The 6500xt and 6400: Meet your next gpu, PC gaming peasants.

For cost reasons alone, APUs are really making sense as a solution in the future. How well will AMD next APU with RNDA 2 will do, particularly with DDR5 will be interesting. Once AM5 hits the streets, DDR5 actually available with somewhat reasonable prices, the under $750 PC gaming system may come back. GPU discrete cards may all be above $300 if not $400 in order to give a sufficient performance reason for an upgrade. If next gen APUs can give 1080p, high settings, 60fps+, a decent worthy gaming system for most -> there would be no reason for the low end GPUs or just not worth the price in the end. My thoughts at the moment.
 
Agreed. APUs will still be limited with DDR5. If AMD or Intel are serious about budget desktop gaming, the would have developed a newer desktop version of the 8705g. Using HBM, that 5 year old APU still holds it's own against most options today.
4gb of HBM with access to system memory as well would be a huge improvement. But what if the CPU can also access the HBM when you're using a dedicated card? that would be sweet. I think cost killed HBM.
 
For cost reasons alone, APUs are really making sense as a solution in the future. How well will AMD next APU with RNDA 2 will do, particularly with DDR5 will be interesting. Once AM5 hits the streets, DDR5 actually available with somewhat reasonable prices, the under $750 PC gaming system may come back. GPU discrete cards may all be above $300 if not $400 in order to give a sufficient performance reason for an upgrade. If next gen APUs can give 1080p, high settings, 60fps+, a decent worthy gaming system for most -> there would be no reason for the low end GPUs or just not worth the price in the end. My thoughts at the moment.
I hope this pans out.
 
  • Like
Reactions: noko
like this
Those 2 products are not in the same bracket, so why compare them that way? That's disingenuous.
They are literally in the same price bracket which is what everyone was trying to say earlier. MSRP is a guidance it's not the POS price. There are no 3050's at $250 nor will there ever be. Tons people (reviewers as well) compared a card that comes far closer to it's MSRP with a completely fictional POS price.
 
Last edited:
They are literally in the same price bracket which is what everyone was trying to say earlier. MSRP is a guidance it's not the POS price. There are no 3050's at $250 nor will there ever be. Tons people (reviewers as well) compared a card that comes far closer to it's MSRP than a completely fictional POS price.
Yep, If I was buying a GPU, I would look at what the actual cost was and the performance. Looks like some things are becoming available GPU wise, while costly, available. Seeing people cashing out of stocks, Crypto etc. makes it apparent, at least to me GPU's from miners will be next. Sellers may think: "Sell while the price is high before it totally falls through the roof." As for the 6500XT, pure junk, especially when the used market comes back to some sort of sanity.
 
They are literally in the same price bracket which is what everyone was trying to say earlier. MSRP is a guidance it's not the POS price. There are no 3050's at $250 nor will there ever be. Tons people (reviewers as well) compared a card that comes far closer to it's MSRP with a completely fictional POS price.
I mean... I hit the newegg shuffle at $258 for an EVGA XC Black Gaming RTX 3050 on the first day. And you'd better believe this card is hitting ebay the second it gets to me.
 
If I understand this correctly, the missing hardware encoding/decoding means that VA API cannot be used. VA API is used even in basic programs like web browsers such as Firefox and Chromium (In addition to VLC, OBS, etc).

My system the CPU utilization is 30-40% 4k streaming when hardware acceleration (HA) is turned off. With HA enabled, CPU utilization is 5-10%. So using this weak GPU, even watching basic video is going to hit your CPU significantly harder due to not having the hardware decoding available.
 
If I understand this correctly, the missing hardware encoding/decoding means that VA API cannot be used. VA API is used even in basic programs like web browsers such as Firefox and Chromium (In addition to VLC, OBS, etc).

My system the CPU utilization is 30-40% 4k streaming when hardware acceleration (HA) is turned off. With HA enabled, CPU utilization is 5-10%. So using this weak GPU, even watching basic video is going to hit your CPU significantly harder due to not having the hardware decoding available.
Here is what is supported.

Supported Rendering Format
HDMI™ 4K Support
Yes
4K H264 Decode
Yes
4K H264 Encode
No
H265/HEVC Decode
Yes
H265/HEVC Encode
No
AV1 Decode
No
 
Here is what is supported.

Supported Rendering Format
HDMI™ 4K Support
Yes
4K H264 Decode
Yes
4K H264 Encode
No
H265/HEVC Decode
Yes
H265/HEVC Encode
No
AV1 Decode
No
Gotcha. So we would still get the consumption aspect (decoding) but for content creators this is a no go.

