AMD Radeon RX 6400

[Ruru]

yeah fucking scumbags companies try low cost with things dont be cutted like pci-e lanes as your said

for this reason in my case stay waiting intel arc because intel use also pci-e gen 4 but with 8x lanes as your suggest

I did read somewhere (somebody probably posted on some thread here) that this Navi 24 chip was designed for laptop use, so that's why its lanes were cut to x4, and they decided to bring it to desktops later.

Anyway, hella stupid choice especially when it has only 4GB of VRAM which is a bottleneck in modern games. And when pairing it with a PCIe 3.0 platform, the problem gets even worse. At least RX 5300/5500 cards had 8 lanes.

 

[Valantar]

I did read somewhere (somebody probably posted on some thread here) that this Navi 24 chip was designed for laptop use, so that's why its lanes were cut to x4, and they decided to bring it to desktops later.

Anyway, hella stupid choice especially when it has only 4GB of VRAM which is a bottleneck in modern games. And when pairing it with a PCIe 3.0 platform, the problem gets even worse. At least RX 5300/5500 cards had 8 lanes.

It is, it seems to be explicitly designed as a low-cost dGPU for pairing with 6000-series APUs in relatively thin-and-light designs at a low price point. Even accounting for this I'm ever increasingly baffled at how it's held back by that PCIe bus. How much more area would an x8 connection have cost them? 16 more pins on the package, plus a few mm2 of die area? That cut can't possibly be worth it, considering the performance losses seen here.

 

[catulitechup]

I did read somewhere (somebody probably posted on some thread here) that this Navi 24 chip was designed for laptop use, so that's why its lanes were cut to x4, and they decided to bring it to desktops later.

Anyway, hella stupid choice especially when it has only 4GB of VRAM which is a bottleneck in modern games. And when pairing it with a PCIe 3.0 platform, the problem gets even worse. At least RX 5300/5500 cards had 8 lanes.

yeah this is a laptop chip severely cutted since origin and maybe them adapted chips without sell to desktop for no loss and without forget put horrible price with insufficient pci-e lanes

or maybe them are a huge scumbags because make rx 6400 with all this fails to force users buy pci-e gen 4 mainboard like B550 and market have many of this mainboards unsold

 

[Ruru]

It is, it seems to be explicitly designed as a low-cost dGPU for pairing with 6000-series APUs in relatively thin-and-light designs at a low price point. Even accounting for this I'm ever increasingly baffled at how it's held back by that PCIe bus. How much more area would an x8 connection have cost them? 16 more pins on the package, plus a few mm2 of die area? That cut can't possibly be worth it, considering the performance losses seen here.

Yeah, a slight redesign would've more than appriciated.

 

[progste]

It would make sense at 80$, kinda like "my first budget gaming PC" material.
Maybe once prices retrun to sane levels it will go back to that, but until then people trying to build ona budget are probably better off looking on the used market.

 

[Ruru]

It would make sense at 80$, kinda like "my first budget gaming PC" material.
Maybe once prices retrun to sane levels it will go back to that, but until then people trying to build ona budget are probably better off looking on the used market.

With 160USD MSRP, I highly doubt that. And yeah, without a doubt an used card is a much more wise choice.

 

[kanecvr]

The only disappointing things about this card are the price (first and foremost) and the PCI-E x4 interface. What moron thought that would be a good idea? Especially since these kinds of entry level cards are used primarily to upgrade older PCs or add graphics to older OEM office machines.

Good job AMD! You just made sure anyone looking for a low profile low-tdp graphics card to turn an old office PC into an entry level gaming computer or media center (very common practice in my part of europe) stays clear away from your graphics cards. This includes the 6500XT and to some extent the 6600XT.

 

[Ruru]

The only disappointing things about this card are the price (first and foremost) and the PCI-E x4 interface. What moron thought that would be a good idea? Especially since these kinds of entry level cards are used primarily to upgrade older PCs or add graphics to older OEM office machines.

