the bottom line up front uh it's not impressive the card is it's pretty underwhelming and andy has cut a lot of features off that really should just be there there's not a great reason why they're not there sometimes you see silicon getting physically fused off sometimes it's reject silicon that could be allocated to lower down the stack stuff but this is just missing weird features that make it feel like a really forced artificial product segmentation so we're not extremely happy with this card as it performs that's been true in general but this one it's is you'll see that when you see the numbers for the 580 which is 2017 versus this all will become clear now before we really get started we need to talk about the pcie situation this was in the news a lot before the card launched although software obviously can tell us how many lanes the card has normally accurately we can also use the physical hardware and our eyeballs another software utility that we've recently received updates for because if you look at the card you'll see that it's got about well by four of the traces worth populated at the pcie foot the physical slot this can be okay if the card is hard limited on its performance anyway for example if we're talking about a gtx 1050 maybe a gtx 750 ti you're not losing a lot on pcie gen 3x4 because there wasn't a lot to be had to begin with the actual available bandwidth is irrelevant if the device connected to it will not saturate it much like with ssds for example you can have a 550 megabyte per second limitation on sata all you want if the hard drive only does 100 megabytes per second it doesn't really matter then burst speeds so this it will start to matter though and the problem is that in this instance it's not just a buy four by eight by 16 thing it's buy four pcie gen four is probably fine but buy four pcie gen three is problematic because you're cutting it in half so uh pcie gen 3x4 gives us about four giga transfers per second whereas pcie gen 4x4 gives us about eight giga transfers per second not factoring in overhead that's an insane difference and it's really for no good reason we're losing half of the potential throughput for what ultimately boils down to being an exceptionally mind-numbingly cheap way to approach a video card that seems low end certainly the decisions handy's made here are those of a gtx 750 or ti like 150 card applied to a 200 card now if they were taking off other features like ceus or memory which they've done as well fine that has a very real physical cost especially memory right now but once you start doing this it just looks cheap talking about pennies in a lot of instances for the types of changes being made now although this won't be a problem for newer cpus it becomes a major limitation for older platforms especially intel from before you know a few months ago this is one of the cheapest new gpus right now it's also one of the best candidates for anyone who doesn't have the funds to just simply buy an entire new computer when their cpu is otherwise sufficient this also could have been a perfect upgrade path for apu 5600g users but they lose another key feature which is encode and decode support on this gpu the rx 6500xt lacks av1d code this isn't widely adopted yet but it will be soon netflix and youtube for example are among the leading platforms that are adding av1 options the 65xt also lacks hevc encode support restricting usefulness if you want to use it for h.265 for example the end result is that the 6500xt is maybe useful as an immediate stopgap for a gaming card but once its gaming usefulness has expired the card has basically expired you can use it for video out sure you use an igp for video out you use like a gt710 for video out so it loses some of the the key features that would make it viable as a true video card meaning a non-gaming video card as it ages past ability to play games reasonably uh there's not a lot of hand-me-down value in this one which is really unfortunate because it's not like there's a tangible clear reason that it makes it cheaper to do these things there's probably some validation cost in there and cutting memory in half we can understand where that has a very obvious cost savings but this is just kind of weird enough of all that let's get into the benchmarks i've stated we have gen 3 and gen 4 benchmarks we'll kind of all tonight between them and uh there's going to be a lot of stuff to look at we did run more games but you'll see once we get through the whatever however many charts it is there's not really much reason to show even more of them so we've cut it off when we think we've established the pattern and made the point let's get started let's look at some pcie gen 3x4 versus pcie gen 4x4 results for this we're using a new intel alder lake test platform we typically have used a 10700 k for a gpu review bench which means pcie gen 3. for this particular set of data we're using an msi unifix z690 and i712 700 kf which means we can go up to gen 5. of course this is limited by what the gpu offers testing is 100 identical between the gen 3 and 4 results and it was conducted on the same exact platform we toggled the pcie generation and bios to force the restriction so what you're looking at is pure data without any screwery between multiple platforms it's all generated on the same thing this chart shows a cross section of 18 results we collected for average fps we had a couple more but we stripped them for reasons we'll explain later on average totaling all of these we saw about a 7 improvement with pcie gen 4 versus gen 3 both on by four lanes as a reminder the games seem to fall into two major groups either a nominal uplift of one to three percent which is irrelevant you wouldn't notice it or a much larger uplift of 15 to 17 which you would notice we had some games that were higher still but we didn't have time with the review deadline here to determine whether they were valid results so we removed them from now and we'll revisit them later as we have time to do validation passes either way though we're seeing at least 15 to 17 at the high end of the results so far and that's a pretty big gap the left column shows the game the division two is the only one that plotted a regression but that's just variance we want to be very clear about this the hard numbers were 50 fps average versus 49 fps average so in other words although it says 2 regression it's just normal error it's part of the testing process and it is not representative of an actual realized loss it's just run to run deviation even with a four run average for each test in this average fps chart instead you can see that far