3 Graphics Cards You Should Buy Instead! AMD RX 6500 XT from AMD is an Rs. 14,880.45 graphics cards that will cost roughly Rs. 14,880.45 in 2022. At the very least, if you can find one. Due to the GPU shortage, secondhand market prices are closer to Rs. 29,760.90, and it appears like AMD made too many compromises with this launch to win a slot among the finest 1080p graphics cards.
It’s been dubbed “the worst graphics card launch in two decades” by Hardware Unboxed, and “a GPU for the desperate” by Linus Tech Tips. we are I’m still waiting for a sample to test, but what has been released so far shows that RX 6500 XT isn’t an excellent graphics card.
There are several reasons for this, which I discuss at the end of this essay. For the time being, all you need to know is that RX 6500 XT is frequently outperformed by graphics cards that are several years old, and even at exorbitant secondhand costs, those cards should provide greater features and performance. Instead of RX 6500 XT, consider these three pricey graphics cards.
3 Graphics Cards You Should Buy Instead
1-AMD RX 5500 XT 4GB
Yes, even at its inflated costs, the last-gen edition of RX 6500 XT is a superior alternative. This card was released in 2019 for around Rs. 14,880.45, and used models can be found on eBay for roughly Rs. 14,880.45 to Rs. 18,600.94. That’s for the 4GB variant, which is still superior to the RX 6500 XT in terms of performance. The 8GB variant is more expensive as well as performs better, with a resale price of roughly Rs. 22,320.14.
RX 5500 XT appears to operate similarly to RX 6500 XT, with trading blowing up or down by a few frames based on the game. RX 6500 XT has a bandwidth problem, so while it should theoretically function better than RX 5500 XT in actuality, it doesn’t seem to.
By choosing the older card, you’ll be foregoing hardware-accelerated ray tracing, but none of AMD’s latest-gen cards are particularly good at ray tracing. Actually, it’s more expensive, but I expect RX 5500 XT will sell for less once the first stock of RX 6500 XT has found its way into scalpers’ hands.
AMD RX 5500 XT 4GB Specification
Compute Units | 22 |
Boost Frequency | Up to 1845 MHz |
Game Frequency | 1717 MHz |
Peak Pixel Fill-Rate | Up to 59 GP/s |
Peak Texture Fill-Rate | Up to 162.36 GT/s |
Peak Single Precision Compute Performance | 5.2 TFLOPs |
ROPs | 32 |
Stream Processors | 1408 |
Transistor Count | 6.4 B |
Typical Board Power (Desktop) | 130 W |
Minimum PSU Recommendation | 450 W |
Memory Speed | 14 Gbps |
Max Memory Size | 8 GB |
Memory Type | GDDR6 |
Memory Bandwidth | Up to 224 GB/s |
K H264 Decode | Yes |
4K H264 Encode | Yes |
H265/HEVC Decode | Yes |
H265/HEVC Encode | Yes |
DisplayPort | 1.4a |
HDMI™ | 4K60 Support |
Product Family | AMD Radeon™ 5500 Series |
Product Line | AMD Radeon™ RX 5500 Series |
Type | Component |
OS Support | Windows 11 – 64-Bit Edition |
Additional power connector | 1 x 8-pin |
2-Nvidia GTX 1070
Nvidia GTX 1070 is ideal for gamers that prefer to focus solely on performance. The card was first released in 2016 for roughly Rs. 29,763.20, as well as secondhand options, are available for between Rs. 22,320.14 and Rs. 29,763.20 in 2022. Even for a five-year-old graphics card, that’s not bad considering how high costs are right now.
based on the game, you should expect a 20 percent to 50 percent performance gain over RX 6500 XT. The GTX 1070 boosts speed while also providing twice the amount of video RAM for more intensive workloads. It lacks ray tracing and Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), however, these features aren’t crucial when compared to RX 6500 XT.