Good job AMD! You just made sure anyone looking for a low profile low-tdp graphics card to turn an old office PC into an entry level gaming computer or media center (very common practice in my part of europe) stays clear away from your graphics cards. This includes the 6500XT and to some extent the 6600XT.

Agree. With even x8 this would (in a low-profile form) be a great card for the SFF office PCs many tech-tuber revies from time to time.

 

[mechtech]

@W1zzard

any plans to review amd 5500/5600 CPUs??

 

[Ruru]

@W1zzard

any plans to review amd 5500/5600 CPUs??

Personally I find 5700X way more interesting..

 

[defaultluser]

Let's not forget about the fact that the 6400 and 6500 XT are the only cards that are selling for MSRP brand new.

The 6500 XT did this because it's the shittiest card ever produced.

As a result, the 50% faster 3050 got bum-rushed by anyone with a brain., but now is dropping to MSRP:

https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=08G-P5-3551-KR

The 6400 can at-least justify it's existence ( but only for hardcore RX 560 holdouts who already passed on the low-profile 1650!)

 

[thelawnet]

The 6500 XT did this because it's the shittiest card ever produced.

As a result, the 50% faster 3050 got bum-rushed by anyone with a brain., but now is dropping to MSRP:

https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=08G-P5-3551-KR

The 6400 can at-least justify it's existence ( but only for hardcore RX 560 holdouts who already passed on the low-profile 1650!)

In my market the 3050 is the same price as the 6600, and it costs more than 50% more than the 6500 XT.

At the moment the 6500 xt is good here because it offers significantly better performance than anything around the price. We don't even have an RRP here, and if you offered the price of a 6500 xt for a 3050 they would just laugh at you. There is no such thing as selling cards at RRP, it's just 100% market forces.

Both the 6400 and 6500 xt are completely justifiable products, the only issue is the price. literally there is no issue with a $100 GPU having no encoder, and requiring pcie4. And once you consider that $100 is now $200 in buying gpus, it is what it is.

All the hysteria about the 6500 xt was just ridiculous.

 

[Valantar]

In my market the 3050 is the same price as the 6600, and it costs more than 50% more than the 6500 XT.

At the moment the 6500 xt is good here because it offers significantly better performance than anything around the price. We don't even have an RRP here, and if you offered the price of a 6500 xt for a 3050 they would just laugh at you. There is no such thing as selling cards at RRP, it's just 100% market forces.

Both the 6400 and 6500 xt are completely justifiable products, the only issue is the price. literally there is no issue with a $100 GPU having no encoder, and requiring pcie4. And once you consider that $100 is now $200 in buying gpus, it is what it is.

All the hysteria about the 6500 xt was just ridiculous.

While I mostly agree with you, these GPUs do stand out in a negative sense in how variable their performance is, and how they perform disproportionately badly in certain titles. Outside of those titles, performance is decent - they're just priced a bit too high for what they deliver (but then so are all GPUs these days). But with two Navi 24 implementations now demonstrating these odd bottlenecks and uneven performance, it's becoming clear that the prioritizations made by AMD when configuring this die were ... well, a very poor fit for desktop usage, put simply. The die area cost of adding an x8 PCIe link would have been next to nothing. The memory bandwidth is a more difficult hurdle to overcome, and is also a bit more excusable - or it would have been if the PCIe bus was wide enough to stream in assets more rapidly. Instead, we get a GPU that, while performing decently overall, is beaten by the GTX 1050 Ti in several titles in HWUB's testing when limited to PCIe 3.0. That's ... to be honest, shockingly bad. The 1050 Ti came out in 2016, and had a power budget similar to this. If not for these weird bottlenecks, this GPU would have trounced it, but instead AMD chose to cripple it in some very strange ways. They kind of make sense in a very specific use case: low cost dGPUs for affordable, low power but gaming capable thin-and-light laptops. And as AMD's 6000 APUs also have PCIe 4.0, these will likely look pretty good for what they are (25W or 35-50W mobile GPUs, essentially competing with MX550 and the like). But for desktop usage? Eeeeeeh. Really depends on your games. In most cases they are decent, but expensive. In a few cases they are atrociously bad. That's ... not a good mix. That's like having a friend who is okay most of the time but tends to drink all your beer when they come over, but then also at times starts massive arguments over nothing. Is that a good experience?

