Discussion Radeon 6500XT and 6400

[GodisanAtheist]

Just getting a thread up for this. Navi 24 will ride... Q1 2022... ish.

AMD Readies Radeon RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 Graphics Cards

AMD is preparing to wrap up its Radeon RX 6000 series desktop discrete graphics card family with two new SKUs, the RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400. The two debut the company's smallest piece of silicon based on the RDNA2 graphics architecture, codenamed "Navi 24," to the desktop space. The RX 6500 XT...

www.techpowerup.com

I fugure the 6500XT lands ~5500XT territory for ~$200.

 

[jpiniero]

Those charts are from Kit Guru BTW.

That's a 4.0 system though. The 6500 XT probably takes a decent hit on 3.0 at 1080p High.

 

[maddie]

That's a 4.0 system though. The 6500 XT probably takes a decent hit on 3.0 at 1080p High.

Can't one say this about any item, that all things have compromises?

Would you put a 6900 XT in a system with a dual core CPU, a 400W PSU, etc. It has its niche, as do all products. Expecting it to be all things to all people is simply fantasy thinking as no such product exists.

 

[LightningZ71]

Like I said, an absolute minimal effort card. They didn't want to make a specific chip for the 6500xt. They, instead, just reused their mobike chip with higher limits. The mobile chip would bever be on a system with greater tan a 1080p screen, so having it setup for that at max, with hard limits for cost reduction makes sense. Unfortunately, it means that it is needlessly hamstrung as a desktop card.

Texture swapping over an x16 PCIe 4.0 bus would be a significant boost to the 6500xt's effective VRAM and game performance, especially on DDR5 systems as they would have bandwidth to spare. No, its not ideal. Yes, 8GB VRAM would be far better. We've seen the difference between the 5500xt 4gb vesion and 8GB version to know it makes a difference. The Infinity Cache is too tiny and slow to make a difference here.

It woukd have added a few dollars to board cost and chip cost, max, and the street prices would certainly have supported a $20 higher MSRP. And, they still would have sold every one they make.

 

[jpiniero]

Guess the question is what people would have now, that the 6500 XT would be a legit upgrade from.

 

[DeathReborn]

Well, my 1060gtx 6GB is slowly getting old.
Except the 6500xt, I dunno what I could get.
At about 500€ Max in EU, there's not much to love IMO.

True, for 500ish you could get a 6500XT (245+) x2, 3050 (390+) 6600 (455+) or a 2060 12GB (495+), 6600XT (530+) or 3060 (590+). Link to 8GB+ in the EU comparison.

Grafikkarten PCIe mit Speichergröße ab 8GB Preisvergleich Geizhals EU

Preisvergleich und Bewertungen für Grafikkarten PCIe mit Speichergröße ab 8GB

geizhals.eu

 

[maddie]

Guess the question is what people would have now, that the 6500 XT would be a legit upgrade from.

I guess we look at the world and see it differently. Are upgrades the only relevant demographic?

What about all those potential gamers entering the market annually. The human population replenishes itself continuously and every year there are a lot of new and ageing individuals. Try to remember yourself as a kid getting his 1st PC and trying to find the cheapest way to start gaming. Money or lack of it, is a reality for many more than we seem to think. Used was the accepted way, but we are not living in normal times.

Adapt our thinking to the present. If it changes, then adapt again.

 

[maddie]

Like I said, an absolute minimal effort card. They didn't want to make a specific chip for the 6500xt. They, instead, just reused their mobike chip with higher limits. The mobile chip would bever be on a system with greater tan a 1080p screen, so having it setup for that at max, with hard limits for cost reduction makes sense. Unfortunately, it means that it is needlessly hamstrung as a desktop card.

Texture swapping over an x16 PCIe 4.0 bus would be a significant boost to the 6500xt's effective VRAM and game performance, especially on DDR5 systems as they would have bandwidth to spare. No, its not ideal. Yes, 8GB VRAM would be far better. We've seen the difference between the 5500xt 4gb vesion and 8GB version to know it makes a difference. The Infinity Cache is too tiny and slow to make a difference here.

It woukd have added a few dollars to board cost and chip cost, max, and the street prices would certainly have supported a $20 higher MSRP. And, they still would have sold every one they make.