cry 6 produced noticeable swings from a 66 fps average to 76 fps average we observed another large change in shadow of the tomb raider at dx12 and 1080p moving from 63 to 72 fps average the horizon zero dawn results also swung notably from 60 to 70 fps average any game that becomes more limited by the four gigabyte frame buffer will demonstrate a larger change because the gpu is now forced to access system memory in order to do that the gpu as in the actual piece of silicon on the card has to communicate through the pcie bus where it's limited here into the cpu to the memory back through the cpu back down to the pcie bus and the gpu and he could have added more ram to deal with this on the card or it could have run more lanes to resolve this issue but instead it chose to strand pcie gen 3 owners with a needlessly worse product at least sometimes we'll start with strange brigades since we have some interesting data for it and lots of cards tested first at gen 3 and then at gen 4. the rx 6500xt landed at 98 fps average with lows reasonably spaced at 83 and 80 fps there's really no problems here for frame time pacing so it looks good but once you compare it to literally anything else it doesn't look good the rx 580 gaming x 8 gigabyte a card that shipped for about 250 to 260 dollars five years ago in 2017 yes that was five years ago is outperforming the rx 6500 xt by six percent that's just embarrassing for amd it can't be its own similarly priced product from a half a decade ago the gtx 106 gigabyte is out done by the 6500 xt by 20 so it's not much of an upgrade over a six-year-old card that sold for three hundred dollars of course all these numbers are without factoring in inflation the gtx 960 would benefit from upgrading to the 6500 xt but then again you could also buy an rx 580 on ebay for the mid 200s to 300 range and be better off we'll quickly highlight the rtx 2060 ko a 300 card when we bought it the rx 5600 xt and the rtx 3060 for other points of reference the 6600 xt is far ahead of the 65 nearly doubling the throughput on the alder lake platform instead the results are exactly the same that's useful because we have a lot more points for comparison on the gen 3 platform we're at 98 fps average on the 6500 xcs our previous chart is the same as this one for the 65 xd the 1660 leads the 65 xt marginally they're functionally the same and the lows are within the wide margin here the rx 580 still leads the 2060s on the same spot as before and the 3060 ti is in about the same spot as before as well even on gen 4 instead of gen 3. at 1440p and with gen 3 the 6500xt struggled to hold 60fps average the rx 580 led by about 15 here expanding its lead at the higher resolution the gtx 1060 reduced the gap to nine percent from 20 percent before the 6500 xt thus far is having trouble scaling at higher resolutions it's not much of an upgrade from the gtx 970 either but it could be from a 960 or a 1050 ti except then again there are used cards on ebay that might also be better options with pcie gen 4 it's the same result the 580 still leads the 6500 xt is still about 60 fps average and the 1650 now on the charge is led by the 6500 xt by about 16 our next test is for total war 3 kingdoms at 1080p ultra on gen 3. the 6500xt ran at about 38 fps average here that's expected because we use this test as an extreme load for future scaling this means that we're more interested in the percentages than the values four percentages that puts the 6500 xt about five percent ahead of the 588 gigabyte that's unimpressive the gtx 980 ti and the gtx 1070 still outperform the 6500 xt and the 5600 xt out does the 6500xt by a huge 60 lead we don't test this one on gen 4 yet due to alder lake scheduling issues rainbow six siege at 1080p ultra without the ultra hd texture pack is next because we're not using the texture pack we're still within the vram budget installing the texture pack will tank this card's performance due to amd's choice to both to limit the vram and the pcie generation where it's relevant limitation this is something we troubleshot with steve from hardware unboxed when doing the testing he was seeing a much lower frame rate as a result of using the texture pack neither choice is really the right choice from a testing perspective so to speak from a use case perspective if you had a 65 xt you'd probably want to turn off the texture pack from a benchmarking perspective it actually exposes a really interesting data point probably one of the most interesting ones here which is that there's a huge potential four gigabyte limitation on this specific card uh with the texture pack being added on gen 3 the 6500xt ended up at 180 fps average an hour testing putting it about nine percent ahead of the rx 588 gigabyte and 19 ahead of the gtx 1066 gigabyte the 1070 and 2060 lead the 6500xt effortlessly here and everything from the 2016 and up is in another class entirely at 1440p the 6500 xt dropped to 93 fps average that's still playable in this game but other games will be more demanding the gtx 1060 is about the same here and the 970 is for amd also embarrassingly close in performance the rx 580 manages a slight lead outside of error here and the 1070 is significantly ahead gives you a couple of options for used cards in shadow of the tomb raider tested with 1080p high and on gen 3 first we see the rx 6500 xt landing at 67 fps average that has it just between the 580 and the 1060. it's also leading the gtx 970 by 24 and it's being led by the rx 5600 xt by 59 with the rtx 2060 similarly placed frame time consistency is fine it's just not an impressive performance tested with pcie gen 4 and a newer game version the 6500 xd held about 72 fps average leading the rx 580 marginally and allowing the 1660 elite of 11 the gen 3 results on this platform and the game version difference had the rx 6500xt at 63 fps average it's just ahead of the gtx 1650 by nine percent and just behind the rx 580. finally for this game the 1440p results had the 6500 xt as about tied with the 1060 while allowing the rx 580 an 11 lead on the gen 3 platform the 5600 xt and up gave a significant advantage red dead 2 at 1080p with gen 3 had the 6500 xt at 53 fps average about the same as the rx 580 but meaningfully ahead of the gtx 1060 amounting to 23 the rtx 2060 establishes a firm dividing line between the gpu classes here it's got 78 fps average for its performance which is 47 ahead of the 6500 xt tested with pcie gen 4 the rx 6500xt ended up at the same spot as previously the results are a little different due to the platform change but overall the comparative scoring puts it in the same rank hierarchically as the gen 