To me, it looks like AMD's choice to drastically cut the memory bus and the PCIe link and the Infiniti Cache was at least one cut too many. An increase in either of the three would likely have gone some way towards alleviating these bottlenecks. As it stands, it's a real shame, as this die had so much potential to be a great low power chip. Instead it's a kind of good but also weirdly unpredictable one.

 

[catulitechup]

In my market the 3050 is the same price as the 6600, and it costs more than 50% more than the 6500 XT.

At the moment the 6500 xt is good here because it offers significantly better performance than anything around the price. We don't even have an RRP here, and if you offered the price of a 6500 xt for a 3050 they would just laugh at you. There is no such thing as selling cards at RRP, it's just 100% market forces.

Both the 6400 and 6500 xt are completely justifiable products, the only issue is the price. literally there is no issue with a $100 GPU having no encoder, and requiring pcie4. And once you consider that $100 is now $200 in buying gpus, it is what it is.

All the hysteria about the 6500 xt was just ridiculous.

both cards are trash in various levels like: features, compatibility, price compared previous amd and nvidia gpus*

*sff maybe a exception but this is not moment to buy until appear cut price but this depend how nvidia can respond to rx 6500 xt and rx 6400 without forget how intel arc can affect the actual situation

if you consider give 200us for 100us product, seriously must need leave this conformist attitude

 

[AusWolf]

I'll be really interested in that comparison too - and just generally in a "what settings do you need for 1080p60 on a 6400" type of test. Especially interesting with PCIe 3.0 (and presumably not the most powerful CPU?) too.

It'll be the one in my signature: the Ryzen 3 3100.

You have, but only with CPU or with capture card, neither is appealing to low spec market, when ReLive and Shadowplay exist.

You basically said that almost every modern graphics card except for the 6400 and 6500 XT has some kind of video encoder in it, which is true. How many more options do you need?

And you miss the point, by discrediting the lack of proper decoders. Which is the entire reason why you would buy a low end "display adapter" like RX 6400. BTW CUDA is actually relevant for media usage too. Ever heard of MadVR? Some people actually want to use it.

What do you mean by "proper"? Is being able to decode everything except from AV-1 not proper? Then nothing is proper except from nvidia Ampere, Navi 21, 22 and Intel Rocket Lake and above.

Has always been there, just that everyone assumed that GPU can do it and that was that.

A fair point. It may be true - I've just missed it, I guess, as the whole "let me stream how I troll around in Fortnite" scene is totally alien to me.

You can keep shitting on Athlon X4, but you are lucky to be able to swap core components of your computer every 2 years or so.

I'm shitting on the Athlon X4 because a 3rd gen Core i7 would cost you pennies and laughably destroy it. It isn't only not competitive now - it wasn't even competitive when it was new. Like I mentioned, I've just built a whole system with an i7-4765T for around 100 quid.

RX 6400, RX 6500 XT or aka laptop special for desktop users with love from Alibaba.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Ruru]

Personally I wouldn't be that worried about media decoding, as any even slightly modern processor can practically decode anything.

