Sapphire Radeon RX 6500 XT Pulse

[W1zzard]

The Sapphire Radeon RX 6500 XT Pulse comes with super impressive noise levels. Even when fully loaded does it run whisper-quiet in an already quiet room. If you put it into a case, it'll be inaudible. Unfortunately, the card is held back by its small VRAM size of 4 GB and the narrow PCIe x4 interface.

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[lightofhonor]

@W1zzard the charts say 6600 XT, not 6500 XT

 

[Blaazen]

Sapphire made GPU clocks 150 MHz lower than Asus (2750 vs 2900 MHz) and power consumption in gaming is 12 watts lower (89 vs 101 W). VRM seems be the same.

 

[Forza.Milan]

brace your self, more are coming..

 

[NC37]

People willing to pay $350 for a 64 bit 4GB card deserve to be scammed by this trash. Budget sub $150 at best. Laughable how much the 5500 beats it.

 

[AdmiralThrawn]

For this price you can buy a used 980ti that will completely outclass it in gaming performance. It is honestly pathetic that companies are now scalping their own products. If the only AMD can come up with is a cheaped out compromise gpu using tech from 2016 then they need to make some serious changes moving forward.

Just noticed that it only pushes 72 fps in 1080p on doom. One of the best optimized games out there. Then only gets 27 fps in valhalla, at 1080p. My ps4 could run that game better.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

For people who don't pay attention to gpu reviews this is the equivalent of getting scammed with a fake gpu on ebay....

 

[Turmania]

People willing to pay $350 for a 64 bit 4GB card deserve to be scammed by this trash. Budget sub $150 at best. Laughable how much the 5500 beats it.

Well when an average consumer goes into a shop orders PC parts, 250 usd for a cpu, 200 for a motherboard, 100 usd for memory and ssd. and then when he see 1000 usd for a mid level gpu he will choose this. this is marketing trick, that is why world first 6nm gpu will be used to promote it. and many will buy.

 

[RedBear]

No mention of the missing H.264/H.265 hardware encoding in the conclusions? Isn't this an important limitation for people building entry-level eSports gaming PCs who would like to stream their games?

EDIT:

For people who don't pay attention to gpu reviews this is the equivalent of getting scammed with a fake gpu on ebay....

Actually the review still recommends it for people who owns a PCIe Gen 4 system, as long as it doesn't exceed the $300 mark. It's a bit of a stretch, but I guess it's a legit point of view, as long as one understands exactly what he's buying and what he's going to use it for. Between the outlets I follow I guess only Tomshardware's review was similarly soft with AMD on this GPU (I mean, a lot of people simply said to not buy it, period).

 

[watzupken]

No mention of the missing H.264/H.265 hardware encoding in the conclusions? Isn't this an important limitation for people building entry-level eSports gaming PCs who would like to stream their games?

EDIT:


Actually the review still recommends it for people who owns a PCIe Gen 4 system, as long as it doesn't exceed the $300 mark. It's a bit of a stretch, but I guess it's a legit point of view, as long as one understands exactly what he's buying and what he's going to use it for. Between the outlets I follow I guess only Tomshardware's review was similarly soft with AMD on this GPU (I mean, a lot of people simply said to not buy it, period).

Because most of the reviewers likely don't use a card of this class. So as a 1 off review of the card, those cuts may not be a problem. Objectively, the card is good enough for 1080p gaming IF one owns a PC with a working PCI-E 4.0 slot for it. If not, then look elsewhere. Secondly, if the price is higher than MSRP, I will also recommend people to look away. The cheapest Sapphire Pulse is going for around 265 USD before taxes, and models from the likes of Asus and Gigabyte is going for close to 300 USD.

 

[nguyen]

I hope scalpers gobbled up all these 6500XT, only to take a huge cut and sell them for <100usd in a few months because no one is buying these turds.

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard the charts say 6600 XT, not 6500 XT

Whoops .. fail .. fixed now

No mention of the missing H.264/H.265 hardware encoding in the conclusions? Isn't this an important limitation for people building entry-level eSports gaming PCs who would like to stream their games?

Don't think it's a big deal, but definitely worth mentioning. Added

I mean, a lot of people simply said to not buy it, period

That is simply bad advice in my opinion. I think our job is to educate readers to come to their own conclusion. Yeah, times are changing, I know ..
The card works fine and gets you somewhat decent 1080p gaming, it comes down to price and availability. IF you can find it for $200, it's a great option, because nothing exists in this market thats offering similar value.

 

[Selaya]

[ ... ]
That is simply bad advice in my opinion. I think our job is to educate readers to come to their own conclusion. Yeah, times are changing, I know ..
The card works fine and gets you somewhat decent 1080p gaming, it comes down to price and availability. IF you can find it for $200, it's a great option, because nothing exists in this market thats offering similar value.

agreed.

however, this card has a huge asterisk attached - PCIe 4.0 platform is essentially mandatory, which significantly drives up your costs (since Skylake or [AMD] B450/A520 are out ie the best budget platforms)
honestly i would just go shop for something used like rx570, 580, gtx1060 or gtx980ti or something because they will all function properly w/o PCIe 4.0.

 

[HD64G]

Agreed that this GPU has many shortcomings for a desktop GPU and that is a strong indication of its design initially being made for notebooks only. But for anyone in a rush to make a new PC or with a faulty GPU to replace, if found close to MSRP it is the only sensible solution. Sadly to say that but this market is too bad for any PC gamer on a budget. And after the initial disappointment about this GPU and with a clear mind it is the only and mediocre solution to many people. Nothing else new and close to that price is incoming in the next months after all.

 

[Readlight]

I haw fan speed overshoot to.

