The 6500 XT wouldn't exisit without the pandemic because of the asinie Nvidia prices for a GTX 1650 at $500 at one point.
Does the 6500 XT beat Any of AMD's APU's ?
Don't forget also that the GTX 1650 costs the same as the RX 6500 XT but it even gets beat by the less expensive RX 6400. The GTX 1650 gets absolutely ramrodded by the RX 6500 XT because for the same price, the RX 6500 XT is 39% faster. Yet we have the GTX 1650, a card with HORRIBLE value, as the most common card on Steam. I honestly don't think that people go out and buy this card as much as it's probably included in prebuilt PCs that are marketed as "gaming PCs" to the uninformed masses by the likes of Dell and HP.
That depends on your definition of "suck" because you have to take the laws of physics into account. Video cards are GIGANTIC compared to CPUs with big coolers and draw huge amounts of power compared to the IGP mounted to an APU. The fastest consumer-grade x86 APU in the world, the R7-5700G, shows an absolute
peak power draw of 88W in AnandTech's tests. That's for BOTH the 8-core CPU AND the Vega 8 IGP. There's not a chance in hell that they'd ever be able to match a real video card that draws at least 75W+
by itself (let alone the ones that draw more) has a gigantic cooler compared to a CPU cooler and doesn't have to share a die with CPU cores that also generate heat. For an APU to
not appear to suck in that test would be a miracle. Unfortunately for people who seem to believe in miracles, the laws of physics tend to prevent miracles from occurring. If you're a GPU that sips tiny amounts of power, share a die with CPU cores and have to share a single fan and heatsink with those CPU cores there's not a chance in hell that your performance would match that of a dedicated video card. Your best and only hope is that you're "good enough" that the end user is satisfied.
Remember also that AMD APUs were good enough for two generations of gaming consoles. I would say that they suck compared to actual desktop video cards but where they really shine is in craptops. Also remember that AMD APUs absolutely mop the floor with any IGP made by Intel. I actually have an example of AMD's first APU, Llano. As I remember, it was an absolute game-changer when it came out. Sure, at the same price point, the AMD CPU cores (essentially Phenom II cores) were a bit inferior to the competing Intel offerings, but the Radeon HD 6620G IGP was an order of magnitude better than the competing Intel IGP and the power efficiency was out of this world for its time. Back in 2011, on my "consumer grade" Acer Aspire A5560 with an A8-3500M APU, I could play SKYRIM at 720p with medium settings and it looked just fine on the 15.6" monitor. That craptop cost me only $500CAD and there wasn't an Intel craptop in existence that could match that feat for less than double that price. It was
this review from Tom's Hardware that prompted me to buy it. This was back when Tom's Hardware was REALLY Tom's Hardware instead of the bastardised parody of a tech site that it is today because Don Roligroski's review was spot-on.
Well yes and no. The issue I have with the 6500XT is what you read on TPU vs User reviews on Newegg and Amazon are completely opposite to each other.
That's just fake reviews vs. fake reviews. I don't think that anyone worth their salt pays attention to those. It would be like taking LoserBenchmark seriously or blindly believing everything you read on WCCFTech.