 

[AusWolf]

While I mostly agree with you, these GPUs do stand out in a negative sense in how variable their performance is, and how they perform disproportionately badly in certain titles. Outside of those titles, performance is decent - they're just priced a bit too high for what they deliver (but then so are all GPUs these days). But with two Navi 24 implementations now demonstrating these odd bottlenecks and uneven performance, it's becoming clear that the prioritizations made by AMD when configuring this die were ... well, a very poor fit for desktop usage, put simply. The die area cost of adding an x8 PCIe link would have been next to nothing. The memory bandwidth is a more difficult hurdle to overcome, and is also a bit more excusable - or it would have been if the PCIe bus was wide enough to stream in assets more rapidly. Instead, we get a GPU that, while performing decently overall, is beaten by the GTX 1050 Ti in several titles in HWUB's testing when limited to PCIe 3.0. That's ... to be honest, shockingly bad. The 1050 Ti came out in 2016, and had a power budget similar to this. If not for these weird bottlenecks, this GPU would have trounced it, but instead AMD chose to cripple it in some very strange ways. They kind of make sense in a very specific use case: low cost dGPUs for affordable, low power but gaming capable thin-and-light laptops. And as AMD's 6000 APUs also have PCIe 4.0, these will likely look pretty good for what they are (25W or 35-50W mobile GPUs, essentially competing with MX550 and the like). But for desktop usage? Eeeeeeh. Really depends on your games. In most cases they are decent, but expensive. In a few cases they are atrociously bad. That's ... not a good mix. That's like having a friend who is okay most of the time but tends to drink all your beer when they come over, but then also at times starts massive arguments over nothing. Is that a good experience?

To me, it looks like AMD's choice to drastically cut the memory bus and the PCIe link and the Infiniti Cache was at least one cut too many. An increase in either of the three would likely have gone some way towards alleviating these bottlenecks. As it stands, it's a real shame, as this die had so much potential to be a great low power chip. Instead it's a kind of good but also weirdly unpredictable one.

It looks like I won't need to do my test, then. I'll still run a couple of benchmarks, though, because I'm curious.

As for what you said, I agree.

I'll hold on to what I said about the 6500 XT when it was released: it's a bad all-around offering. It's not good enough for gaming at its price, and it consumes way too much power for what it is.

As for the 6400, though, I still don't think it's a bad value simply because there is no other low profile card available at this price range. The rare 1650 is overly expensive (at least in a low profile version) and the cheaper 1030 is still way below this performance range. It's sad, but the only thing that makes the 6400 great is the same thing that made the 1030 and low profile 1050 Ti great: the lack of competition.

With that said, I'm not gonna withdraw my order for the 6400 because now I'm more curious than ever, and I still need that HDMI 2.1.

 

[Ravenas]

TPU benchmarks are run at Ultra. Which is understandable and a good practice for higher end cards (even if it's dumb to play at Ultra even with those cards), but rather ridiculous for a card like this. I have zero doubt the 6400 can do 1080p60 steady in pretty much any game you throw at it as long as you set the settings to some more reasonable level for this class of GPU. Obviously not in RT, but AAA games more broadly? At medium-ish? I wouldn't be surprised at all.

I 100% agree here. However, data on FSR/RSR performance is desired.

 

[catulitechup]

curiously in microcenter appear rx 6500 xt around 160us on openbox, same price than rx 6400 xt

 

[The red spirit]

You basically said that almost every modern graphics card except for the 6400 and 6500 XT has some kind of video encoder in it, which is true. How many more options do you need?

Bruh 6400 and 6500 XT don't have ReLive.

What do you mean by "proper"? Is being able to decode everything except from AV-1 not proper? Then nothing is proper except from nvidia Ampere, Navi 21, 22 and Intel Rocket Lake and above.

If it can't run YT, then it's improper. And yes, many rather recent cards are improver in this way. Today, decoding 4K YT, should be norm.

A fair point. It may be true - I've just missed it, I guess, as the whole "let me stream how I troll around in Fortnite" scene is totally alien to me.

Was talking about encoders/decoders. People converted videos for ages, it's not some special functionality.

I'm shitting on the Athlon X4 because a 3rd gen Core i7 would cost you pennies and laughably destroy it. It isn't only not competitive now - it wasn't even competitive when it was new. Like I mentioned, I've just built a whole system with an i7-4765T for around 100 quid.

