AMD will begin selling entry-level gaming graphics card Radeon RX 6500 XT January 19. Its recommended cost is $ 200. However, against the background of the continuing shortage of accelerators, partly caused by cryptominers and resellers who sweep all available offers from the shelves, it has been impossible to find video cards at affordable prices for more than a year now.
Image source: AMD
Will with Radeon RX 6500 XT somehow differently, partly depends on the volume of its supply, however, AMD also claims that they developed this graphics accelerator in such a way that it looked less attractive in the eyes of cryptocurrency miners. When talking to the press regarding issues related to recent announcements at CES 2022, AMD Radeon VP Laura Smith described how the Radeon RX 6500 XT has been “optimized” for gamers.
“We’ve really optimized this accelerator to be a gaming accelerator in the target market. This is quite noticeable if you look at its characteristics. Despite the fact that the card has only 4 GB of memory, this amount is enough for most AAA-class games. At the same time, the video card does not look attractive for those who plan to use the accelerator for operations with blockchain or mining “Smith noted.
Indeed, if you look at the characteristics of the Radeon RX 6500 XT, you will notice that the card differs for the worse even against the background of the entry-level Radeon RX 5500 XT of the previous generation. Firstly, the new accelerator has not 8, but only 4 GB of memory. Secondly, the width of the memory bus of the Radeon RX 6500 XT is half that of its predecessor (64 bit versus 128 bit). Such memory bus width can be found today only in budget discrete mobile video cards of the GeForce MX 450 level. However, the memory bus width of the latest generation desktop graphics accelerators was at least 128 bits. Less memory and its reduced bandwidth will negatively affect the efficiency of the video card in mining Ethereum.
To compensate for the slow memory interface and help the card compete with offerings on the level of the Radeon RX 570 and Radeon RX 5500 XT, the manufacturer has increased the frequencies of the Radeon RX 6500 XT GPU. The maximum GPU frequency of the new accelerator is 2815 MHz. For comparison, the chip of the Radeon RX 5500 XT model runs at 1845 MHz.
Whether such technical solutions from AMD will help to win the attention of gamers to the Radeon RX 6500 XT and discourage miners from it, we will find out after the start of its sales.
If you notice an error, select it with the mouse and press CTRL + ENTER.