With the cryptocurrency craze taking off, many computer gamers are asking the same questions over and over again. When will the graphics cards that have been taken off the shelves by the miners spending their money be seen as normal, and when will they stop being ripped off by scalpers in the second-hand market and sold to internally damaged graphics cards that are actually eliminated by the mines? In this regard, the two major graphics card brands have made a lot of efforts, such as trying to launch graphics cards that reduce computing power. However, no matter how the computing power is restricted, there will always be gods from all walks of life who will find a way to crack it. AMD recently plans to go head-on and launch a new graphics card, the RX 6500XT, which is obviously not suitable for computing virtual currencies. This graphics card has recently been officially launched in Taiwan. However, such a good card has not received much praise in the mouths of many media, and it has even struggled to squeeze out positive reviews. Should I buy this graphics card today in 2022?
▲（Image source）
Many players put performance first when choosing a graphics card. After all, you need to enable more special effects in the game to make the game screen more exquisite and beautiful. Performance is definitely the most important consideration. However, the pricing of graphics cards is often linked to performance. Therefore, after considering performance, it is necessary to estimate whether the cash in hand can squeeze out more budget.
However, in addition to issues of performance and price, modern gamers have to face the third most serious problem, which is that in addition to the buying group of gamers in the graphics card market, there is also a group of virtual currency miners who target the computing power of graphics cards and regard graphics cards as a money-making tool. The latter’s strong purchasing power has caused a serious shortage of graphics cards in the global market. Many players are unable to continue to upgrade their computers by purchasing new cards because of the shortage, which also affects their desire to buy games:
▲（Image source）
For the two major display chip giants AMD and NVIDIA, they both want to meet the needs of gamers. After all, although virtual currency miners have amazing purchasing power, they have also caused market distortions. NVIDIA has figured out how to block computing power from the driver side and even the graphics card hardware side. Every time it is blocked, a group of “fairies” will jump out to find cracking loopholes. So far there is still no good result.
AMD believes that it should distinguish between product lines dedicated to miners and gamers. In order to prevent the rush of miners from affecting gamers, the solution they came up with was to launch a graphics card with a significantly reduced display memory specification. This graphics card does not have impressive computing power, thus avoiding the rush of miners. Perhaps based on this thinking, RX 6500XT was born:
▲（Image source）
The RX 6500 XT is an entry-level graphics card with an MSRP of $200. In terms of price, many performance players may not be interested in such a graphics card, but if they just want to upgrade their computers and don’t have such high gaming performance requirements, this new card may still satisfy some players. but. Many media have a headache about this card. The headache lies in how to balance the advantages and disadvantages in the evaluation report.
Because the RX 6500XT only provides 4GB of display memory, such specifications are obviously not enough for computer gamers who have already purchased 2K or even 4K monitors. But for players who are still using Full HD resolution displays, the RX 6500XT may meet the expectations of these gamers:
▲（Image source）
However, the media may not be willing to give such a “peaceful” statement.
Techspot:[T]his is the worst GPU release since I can remember, and I’ve been doing this job for over two decades
Gamers Nexus: RX 6500XT is worse than 2016’s GPUs
Linus Tech Tips: A GPU you might be able to buy… but shouldn’t,
Guru3D: The year 2022 just started, and this potentially looks to be the most insufficient graphics card series of the year
Of course, there are also relatively optimistic views. For example Tom’s Hardware I think this card is, after all, a brand new one and the most readily available graphics card at this stage. At least compared to the various second-hand graphics cards sold on eBay or other second-hand markets or websites, the RX 6500XT at least has not been manipulated by miners since its launch.
The growth rate of RX 6500XT in terms of performance is not as high as expected, and it is roughly equivalent to RX 5500XT. However, the video output specifications of the 5500XT are more advanced than the new card 6500XT. Some users even discovered that the 6500XT has removed the built-in video encoder, which means that this card does not have the hardware decoding capabilities required for game live broadcast. If you want to start the live broadcast while playing the game, the game performance will be significantly affected:
▲（Image source）
For players who really can’t afford a better new graphics card, consider the RX 6500 XT. Perhaps you need to think twice. This card is actually very helpful to some players. After all, RX 6500XT supports AMD FSR technology. Even if the hardware specifications are reduced, it may still be possible to play new games in low-resolution environments.
Source: KOCPC Chinese