Good for you, but I don't care about that. Build had complicated history, but it serves as example, how relatively recent hardware fails to decode videos properly. AMD also launched excavator chips on AM4 and there are people with mini computer, that have laptop chips. You miss the point.

Care to elaborate?

Not sure what, I thought it was already known that 6400 and 6500 XT are nothing more than harvested laptop chips put on PCB to resell for desktop users. Explains why video outs are limited, why it uses 4x slot and why it has lackluster decoding/encoding capabilities. I doubt that AMD made entirely new SKU as they still left whole physical 16x slot on cards with gold pins. or that they specifically re-engineered whole GPU to nerf decoder/encoder. People on Alibaba and Aliexpress used to do the same with nVidia chips in the past or just make a PCIe X16 adapter for MXM cards. AMD stole idea and made it more official, while charging a lot more than Ali people did. Toxic capitalism at its finest.

 

[Ruru]

Bruh 6400 and 6500 XT don't have ReLive.

I don't even know what that is, so I doubt I would need that feature.

 

[Valantar]

Not sure what, I thought it was already known that 6400 and 6500 XT are nothing more than harvested laptop chips put on PCB to resell for desktop users. Explains why video outs are limited, why it uses 4x slot and why it has lackluster decoding/encoding capabilities. I doubt that AMD made entirely new SKU as they still left whole physical 16x slot on cards with gold pins. or that they specifically re-engineered whole GPU to nerf decoder/encoder. People on Alibaba and Aliexpress used to do the same with nVidia chips in the past or just make a PCIe X16 adapter for MXM cards. AMD stole idea and made it more official, while charging a lot more than Ali people did. Toxic capitalism at its finest.

This needs pointing out: you know that GPU dice are used essentially universally across both mobile and desktop segments, right? That pretty much every consumer GPU die AMD and Nvidia has made for several generations has both mobile and desktop variants? And no, this isn't akin to a PCIe MXM adapter - it's a dGPU, with the GPU package soldered to a made-for-purpose PCB. Does this look like an adapter board?

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-radeon-rx-6400-aero-itx/images/front.jpg

There is literally nothing linking this to those adapter boards. Just because the GPU die is purpose-built for mobile usage doesn't make the dGPU PCBs anything other than regular old dGPU PCBs. Also, PCB design for a GPU this simple, with this little I/O and this low power consumption is dead simple.

As for the PCIe fingers being fully populated: design elements like that are copy-pasted into literally every design; the PCB design software has that layout saved, ready for adding to any design. Removing pins is far more work than just leaving them there but not connected to anything, and the cost of the copper + gold plating is so low, even across thousands of units, to not matter whatsoever.

I don't even know what that is, so I doubt I would need that feature.

ReLive is AMD's streaming/recording feature in Radeon Software.

It looks like I won't need to do my test, then. I'll still run a couple of benchmarks, though, because I'm curious.

I'm still very interested in seeing a comparison with a more reasonable CPU, so feel free to go for it

 

[catulitechup]

Not sure what, I thought it was already known that 6400 and 6500 XT are nothing more than harvested laptop chips put on PCB to resell for desktop users. Explains why video outs are limited, why it uses 4x slot and why it has lackluster decoding/encoding capabilities. I doubt that AMD made entirely new SKU as they still left whole physical 16x slot on cards with gold pins. or that they specifically re-engineered whole GPU to nerf decoder/encoder. People on Alibaba and Aliexpress used to do the same with nVidia chips in the past or just make a PCIe X16 adapter for MXM cards. AMD stole idea and made it more official, while charging a lot more than Ali people did. Toxic capitalism at its finest.

this is interesting

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard

any plans to review amd 5500/5600 CPUs??

Personally I find 5700X way more interesting..

AMD offered 5700X and 5600 a while ago and wanted to get back to me as soon as they have the tracking number, that was two weeks ago

 

[AusWolf]

Bruh 6400 and 6500 XT don't have ReLive.

