23score
#101 of 131
Overall rank

Radeon RX 6500 XT

3.9 · 551 votes
Best for 1080p esports gaming

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VRAM
8 GB
CUDA
1,024
FP32
5.765 TF
Bandwidth
143.9 GB/s
TDP
107W
Boost
2815 MHz
Strengths at a Glance

How it stacks up to the flagship

Each metric is shown as a percentage of the GeForce RTX 5090 D, the strongest card we track.

FP32 compute5.765 TFLOPS6%
vs RTX 5090 D: 104.8 TFLOPS
Memory bandwidth143.9 GB/s8%
vs RTX 5090 D: 1790 GB/s
VRAM capacity8 GB25%
vs RTX 5090 D: 32 GB
Shading units1,0245%
vs RTX 5090 D: 21,760
Power efficiency17/10029%
vs RTX 5090 D: 58/100
Synthetic Benchmarks

Estimated benchmark results

Each result is shown as a share of the RTX 5090 D's score in the same test.

3DMark Time Spy8,280pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 36,000 pts
3DMark Port Royal (RT)3,600pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 18,000 pts
Blender (samples/min)1,092spm
vs RTX 5090 D: 5,200 spm
Geekbench Compute43,200pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 240,000 pts

Performance breakdown

Gaming23
Ray tracing20
AI / Compute18
Creator / 3D21
Power efficiency17
Real-World Gaming

FPS Across Resolutions

1080p · Ultra preset1440p · Ultra preset4K · Ultra preset
Cyberpunk 2077avg 16 fps
1080p
29
1440p
16
4K
4
Counter-Strike 2avg 45 fps
1080p
80
1440p
34
4K
22
Fortniteavg 64 fps
1080p
112
1440p
56
4K
25
Battlefield 5avg 64 fps
1080p
90
1440p
66
4K
37
Far Cry 5avg 53 fps
1080p
83
1440p
55
4K
22
Valorantavg 163 fps
1080p
160
1440p
199
4K
131

Average FPS across all PC games

1080p
67fps
1440p
29fps
4K
16fps

Cost per frame

Launch MSRP ($199) ÷ average FPS — lower is better.

1080p
$2.96
1440p
$6.79
4K
$11.07
Community Feedback

What Owners Say

Owners like it for low-power 1080p gaming without breaking the bank. The usual gripe is the limited memory bus and lack of video encoding hurt performance and features.

Pros
  • Handles modern games at medium settings
  • Runs cool and quiet under load
  • Small enough for compact builds
  • Works fine for 1080p gaming
Cons
  • Only 4GB VRAM limits modern games
  • No AV1 hardware video encoding support
  • Weak memory bus hurts high resolution

Supported technologies

Ray TracingAV1 Encode

Full specifications

Graphics processor
Architecture
RDNA 2.0
Process node
6 nm
Transistors
5.4 B
Compute Units
16
Release date
2022
Launch price
$199
Core configuration
CUDA Cores
1,024
RT Cores
16
TMUs
64
ROPs
32
L2 cache
1024 MB
Memory
Size
8 GB
Type
GDDR6
Bus width
64-bit
Bandwidth
143.9 GB/s
Memory clock
2248 MHz
Clocks & throughput
Base clock
2610 MHz
Boost clock
2815 MHz
FP32 (float)
5.765 TFLOPS
FP16 (half)
5.765 TFLOPS
Pixel rate
90 GPixel/s
Texture rate
180.2 GTexel/s
Board & power
TDP
107W
Suggested PSU
200W
Power connectors
1x 6-pin
Bus interface
PCIe 4.0 x4
Slot width
2-slot
Display & outputs
Max resolution
7680×4320
Outputs
1x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4a

API and SDK support

DirectX
12 Ultimate (12_2)
Shader Model
6.6
OpenGL
4.6
OpenCL
2.2
Vulkan
1.3
Verdict

Our verdict on the RX 6500 XT

The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is a budget graphics card crippled by its tiny 4GB memory buffer and missing hardware encoding.

Get it if you're on a super tight budget and only play esports titles at 108p, where it's fine for the price. Skip it if you want to play modern games or do any creative work, because the limited memory and bus cripple performance badly.

Buy it if…

  • Buy it if you’re building a very cheap, small-form-factor gaming PC.
  • Buy it if you need a basic GPU for a prebuilt office machine upgrade.
  • Buy it if you only play esports titles at medium settings.
3.9

551 votes

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