You actually think that the cost delta would have been $20?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I guess we look at the world and see it differently. Are upgrades the only relevant demographic?

What about all those potential gamers entering the market annually. The human population replenishes itself continuously and every year there are a lot of new and ageing individuals. Try to remember yourself as a kid getting his 1st PC and trying to find the cheapest way to start gaming. Money or lack of it, is a reality for many more than we seem to think. Used was the accepted way, but we are not living in normal times.

Adapt our thinking to the present. If it changes, then adapt again.

The MSI 1050ti being #7 and the MSI 1650 #4 cards sold on Newegg, speaks volumes to who needs a card. Which leads me to answer the question of what a 6500xt is an upgrade from. Whatever the people buying those 2 worse performing GPUs have. Or as you pointed out, don't have. It's that simple. No pretzel logic or magic 8 ball required.

 

[LightningZ71]

You actually think that the cost delta would have been $20?

In volume, that's probably an OVER estimation.
Marketing stays the same.
Packaging stays the same.
Driver development overhead is essentially the same.
The power section of the pcb stays the same.
The dram on the pcb stays the same.
The amount of material on the PCB stays the same.
R&D stays almost unchanged as AMD already has a 16 lane PCIe interface on N6 (rembrant, MI series) and N7, which is design compatible. All their RDNA2 gpus are cut and paste for the most part.

Changes: the GPU itself grows a few %, cutting wafer yield by less than 5%.
The pcb needs 24 more traces, minimal cost.

At volume, that's much less than $20 difference. If the MSRP is $200, cost of materials is much less than that. $20 is easily covering the difference.

 

[eek2121]

In volume, that's probably an OVER estimation.
Marketing stays the same.
Packaging stays the same.
Driver development overhead is essentially the same.
The power section of the pcb stays the same.
The dram on the pcb stays the same.
The amount of material on the PCB stays the same.
R&D stays almost unchanged as AMD already has a 16 lane PCIe interface on N6 (rembrant, MI series) and N7, which is design compatible. All their RDNA2 gpus are cut and paste for the most part.

Changes: the GPU itself grows a few %, cutting wafer yield by less than 5%.
The pcb needs 24 more traces, minimal cost.

At volume, that's much less than $20 difference. If the MSRP is $200, cost of materials is much less than that. $20 is easily covering the difference.

If the chip itself supports PCIE x8 or x16, yes, however, the chip does not, in fact, support more lanes. It isn't just about wiring up more lanes to the PCB and routing them. The design of the chip has to be changed. The chip was designed for mobile, where PCIE 4.0 was standard and the leaky parts were backported to desktop. Despite that, the card is extremely popular right now. Like, more popular than the 6600.

 

[LightningZ71]

I think I wasn't clear. My argument is that AMD should have made the 6500XT gpu with 16 lanes to begin with and accepted the marginally reduced yields per wafer as a consequence, making up for the higher per-chip costs by selling them for a bit more money. That section can be fused off for products which don't need it. Yes, I agree that it would be a waste of silicon in many of the products, silicon that could have made the overall product better in other areas.

 

[jpiniero]

I think I wasn't clear. My argument is that AMD should have made the 6500XT gpu with 16 lanes to begin with and accepted the marginally reduced yields per wafer as a consequence, making up for the higher per-chip costs by selling them for a bit more money. That section can be fused off for products which don't need it. Yes, I agree that it would be a waste of silicon in many of the products, silicon that could have made the overall product better in other areas.

When AMD designed Navi 24, they probably weren't even thinking about a desktop model.

 

[Glo.]

Does anyone know what is the state of Linux support for RX 6500 XT?

If I will use Pop!_OS 21.10, latest ISO, will I get out-of-the-box support?

 

[Stuka87]

Does anyone know what is the state of Linux support for RX 6500 XT?

If I will use Pop!_OS 21.10, latest ISO, will I get out-of-the-box support?

This may partly answer your question: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=radeon-rx6500xt-linux&num=1

 

[Shivansps]

When AMD designed Navi 24, they probably weren't even thinking about a desktop model.

AMD does not have enoght marketshare in notebooks for that, and in fact one of the first thing they did with this GPU was to launch a OEM only version and a FirePRO version. Nah, as i said many times, this is the kind of GPU that was designed to target the very low end on all markets, the kind of GPU that they would use to replace the RX550 and target the same markets as the GT1030/RX550/ and low end 1050 cores (in notebooks) that currently Nvidia dosent have a replacement.
The fact that the Navi24 has the same PCIE lanes as the nvidia conterparts is not coincidence.