Did you actually read my answer?
"You basically said that almost every modern graphics card except for the 6400 and 6500 XT has some kind of video encoder in it, which is true. How many more options do you need?"

Oh, and don't "bruh" me. Thanks.

If it can't run YT, then it's improper. And yes, many rather recent cards are improver in this way. Today, decoding 4K YT, should be norm.

I am watching 4K Youtube on my HTPC as I'm typing this and it does not have an AV-1 decode capable GPU.

Was talking about encoders/decoders. People converted videos for ages, it's not some special functionality.

I'm not sure. I used to convert lots of videos to be able to watch them on multiple devices (traditional mobile phones, PSP, DVD players...), but I don't think that's the norm anymore. Pretty much any device can play anything nowadays, which means average home users don't really need to convert anything.

Good for you, but I don't care about that. Build had complicated history, but it serves as example, how relatively recent hardware fails to decode videos properly. AMD also launched excavator chips on AM4 and there are people with mini computer, that have laptop chips. You miss the point.

Because that relatively recent hardware in question (Athlon X4) was was lower end than the lowest of all ends when it was released - like basically everything on the FM2 platform. Complaining that it doesn't play Youtube is like complaining that your first gen single core Atom takes half an hour to load the Windows desktop. You could go to a computer recycling centre, pick up a Sandy Bridge mobo+CPU combo that was made ten years ago for basically free, and be a lot happier.

And obviously, don't buy a 6400 or 6500 XT to play Youtube videos if you're one of the 3 people on the planet who's still using an Athlon X4 and doesn't want to swap it for something equally cheap but miles better.

Not sure what, I thought it was already known that 6400 and 6500 XT are nothing more than harvested laptop chips put on PCB to resell for desktop users. Explains why video outs are limited, why it uses 4x slot and why it has lackluster decoding/encoding capabilities. I doubt that AMD made entirely new SKU as they still left whole physical 16x slot on cards with gold pins. or that they specifically re-engineered whole GPU to nerf decoder/encoder. People on Alibaba and Aliexpress used to do the same with nVidia chips in the past or just make a PCIe X16 adapter for MXM cards. AMD stole idea and made it more official, while charging a lot more than Ali people did. Toxic capitalism at its finest.

Let me address those point separately:
"Harvested laptop chips": That's a good theory and I can see where it's coming from (lack of video encoder, PCI-e x4), but where are those laptop GPUs? And if the theory is right, so what?
"Limited video outs": 2 is perfectly fine for me, and for most users, I think.
"x4 slot": Yes, that's very sad indeed.
"Lacklustre en/decoding": Like I sad, AV-1 is limited to Ampere, Rocket/Alder Lake, or Navi 21 and 22, so it's still a niche. As for encoding, not everybody needs it (as discussed).
"AMD left the x16 slot": I think it's more like manufacturers left the x16 slot as redesigning the PCB would have cost money.
"Nerf the de-/encoder": They didn't nerf anything. Navi 24 is a completely new chip. Just like nvidia never nerfed the 16-series by cutting out the RT cores. Those RT cores were never there in the first place.
"Toxic capitalism": Making money is the ultimate goal of every for-profit company. You can only do that by cutting costs and increasing prices. AMD designed Navi 24 to be as small as possible with this in mind. I agree that they cut too many corners with the x4 bus, and that the 6500 XT is an inefficient, power-hungry monster of a card for its performance level, but other than that, the 6400 isn't that bad, especially when you consider the competition which is sadly the now £100 GT 1030 or the almost non-existent low profile GTX 1650 for £300 on ebay.

Sorry for the long post. I've said what I wanted, I'll leave it at that for now.

I'm still very interested in seeing a comparison with a more reasonable CPU, so feel free to go for it

I've got Cyberpunk 2077 and Merto: Exodus EE in the download queue. I've also got 3DMark and Unigine Superposition installed. Still have to wait until Saturday for the 6400, though.