Thank you for clarifying.
 
  • Like
Reactions: kac77
like this
I've heard that APUs with onboard graphics can still do encoding. Any truth to that?

Combined with the fact that only Ryzen 6000-series laptop APUs have PCIe 4.0, I don't think there should be any real doubt that these were always laptop parts being pressed into desktop service.
 
Not having it on a dedicated GPU is inexcusable.

It just cements the notion that this was a laptop part for use with PCIe 4 APUs. I'm sure if AMD could have predicted this market a little better, what, three, four years ago? they would have developed this segment very differently. It's clear, in hindsight, that they expected people to be able to get 6600s as entry-level desktop parts.
 
It just cements the notion that this was a laptop part for use with PCIe 4 APUs. I'm sure if AMD could have predicted this market a little better, what, three, four years ago? they would have developed this segment very differently. It's clear, in hindsight, that they expected people to be able to get 6600s as entry-level desktop parts.
Yeah, pretty much. They're running a pretty high clock and jamming a lot of power into this little chip to try to make it go, and it's features just scream laptop. The 4x PCI-e 4.0 link wouldn't be a big deal paired up with a 6000 series APU or an Alder Lake chip from Intel, and the lack of encode/decode support would be a non-issue since both of those procs have it built in. You wouldn't want your GPU to fire up just to watch a video when integrated can handle it just fine and use less of your battery power. I bet it also has 3 outputs but one of them is for a built-in LCD.

Funny thing is I probably wouldn't mind one of these chips if it were used the way it was probably intended. I tend to go for fairly thin and light laptops since I only keep one around so I have something portable. Having a little GPU is nice but anything serious makes the machine too heavy. I bet this little chip could be set to use a lot less power (and run a lot slower), but that's pretty much what I like in a laptop. My current 2019 model ThinkBook 14s has a Radeon 540X, i7-8565U and 16GB ram in it and weighs 3.2lbs. Got it for a little over $800+tax as an early Black Friday special in October 2019. I didn't even pay attention to the GPU and didn't pay much attention to the CPU when I bought it. I just wanted the 16GB and it was the best deal on a ~3lb "business" machine I could find with 16GB. Don't bother looking for Radeon 540X benchmarks. I tried. It got a graphics score of 787 in 3DMark Time Spy. So I've got the old "4" laptop chip and this thing might be the new "4". 540X. 6400... on that note they shouldn't have called it a 6500XT. The "5" XT/Ti/Super is supposed to be pretty good at basic resolution (1080p these days) gaming. It's short of the mark for that, but even in a low power laptop form would do just fine for emergency gaming (I load old games, Civilization and now Islanders (indy, $5 on steam, highly recommend it for the price) on my laptops) when it's raining cats and dogs in the middle of a beach trip or I have nothing to do between a visitation and the funeral the next day... unless it's on dad's side. They'll break out the beers.
 
Funny thing is I probably wouldn't mind one of these chips if it were used the way it was probably intended. I tend to go for fairly thin and light laptops since I only keep one around so I have something portable. Having a little GPU is nice but anything serious makes the machine too heavy. I bet this little chip could be set to use a lot less power (and run a lot slower), but that's pretty much what I like in a laptop.

I bet with 8 or even 6 gigs of ram it cleans up at 1080p -- exactly where laptops are still today.

It would work out to about a 580/590 in a thin-and-light with RDNA features. That would have been fucking tits. (I also prefer thin-and-lights.)
 
I bet with 8 or even 6 gigs of ram it cleans up at 1080p -- exactly where laptops are still today.

It would work out to about a 580/590 in a thin-and-light with RDNA features. That would have been fucking tits. (I also prefer thin-and-lights.)
Imagine Navi24 + Ryzen 6000U in a Surface product. Jfc, I need that.
Edit: or a ZenBook!
 
  • Like
Reactions: Axman
like this
I mean... I hit the newegg shuffle at $258 for an EVGA XC Black Gaming RTX 3050 on the first day. And you'd better believe this card is hitting ebay the second it gets to me.
Ooh cool. You'll maybe make $50, after Ebay takes their fees at the end of the month.
 
Laptops come with hardware encoding capability. The 6500xt is a bottom barrel profit machine, that's all. Its not a re-purposed laptop gpu. It was specifically made to take advantage of the situation.
Laptops get their encode/decode capability from the CPU/APU. All of them can do it. It's been years since you could get a laptop CPU/APU that didn't have integrated video and encode/decode is a standard feature on laptop CPUs/APUs. New laptop designs use current hardware, so this chip that hasn't even launched in laptops yet will get paired up with 6000 series AMD APUs, 12th gen (Alder Lake) Intel chips and likely future procs since low end GPUs tend to live longer than procs. The 6000 series and 12th gen both do AV1 and PCI-e 4. You don't want your laptop GPU to wake up for video. That just sucks battery. You've got dual graphics in a modern laptop. Just let the CPU/APU do it. It's quite capable.
 