Nvidia GTX 1070 Specification
NVIDIA CUDA | 1920 |
Base Clock (MHz) | 1506 |
Boost Clock (MHz) | 1683 |
Memory Speed | 8 Gbps |
Standard Memory Config | 8 GB GDDR5 |
Memory Interface Width | 256-bit |
Memory Bandwidth (GB/s) | 256 |
Multi-Projection | Yes |
VR Ready | Yes |
NVIDIA Ansel | Yes |
NVIDIA SLI | Yes – SLI HB Bridge |
NVIDIA G-SYNC-Ready | Yes |
NVIDIA GameStream-Ready | Yes |
NVIDIA GPU Boost | 3.0 |
Microsoft DirectX | 12 API with feature level 12.1 |
Vulkan API | Yes |
OpenGL | 4.5 |
Bus Support | PCIe 3.0 |
OS Certification | Windows 7-10, Linux, FreeBSDx86 |
Maximum Digital Resolution | 7680×4320@60Hz |
Standard Display Connectors | DP 1.4 |
Multi-Monitor | Yes |
HDCP | 2.2 |
Height | 4.376″ |
Length | 10.5″ |
Width | 2-slot |
Maximum GPU Temperature (in C) | 94 |
Graphics Card Power (W) | 150 W |
Recommended System Power (W) | 500 W |
Supplementary Power Connectors | 8-pin |
3-AMD RX 580
Even at dramatically inflated costs, RX 580 is a better deal than RX 6500 XT, the poster child of budget graphics cards. An RX 580 can be had for roughly Rs. 22,320.14 on eBay, which is an excellent price when compared to RX 6500 XT. The card went on sale in 2017 for about Rs. 18,600.60.
Some games prefer one card over the other in early tests, but on average, RX 580, as well as RX 6500 XT, are close. If anything, RX 580 appears to have a slight advantage.
However, it’s worth remembering how famous RX 580 was as a mining GPU. On the secondhand market, there are a plethora of alternatives, but be sure to stick with reliable merchants.
AMD RX 580 Specification
Manufacturer | AMD |
GPU Architecture | AMD Polaris 20 14nm |
Cores | 2304 Stream Processors |
Base Clock | 1257 MHz |
Boost Clock | 1340 MHz |
Transistor Amount | 5.7 Billion |
Texture Units | 144 |
ROPs | 32 |
Memory Size | 8GB GDDR5 |
Memory Clock Effective | 8000 MHz |
Memory Interface Width | 256-bit |
Memory Bandwidth | 256 GB/s |
DirectX® Version | 12 |
OpenCL | 2.0 |
OpenGL | 4.5 |
Shader Model | 5.0 |
Maximum resolution | 3840 x 2160 @ 120 Hz (DisplayPort) |
Display Port | 1.4 HDR |
HDMI | 2.0b |
USB-C | No |
Dual-Link DVI | No |
Single Link DVI | No |
VGA | No |
Interface | PCI-E 3.0 x16 |
Power Connectors | 1 x 8 pin |
PSU Recommendation | 500 W |
Graphics Card Power | 185 W |
Length | 24.2 cm (9.53″) |
Width | 2 SLOT |
Height | 11.1 cm (4.37″) |
Weight | 1kg (average) |
Why The RX 6500 XT Is A Bad Buy
It’s one thing if RX 6500 XT is a letdown, but that doesn’t usually warrant promoting graphics cards that are several years old and merely provide comparable performance. In most circumstances, a budget GPU from the last few of gen is preferable to a high-end card from a previous generation.
RX 6500 XT is an outlier in this regard. The first and most serious problem is a lack of bandwidth. RX 6500 XT is PCIe 4.0 x4 compatible, which means it uses four PCIe 4.0 lanes. If you’re running an Intel 12th-gen or AMD Ryzen 5000 processor, which both offer PCIe 4.0, that’s fine. If you’re using anything older than PCIe 3.0, you’ll be limited to PCIe 3.0. Let’s face it, this card isn’t designed for gamers using the most latest gen of processors.
That’s PCIe 3.0 x4 in action. The majority of graphics cards use an x16 slot, while RX 5500 XT from the prior generation uses an x8 interface. Early tests indicate that this makes a significant difference. Because of bandwidth limits, the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface handicaps the card, sometimes significantly, resulting in inferior performance on older platforms.
Memory, too, is constrained by these constraints. RX 6500 XT features only 4GB of video RAM, which isn’t bad by any means. The memory is crammed into a 64-bit memory bus, which is half the size of RX 5500 XT’s. As a result of the reduced memory bandwidth, stuttering will occur when you initially load games since the assets are streamed into memory.
Then there’s encoding and decoding, which is a quiet killer. Neither AV1 decoding nor HEVC encoding is supported by RX 6500 XT. Because AV1 is a newer capability that none of the GPUs listed above support, AMD gets a pass.
However, the lack of HEVC encoding is a significant issue. For several generations, this has been a standard feature on GPUs, and it’s accessible on all of the cards listed above. You’re out of luck if you try to conduct any encoding with RX 6500 XT. Put it out of your mind. What about video editing? Only in your dreams, of course. This is a game-only GPU that appears to struggle with gaming.