Tuesday, April 22nd 2025
Oddball Radeon RX 6500 (non-XT) Surfaces in the Chinese Market
AMD's entry-level graphics lineup sees the Radeon RX 6400 at the very bottom, followed by the RX 6500 XT, which is for all intents and purposes, an entry-level discrete GPU, given that its performance is in league of processor integrated graphics (iGPUs). It turns out that AMD had planned a SKU between the two, the RX 6500 (non-XT), and this chip is beginning to surface on entry-level graphics cards in China. A less-known AIB named Zephyr is selling an interesting single-slot low-profile card with dimensions resembling some RX 6400 cards. There's also a more fleshed out full-height, dual-slot card.
The RX 6500 appears to have the same core-configuration as the RX 6500 XT, both SKUs max out the "Navi 24" silicon they're based on. These chips are powered by the two generations older RDNA 2 graphics architecture, AMD's first to meet DirectX 12 Ultimate logo requirements. The RX 6500 is configured with all 16 CU present on the silicon, giving it 1,024 stream processors, and 16 RT accelerators, besides 64 TMUs and 32 ROPs and 16 MB of Infinity Cache. The chip gets 4 GB of GDDR6 memory across the 64-bit wide memory bus of the silicon.
A couple of things set the RX 6500 apart from the RX 6500 XT. To begin with, the power limit of the RX 6500 is set to 55 W, compared to the 107 W of the RX 6500 XT, which limits the GPU boost frequency. Next up, it uses slower 16 Gbps memory speeds compared to the 18 Gbps of the RX 6500 XT. The RX 6500 comes with a Game clock of 1728 MHz compared to the 2610 MHz of the RX 6500 XT. It boosts up to 2066 MHz, compared to the RX 6500 XT, which boosts up to 2815 MHz.
The RX 6500 appears to have the same core-configuration as the RX 6500 XT, both SKUs max out the "Navi 24" silicon they're based on. These chips are powered by the two generations older RDNA 2 graphics architecture, AMD's first to meet DirectX 12 Ultimate logo requirements. The RX 6500 is configured with all 16 CU present on the silicon, giving it 1,024 stream processors, and 16 RT accelerators, besides 64 TMUs and 32 ROPs and 16 MB of Infinity Cache. The chip gets 4 GB of GDDR6 memory across the 64-bit wide memory bus of the silicon.
9 Comments on Oddball Radeon RX 6500 (non-XT) Surfaces in the Chinese Market
It'll probably be quite efficient, but even still it's in danger of getting outperformed by a modern iGPU considering the 780M is marginally ahead of a stock 6400.
Y'all still need to get ontop of an M.2 M-key version. :laugh:
I'd love to see Navi 24 on a 30x80 or 30x110mm stick, or even a 'fingerless' card w/ an MCIO or Oculink connection.
That LPoneslot is dang close, though.
-strip the bracket off, and it'd probably stay mostly-put in one of those 22110 M.2 M-key to x16(phys) w/ finger latch.
I know people will balk at these, but the RX 6500 XT 4GB is a smidge faster than the still-sold-new-at-BestBuy RX580 8GB.
These non-XTs, are probably closer to the 2048SP Polaris cards, hyper-common in and coming out of China.
If I had to guess... they're probably primarily for eCafe and eSports use.
Vs. Polaris cards, I'd imagine a LANcafe full of these would be a fraction of the cost in power and cooling (also, power).
One is bad, both is terrible.
Even 4GB for esports titles is a bit rough, that pretty much demotes them to LOL/DOTA machines, CS is not going to run well.
It appears to be clocked somewhere between the quasi-unreleased W6500M (which, was an OEM-only desktop card, best I can tell)
and the run-of-the-mill RX 65*0M/S mobile dGPU.
IDK if eWaste as recent as RDNA 2.0 is already common in China, or if the Navi 24 mobile die was on firesale
but, these are almost certainly incredibly cheap BOM cards.CSO/Counter-Strike Nexon (if even allowed in Mainland China) and less-demanding games that are China Exclusive, is what I was thinking.
Plus, Navi 24 (full-fat) cards perform a lot like a Polaris card; another common ultrabudget eSports card.
Btw, I always believed that the 6500 XT should use <75w, without 6-pin connector.
They still failed really badly though lmao.