Ooh cool. You'll maybe make $50, after Ebay takes their fees at the end of the month.
I think they take 12%. I bought one for my dad, but i couldnt get it to work in his lenovo desktop. I ended selling it to get another 6600xt for myself. Most 3050s listed on ebay are selling for $500-600 shipped.
 
Will 6500xt be enough for the intensive next*gen games like Suicide Squad and Starfield? In Cyberpunk is getting about 40 frames per sec.
 
Wow, it only uses four lanes? Getting flashbacks to the days of AGP.

Also, cute Die.
 
The 6400 reviewed in all it's glory
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-radeon-rx-6400-aero-itx/

It trades blows with a GTX 1650 with a pcie 4.0 system meaning it's likely closer to 1050ti when using pcie 3.0.

Hey. look at that!- its a running train-wreck!

cyberpunk-2077-rt-1920-1080.png

Is ATI going back to their Rage I 3d-declator days?
 
Last edited:
key point they seemed to ignore...
"entry-level solution with enough muscle for e-sports or AAA games at 720p or 900p; or at Full HD (1080p) with FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and some medium settings."
Just the average modern review taking cheap shots at hardware for not being able to do....what it was never claimed to.
 
Same performance as the 1650 while using the same amount of power...without encoding ability.

When restricted to PCIe 3.0, it slots between a 1650 and a 1050ti. Even low profile users are better off with either of the old Nvidia cards. Standard size case owners are much better off with a used RX570 or 1650 Super.

This trash is useful for nobody.
 
I get it would get really complicated to choose anything else has simply the very highest setting to build a comparison benchmark over time (and not have to redo all of them always)

But highest setting is a lot and not something a 6400-6500xt buyer willl try to run on latest AAA title how much does it run them in 1080p with medium-high setting is probably more interesting for the target audience, once the fact they cannot run the latest game at the highest setting is shown.

All the space taken for the 4k in those review could go at the "medium" setting instead. Like what Hardware Unboxing did seem much more relevant, running hard to run game in medium and not bothering going over 1080p
 
But it's not.

Yeah, I know. It takes 5 years to get these things into production, and AMD biffed it in planning. They thought they'd sell you an RX 6700 XT instead, or at least a 6600, but here we are.

Nvidia biffed it just as bad, too. And Intel is a year behind schedule.
 
Yeah, I know. It takes 5 years to get these things into production, and AMD biffed it in planning. They thought they'd sell you an RX 6700 XT instead, or at least a 6600, but here we are.

Nvidia biffed it just as bad, too. And Intel is a year behind schedule.

Nvidia released their own 75w low profile card over 5 years ago with actual encoding functuality and this card struggles to stay ahead of it. Five years was once an eternity when comparing PC hardware. Budget gamers continue to get the shaft and Microsoft was more than happy to welcome them in with the Series S.

Would be nice to see nVidia pump out a 3/4 version of the 3050 (3030ti?). Having 96 but bus, 24 rops and 6 GB vram should keep it at under 75w with the right clocks. 1650 Super performance with proper pcie support and encoding ability would really make AMD look bad in the budget community.
 
Budget gamers continue to get the shaft and Microsoft was more than happy to welcome them in with the Series S.

AMD is just around the corner from cranking out APUs that will have parity with consoles. Even the parts with 680M graphics are coming on strong.

The entry-level budget gamer is getting a love letter from AMD, with selfies.
 
AMD is just around the corner from cranking out APUs that will have parity with consoles. Even the parts with 680M graphics are coming on strong.

The entry-level budget gamer is getting a love letter from AMD, with selfies.
Pretty much. I easily see budget gaming going to APUs. Imagine not having to have a GPU at all.
 
That's really a dumb test for all those cards.
No, its not - with dlss, that NVIDIA result is more than playable

Quit justifying a shit card that should have shipped with 96-bit bus and 6gb ram., and 8x pcie

there are a lot less demanding rt games out there, and they all MOSTLY maintain that massive 5:1 performance advantage - when AMDhave the balls to price the 6500 within 50 bucks of that ass-raping 3050!

deathloop-rt-1920-1080.png



resident-evil-village-rt-1920-1080.png
 
Last edited:
Back
Top