The Radeon RX 6500 XT is AMD’s offering for gamers on a budget. This low-end GPU was introduced in January 2022 for gamers who were not looking to spend more than 200 USD on a video card. However, at the price it asks for, is the card any good, and does it stack well against competitors like the GTX 1650 and the GTX 1050 Ti, and its predecessor, the RX 5500 XT? Let us find out in this article
The RX 6500 XT: Yay or Nay for Budget 1080p Gaming?
The RX 6500 XT is based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture, like all other RX 6000 series cards. This card packs the Navi 24 GPU inside. This GPU comes with 1024 Shading Cores, 64 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs), and 32 Render Output Units (ROPs). It comes with 4GB of GDDR6 video memory. The card is based on an extremely narrow 64-bit bus.
The card does not look good on paper, and it does not deliver extra-ordinarily in video games. However, what makes this card a good recommendation is the competition.
Nvidia’s cards have not come down to MSRP as fast as AMD Radeon cards have. Add to that, the direct competitor from the company, the RTX 3050 is already overpriced and is selling for $330 in all leading stores. In this market, the only direct competitors to the RX 6500 XT in terms of pricing include the aging GTX 1650 and the GTX 1050 Ti. Nvidia’s latest offering for gamers, the GTX 1630, performs as well as these old cards. Thus, Team Green is in a very unfavorable spot at the moment.
However, the RX 6500 XT is not great value for money. This is because it manages to outperform the last-gen RX 5500 XT by a small margin. The margin is so small that you should probably get the RX 5500 XT over the RX 6500 XT if you get the chance to choose between them which you won’t. This is because the RX 5500 XT is out of stock everywhere and consider yourself lucky if you find one at an okay price.