Monday, July 25th 2022
Sapphire Intros Radeon RX 6500 XT Graphics Card with Off-Spec 8GB Memory
Sapphire introduced one of the first Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics cards in the retail channel to feature 8 GB of video memory, double that of the 4 GB standard for the SKU. The Sapphire Pulse RX 6500 XT 8 GB resembles the company's standard Pulse RX 6500 XT in design. At this point it's unclear how Sapphire went about deploying 8 GB of memory with the RX 6500 XT, given its narrow 64-bit GDDR6 memory interface.
Sapphire probably used four 16 Gbit memory chips, with two chips piggybacking a 32-bit memory channel. This would finally put the metal backplate to some use, as two of the chips could be located on the reverse side of the PCB. The memory ticks at the same 18 Gbps speed as the standard RX 6500 XT. The card's typical board power is increased to 130 W, up from the 107 W AMD reference. This is probably because the added memory chips, as well as slightly increased clock speeds of 2685 MHz (game clock), vs. 2615 MHz reference. The company didn't announce pricing or availability, but is planning a global launch for this card.
Sapphire probably used four 16 Gbit memory chips, with two chips piggybacking a 32-bit memory channel. This would finally put the metal backplate to some use, as two of the chips could be located on the reverse side of the PCB. The memory ticks at the same 18 Gbps speed as the standard RX 6500 XT. The card's typical board power is increased to 130 W, up from the 107 W AMD reference. This is probably because the added memory chips, as well as slightly increased clock speeds of 2685 MHz (game clock), vs. 2615 MHz reference. The company didn't announce pricing or availability, but is planning a global launch for this card.
18 Comments on Sapphire Intros Radeon RX 6500 XT Graphics Card with Off-Spec 8GB Memory
No Sign of it being 16x though.
Also, even low-end cards can benefit from more VRAM because it means being able to use high-resolution textures, which is something that doesn't require more processing power. Being able to use high-res textures at 1080p without running out of VRAM and destroying your performance due to the x4 lanes will help a lot.
now all we need now is a 6500-8gb that's low profile, then we can finally retire the fucking 1650. without spending $500 on the a2000.
I'll be upgrading in literally a week from now though today's minimum for 1080p gaming is 8GB and I run games at 1440p however I can survive off of less intensive games until I get a 16GB card.
If $300 is a hard limit, then sure, I guess, though it's still a poor value from a price to feature-set/performance standpoint.
I'm not sure if I have read the article right but if I have will 8Gb on a 32bit bus hurt performance compared to 4Gb on a 64bit bus?
You have double the memory using the same width bus, in effect that's half the bandwidth per chip. I'm just assuming that a 4GB card is arranged with 2, 2GB chips, each with its own 32bit bus but an 8GB card will most likely be arranged with four 2GB chips (2)32 +(2)32 in effect 4x16 (although not quite).
I seem to remember when gddr3 memory was cheap they used to put silly amounts on some cards (silly for the time) mainly Nvidia for marketing purposes, connecting the chips in pairs like this. The high ram models were always slower. It may be different in this case as most games can use more than 4GB of memory today so that 8GB will get used but before they couldn't even come close to using all the ram.