 

[thelawnet]

agreed.

however, this card has a huge asterisk attached - PCIe 4.0 platform is essentially mandatory, which significantly drives up your costs (since Skylake or [AMD] B450/A520 are out ie the best budget platforms)
honestly i would just go shop for something used like rx570, 580, gtx1060 or gtx980ti or something because they will all function properly w/o PCIe 4.0.

Well. I'm building a new Alder Lake build, so while I'm probably gonna skip the GPU entirely and make do with a 12500, otherwise this board would be a great choice. Used 570 4GB goes $300 here and no guarantee at all, so would be a far worse decision than this with a warranty brand new

As far as PCIe 4.0 goes, PCIe 3.0 makes games slower, but AFAICT it doesn't make it unusable per se - it makes it still better than a 570 4GB, but worse than a 580 8GB, whereas otherwise it would be better than a 580 8GB.

I mean, if you have PCIe 4.0 then this card is objectively more valuable than if you only have 3.0, but the difference doesn't turn it into a GT 1030 DDR4 or something. It's, like, slightly slower on average. In some games *significantly*. But it is what it is and if you need to buy a new card there's no point in telling people to buy a used one, or if this card is available at $250, and then a 1650 Super at $450, or whatever, it wouldn't make much sense to spend the $200 extra for the 1650 Super.

 

[Selaya]

obviously.
4x4 however isnt enough even, theres some games that get bottlenecked still
given equal pricing i'd always skip right past this and buy something used instead (be smart: buy good aibs, rather spend an extra buck than bottom-of-the-barrel and you should minimise your chance of buying bricks)

 

[dalekdukesboy]

This thing is an utter piece of crap for the price it goes for... This is barely a 150$ card at best in a sane world.

 

[Footman]

I see this card being used in laptops and disappearing as a discrete card soon.

 

[HD64G]

This thing is an utter piece of crap for the price it goes for... This is barely a 150$ card at best in a sane world.

Agreed but in the todays crazy market where most used GPUs are twice their price when new...

 

[RedBear]

Don't think it's a big deal, but definitely worth mentioning. Added


That is simply bad advice in my opinion. I think our job is to educate readers to come to their own conclusion. Yeah, times are changing, I know ..
The card works fine and gets you somewhat decent 1080p gaming, it comes down to price and availability. IF you can find it for $200, it's a great option, because nothing exists in this market thats offering similar value.

Thanks, another thing perhaps worth mentioning is the limited video outputs (two, the direct predecessor, Sapphire Pulse RX 5500 XT, had four for instance), it's mentioned earlier in the review, but a lot of people probably just skip to the conclusions when reading a review.

Agreed on the purpose of reviews, but I suppose you don't get a lot of attention if you just say that something is not very good, in terms of generational upgrade is pretty bad actually, but it's still acceptable at the right price and for the right usage.

 

[sith'ari]

We benchmarked ray tracing too in this review and saw massive performance drops. For example, enabling ray tracing effects in Resident Evil Village 1080p dropped the FPS from an enjoyable 80 FPS to 7.5 FPS, a 91% loss. Other titles are similarly affected: Watch Dogs Legion: -64%, Deathloop: -68%, Cyberpunk -75%. Two games, Control and Doom Eternal, simply refused to enable ray tracing, probably because of the 4 GB VRAM size. The Radeon RX 6500 XT really doesn't have the horsepower for ray tracing, but that's no big deal, I think.

Excuse me Wizzard ,but for historical reasons i'll have to disagree.

Personally , i never forgot the statement that AMD's senior VP of engineering for RTG ,David Wang had made 3-years ago ,curiously enough ,exactly the time when nVIDIA was introducing their first RayTracing implementations with Turing:
Back then ,Wang responding to the fact that nVIDIA 's RTX features were only supported from mid/upper range of their lineup ,he had stated that :
"""Utilisation of ray tracing games will not proceed unless we can offer ray tracing in all product ranges from low end to high end"""
( https://www.game-debate.com/news/26...until-even-low-end-radeon-gpus-can-support-it )
I had to wait for 3 years , but i never forgot to check what will eventually happen with Wang's statement.
And ,since the passing of time always comes , after seeing those RT numbers , it's finally time for me to wish "good luck" to those who had taken Wang's statement seriously back then , and they are brave enough to enable RayTracing with those lower-tier products.

 

[arni-gx]

wow, radeon rx 6500 xt 4gb with 64bit, not 128bit......nice radeon new gpu.....

 

[Valantar]

@W1zzard Article suggestion: investigating low-power performance on the 6500 XT, with underclocking (and possibly undervolting). Why? Because this GPU is pretty clearly built to be a 25-50W mobile GPU, judging by both the narrow PCIe bus and the narrow VRAM bus. (That's the power range of the 6400M (25W) and 6500M (35-50W).) This desktop SKU is clearly pushed stupidly high to sell as an x5xx SKU rather than where it belongs, as a (~$100) x4xx SKU. Hence why an article like this would be interesting: how does it perform at various power levels (assuming it can be made to run at them), especially 75W and 50W, but lower too if possible. And what clocks can it maintain at those power levels? I would expect it to hit >2GHz at pretty low power, without losing that much performance overall.

I get that this would be a noticeable amount of extra work for a niche article, but it could be a great investigative piece shedding light on how this missed the mark in balancing product segmentation, marketing and performance expectations.

 

[W1zzard]

Article suggestion

Good suggestion. Maybe once I'm finished with 2x RTX 3080 12 GB, 4x RTX 3050, RTX 3090 Ti (unknown # of samples yet), 3x Alder Lake non-K (might buy 2 more) and 4x SSD