3 test horizon zero dawn is next at 4k the card was dropping textures hard but it still ran we suspect 1440p might also be prone to this due to the frame buffer limitation at 1080p though for the chart we're showing it doesn't have any texture issues the rx 6500xt ran at 60fps average here with lowe's paced just fine the gtx 10 to 66 gigabyte did about the same although with slightly higher lows and the rx 580 is outdone by the 65 xt by about six percent if amd's goal was to put something out that aims to give rx 580 owners and i told you so then they've done a great job on the 6500 xt on the new platform the gen 4 results have the 65 xt at 69 fps average leading the gen 3 results notably that has it about equal to the nvidia gtx 1660 in both average fps and one percent lows the rx 580 is down closer to the pcie gen 3 version of the 6500 xt test gta 5 is next tested at 1080p and gen 3. this one had the rx 6500xt at 73 fps average making it about equal to the rx 580 and behind the gtx 970 and 1066 gigabyte and the doesn't look too great in this one this is a really old game too finally at 1440p the 65 xt ran at 47 fps average and fell slightly behind the 580. we've established a clear pattern at this point so we're not going to keep producing charts you get the idea the 65 xt just doesn't deserve more discussion power consumption testing is next tested at the pcie slot and the pcie cables during full load we're able to look at just the gpu's power consumption or the full board really the 6500 xt pulled 111 watts when fully stock counting all power into the card and not any other power so it's isolated and it moved up to 123 when overclocked the maximum power offset for the card was just 15 percent and 15 110 watts doesn't give much room for movement you'd need to play around with undervolting to afford more power headroom to get any real value out of tuning this car the 6600 pulls about 20 to 30 watts more when both are stock and the 360 black is at about 170 watts as a point of reference so really what we're looking at with this card is a classic example of amd going back to its roots and embarrassing itself thoroughly and he's had a number of pretty good launches in recent years cpus obviously have done great for the company hard to knock them there at this point uh aldo lake is competitive but that doesn't make ryzen bad it's still very good and very competitive so they've done well there gpus amd cleaned up a lot of it's act with the 6800 and the 6800 xt we're sort of before the shortage that we're dealing with now uh it was like wow this is this is really competitive with the 3080 msrp to msrp which is what we were working with at the time because uh you know it wasn't like this yet the north was just starting to get like this the 68 and the 68 xc were fiercely competitive and they're very competitive at 1080p where it out does a lot of the high-end 30 series cards so amd started off really strong with this rx 6000 series and now it's getting to a point where when you know at least nvidia uh when it spits in your face with the price of something like a 3080 ti at least it's a generational improvement and certainly it's a generational improvement for the same price card from half a decade ago here what we have is we're looking at ebay amazon second hand a couple other places before posting this and what we have is something that is competitive with cards that are in the age range of four to six years old that sell for about the same price as this will very likely sell it although msrp's 200 ignoring scalloping street prices all that stuff the partner cards are not on average going to be 200 they never are this isn't new to the current time it's just partners bake in some extra margin there as they release a million different skus and the average tends to be higher than the msrp that's not news that's normally fine but what that means here is that it creeps the price up towards things that are older may be used and might be better in some metrics than average fps for example so you lose a little bit of modern power consumption advantage that is gotten with the 65 xt compared to an rx 580 or something but with an rx 580 you get at worst roughly equal performance within like five percent in some of the charts where it's behind often ahead in performance and eight gigabytes of memory now the 6500 xt also has that other quirk where for the 6000 series that is as you increase the resolution to say 1440p the scaling advantage falls off and relative to other cards that it was doing pretty well against at 1080 it starts to lose ground or they start to make up ground like we saw with the 1066 gigabyte and some 1440p tests and certainly with the rx 580. this card overall is a little bit different than the other ones we haven't recommended many of the new video cards released recently because you know our stance on it if you don't agree with how we look at the cards and the pricing if you think maybe we're a little idealistic or whatever that's fine we can disagree on that um i fully understand the other viewpoint but you know this is kind of the way we do it uh and ultimately the numbers are the numbers it's not really influenced by our viewpoint on it so you can still take from our data and make your own decision so that's what's cool about having data and then having an opinion but the one thing that's different here ignoring all of our past opinions we've stated about stagnation in the market where you pay one dollar more for one percent more uplift not exciting that's actually flatlining in the generational improvements ignoring all of that this one not only has stagnated it has stagnated marvelously haven't ever seen something that's like the same price as six years ago and the same performance and not only that you lose features and to the extent that is relevant at least it's not even a full they only give give you eight lanes you get four they're if you're on pcie gen three then i guess basically [ __ ] you so that's the 6500 xt uh if it's between this and something used give you shopping a shot try and buy it where you're where you're buyer protected at least uh you can certainly get screwed buying used cards but uh you know you also get screwed buying new cards from the manufacturer so uh your choice which one you want to where where you want to get screwed i guess that's it for this one thanks for watching subscribe for more as always you can go to store.camerasaccess.net if you'd like to help us out directly by picking up one of our toolkits which are in stock and shipping now or you can go to patreon.com videos thanks for watching we'll see you all next time