To me only thing that was not planned to me is to launch a >75W $200 version.

 

[jpiniero]

and low end 1050 cores (in notebooks) that currently Nvidia dosent have a replacement.

nVidia does have a replacement/competitor - the mx570 and the 2050L.

 

[igor_kavinski]

ComputerBase on Twitter: "Beaten by a way smaller iGPU. Ouch. #rx6500xt https://t.co/7wsmBFS66X" / Twitter



Wasn't expecting that

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Looks like we're back to AMD's derped out naming schemes. The 680M (WHY AMD WHY CAN'T YOU JUST STICK WITH A GOD DAMN NAMING CONVENTION?!) is now faster than the 6500XT, in at least a couple scenarios.

Que OEMs pairing the 6900HX with a 6500XT and the weaker discrete card bringing the overall laptop performance down...

Oh AMD, you were executing too flawlessly for too long. Got too close to the sun I guess.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Que OEMs pairing the 6900HX with a 6500XT and the weaker discrete card bringing the overall laptop performance down...

That would just be too "AuthenticAMD", if you know what I mean.

 

[Hitman928]

ComputerBase on Twitter: "Beaten by a way smaller iGPU. Ouch. #rx6500xt https://t.co/7wsmBFS66X" / Twitter

View attachment 57793

Wasn't expecting that

Looks like the 6500XT ran out of VRAM. Not surprising results with RT on. Kind of a silly/useless comparison, TBH, as it's not like the 680M is providing any where near playable frame rates and no other APU or GPU in the 6500XT's class will do anything useful under the same conditions. I'm sure you could come up with lots of similar scenarios where the 680M outperforms the 6500XT due to lack of VRAM on the 6500XT, but in every one of those cases, the 680M will be useless as well, so who really cares? If the results are similar with RT off, that would be something to talk about. I give this tweet/chart a big, MEH.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Sorry. I disagree. Some day, in the future, someone will hand down the 680M laptop to their younger kid. He will at least have something playable at 16.3 fps. Some other boy someplace else will inherit a 6500XT rig from his dad and he won't even get 10 fps.. Which kid is going to be more grateful to his dad?

 

[Hitman928]

Sorry. I disagree. Some day, in the future, someone will hand down the 680M laptop to their younger kid. He will at least have something playable at 16.3 fps. Some other boy someplace else will inherit a 6500XT rig from his dad and he won't even get 10 fps.. Which kid is going to be more grateful to his dad?

I predict both will tell their dads that they gave them a piece of junk if they were asking for something that they can play with max settings and RT enabled. You really think anyone is going to try to game with settings where you get an average of 16.3 fps? That is simply unplayable.

Edit: Much more likely is that both kids turn off/down settings until they get something playable and at that point, the kid with the 6500XT will have a better experience.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Depends on the kid. If the kid is like me, he would want to turn RT on. 16.3 fps is not that unplayable. I know coz I used to be happy with 15 fps as an impoverished kid whose dad was dead against gaming and wouldn't let me get a dedicated GPU. My first GPU or rather 3D accelerator, was a 3dfx Voodoo 3000 AGP that I only got coz my mom took pity on me and I kept using it even when other gamers were enjoying the spankin' new Geforce 2. A lot of the games at that time were not nice to the Voodoo, especially when you cranked the settings all the way up, which I loved to do.

 

[LightningZ71]

Two hits that the 6500 takes in this test: the ray tracing performance of Navi2 is lower than comparable 3000 series models (this is a ray tracing ON test) and the 6500 is limited to 4GB vram. I don't know if that's a mobile 3050 with 4G or a desktop 8GB, but, even the mobile 4GB version has twice the PCIe bandwidth for texture swapping.

 

[LightningZ71]

I wonder how that 680m would handle the same settings, but at a rendering resolution of 900 or 720p, upscaled to 1080p? I've seen what a 5700u can do at 720p with fsr upscaling to 1080p on non-raytraced titles. While it certainly isn't a 1080p ultra high detail experience, its definitely playable for most titles (again, no raytracing for the 5700u).