It may be laborious to discover a PC gaming graphics card at a low worth today, however nonetheless low your price range is, we completely suggest staying away from the brand new Asus Radeon RX 6500 XT Twin OC V2 that’s simply come out. Not solely is it primarily based on a GPU that’s now two and half years outdated, however this GPU stank even again then.
Asus makes among the greatest graphics playing cards you should purchase proper now, and I notably just like the quiet and highly effective coolers on its newest ROG Strix playing cards, even when they’re a bit overpriced. A graphics card is just nearly as good because the GPU underneath its cooler, although, and whereas AMD makes some respectable GPUs, the Radeon RX 6500 XT is certainly not one in all them.
AMD wouldn’t even ship me a pattern for evaluation when it got here out, and neither would any of the board companions I contacted. You solely want to take a look at among the different press protection to see why. Launched in January 2022, Radeon RX 6500 XT opinions weren’t simply dangerous, they have been scathing, and generally even expletive-ridden. GamersNexus stated it was “worse than 2016’s GPUs,” as proven within the video beneath, whereas {Hardware} Unboxed merely described it because the “worst GPU” in its evaluation.
What went incorrect? Forged your thoughts again to 2022, when there was a worldwide GPU scarcity and it was unimaginable to purchase any graphics playing cards at their MSRP. There was a niche out there for a price range GPU, and it didn’t even actually must be any good for individuals to probably hand over $200 for it. That was when AMD launched the Radeon RX 6500 XT, which now stands as a major instance of what occurs whenever you lower too many corners.
Primarily based on the Navi 24 GPU used for AMD’s cell GPUs on the time, this desktop card had simply 1,024 stream processors, which was half the quantity on the massively superior Radeon RX 6600 XT, however that was solely the beginning of its issues. AMD additionally geared up it with an especially tight 64-bit reminiscence interface, leading to a pitiful reminiscence bandwidth of simply 143.9GB/s, and also you solely acquired 4GB of VRAM too.
Not solely that, however AMD geared up the cardboard with a miserly 4x PCIe 4.0 interface, which could be positive for the cardboard’s efficiency on a PCIe 4.0 system, however meant it solely had half that PCIe bandwidth on a PCIe 3.0 rig. This was a giant deal in 2022, Intel’s Tenth-gen Comet Lake CPUs had come out simply two years earlier with no PCIe 4.0 assist, and loads of individuals solely had older PCIe 3.0 motherboards for his or her AMD CPUs.
Anyway, for some cause Asus has simply launched a model new graphics card primarily based on this GPU. On the floor, it seems to be like an honest card, with its two cooling followers and carbon fiber-esque look. Asus has even given it an honest overclock, which takes the sport clock from 2,610MHz to 2,670MHz, however this gained’t be sufficient to make this card value shopping for.
Asus hasn’t introduced pricing for the brand new V2 card but, however the V1 model at the moment goes for $179 on Amazon, and you are able to do significantly better. If you really want an inexpensive graphics card now, take my recommendation and keep away from this new Asus card, and as an alternative choose up a second-hand Radeon RX 6600 XT or GeForce RTX 3060 on eBay.
In the meantime, if you happen to’re searching for a bit extra energy, the Radeon RX 7600 and GeForce RTX 4060 from the present era gives you far more gaming efficiency if you happen to can afford them.