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 391,033

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, RX 6500 XT review, AMD RX 6500 XT benchmarks, XFX RX 6500 XT QICK, RX 6500 XT vs GTX 970, RX 6500 XT vs GTX 1060, RX 6500 XT vs GTX 1660, Best GPU 2022, best video cards right now

Id: ZFpuJqx9Qmw

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 19 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/cr6sxwastaken]

Yikes… So glad I didn’t buy this card and waited for benchmarks.

[u/SalmonLover69420]

As a casual gamer I'm gonna ride out my rx 580 until it dies

[u/loucmachine]

Barely past half of January, this will go straight into the 2022 disappointment build!

[u/AcidOctopus]

I'm still running a R9 Fury Nitro+ for fucks sake.

I'm literally begging for a mid-range card with decent stock so I can get one at a sensible price.

[u/TimeGoddess_]

Basically a Worse RX 580 for the 5th year in a row

Edit as some pointed out a worse RX 580 in PCIE 4 a worse RX 570 in PCIE 3

[u/Agreeable-Weather-89]

I don't know what people are complaining about, it's $99, I mean look at the market for $99 dGPU's right now you have what the GT730 and this thing smokes that card. People are simply expecting too much for a $100 GPU in this market, even with partner cards costing $129 it's still decent plus for SFF builds in old optiplexes you can't go wrong.

receives note from off-screen

199?! TWO HUNDREDS DOLLARS. That's insane. I guess it still works for optiplexes

Receives another note offscreen

4x PCI-e Gen 4 lanes... what the fuck. Why?

[u/iukpun]

So, its expensive successor to rx 560, with disabled functionality?

[u/Competitive_Jump_765]

Waiting for Moore's Law Is Dead to make a video saying this gpu is infact best GPU in the market right now, cos you can get it close to MSRP

[u/TalkWithYourWallet]

So funny, the margins on this card are probably pretty decent given the amount of cuts they've made