AMD Removes ‘4GB VRAM is not enough for games’ Marketing Hours Before Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB Launch

Christina Lobo

AMD once claimed that 4 GB VRAM was not enough for gamers to tackle NVIDIA’s entry-level lineup but they are backing up from that marketing statement hours before the Radeon RX 6500 XT hits retail shelves.

AMD Has Removed ‘4 GB VRAM Is Not Enough For Games’ Marketing Hours Before Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB Graphics Card Launch

Update: The card has been launched and most outlets are calling it the worst modern GPU launch yet.

AMD EPYC 7V73X Milan-X CPU With 3D V-Cache Benchmarked, Up To 12.5% Performance Increase Over Standard Milan

As discovered by KitGuru (via Videocardz), the AMD marketing blog for the Radeon RX 5500 XT which mentioned that 4 GB wasn’t sufficient for games has been removed. This comes a mere hours before the red team will be officially launching its highly controversial Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card which packs 4 GB memory.

AMD is leading the industry at providing gamers with high VRAM graphics solutions across the entire product offering. Competitive products at a similar entry-level price-point are offering up to a maximum of 4GB of VRAM, which is evidently not enough for today’s games. Go Beyond 4GB of Video Memory to Crank Up your settings. Play on RadeonTM RX Series GPUs with 6GB or 8GB of VRAM and enjoy gaming at Max settings.

AMD Marketing Blog For Radeon RX 6500 XT (Now Removed) Videocardz

AMD Removes '4GB VRAM is not enough for games' Marketing Hours Before Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB Launch

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it comes as no surprise as that marketing blog would have made the Radeon RX 6500 XT 4 GB graphics card look really bad as a 2022 launch. Here are some key points to consider for the Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card:

  • Only 4 GB VRAM in 2022
  • Limited To Just 4 PCIe Lanes (Gen 3 platforms to see severe performance degradation)
  • No AV1 Decoding
  • No H264/H265 Encoding
  • $199 US MSRP But AIBs suggest over $339/299 Euros pricing
  • Questionable Availability

Furthermore, several reviewers have not been allocated the Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card for review. Renowned tech outlets such as TechPowerUp & Computerbase have reported that they won’t be getting a sample from AMD or its AIB partners.

Some of the design choices were made to make the graphics card a viable option for gamers in a market that is heavily constrained (or so they want us to believe). But it turns out, these decisions have caused a major backlash from the tech community, and even older options such as the Radeon RX 5500 XT or the Radeon RX 480 look like better options compared to the new variant. Benchlife has even posted their review of the card early on and the performance versus the GTX 1650 SUPER OC looks disappointing:

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  • amd-radeon-rx-6500-xt-performance-review-_2

But that’s not it, the latest listings of the RX 6500 XT graphics card are way above the MSRP. In fact, these are cards are almost twice the MSRP, retailing at up to 378.44 Euros. That’s $400-$430 US if you convert it and the MSRP is $199 US for the US market. We have seen ASUS state a 299 Euros pricing for their custom cards but in reality, it’s going to be much higher.

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT Graphics Card With 6nm Navi 24 XT GPU – $199 US / 19th January Launch

The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT will be utilizing the full Navi 24 XT GPU die. Internally known as ‘Beige Goby’, the AMD Navi 24 GPU is the smallest of the RDNA 2 lineup and will feature a single SDMA engine. The chip will feature 2 shader arrays for a total of 8 WGPs and a maximum of 16 Compute Units.

AMD has 64 stream processors per compute unit so that brings the total core count on the Navi 24 GPU at 1024 which is half that of the Navi 23 GPU which will offer 2048 stream processors in 32 compute units. The GPU for the RX 6500 XT will be clocked at 2815 MHz boost and 2610 MHz game clock, making it the highest clock RDNA 2 GPU to date. That’s around 5.7 TFLOPs of FP32 performance from the chip.

In addition to the number of cores, each shader array would feature 128 KB of L1 cache, 1 MB of L2 cache and there would also be 16 MB of Infinity Cache (LLC). The AMD Navi 24 RDNA 2 GPUs will also be featured across a 64-bit bus interface & will be featured on low-end Radeon RX 6500 or RX 6400 series parts. The card will feature a bandwidth of 144 GB/s but AMD is coming up with a new marketing name for total bandwidth (including Infinity Cache) which is rated at 232 GB/s.

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As for the specifications, the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card will feature 1024 cores and 4 GB of GDDR6 memory. The card would not be able to operate in any mining algorithm, especially ETH. The top model will feature a TDP of 107W and as such, will require external power connectors to boot. The graphics card has launched and we will update this post with a few retailers links for you to see that none of them match the MSRP of $199 US as promised by AMD.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series “RDNA 2” Graphics Card Lineup:

Graphics Card AMD Radeon RX 6400 AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT AMD Radeon RX 6600 AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT AMD Radeon RX 6800 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Liquid Cooled AMD Radeon RX 6900 XTX
GPU Navi 24 (XL)? Navi 24 (XT)? Navi 23 (XL) Navi 23 (XT) Navi 22 (XT?) Navi 21 XL Navi 21 XT Navi 21 XTX Navi 21 XTXH Navi 21 XTXH
Process Node 6nm 6nm 7nm 7nm 7nm 7nm 7nm 7nm 7nm 7nm
Die Size 107mm2 107mm2 237mm2 237mm2 336mm2 520mm2 520mm2 520mm2 520mm2 520mm2
Transistors 5.4 Billion 5.4 Billion 11.06 Billion 11.06 Billion 17.2 Billion 26.8 Billion 26.8 Billion 26.8 Billion 26.8 Billion 26.8 Billion
Compute Units 12 16 28 32 40 60 72 80 80 80
Stream Processors 768 1024 1792 2048 2560 3840 4608 5120 5120 5120
TMUs/ROPs 48/32 64/32 112/64 128/64 160/64 240 / 96 288 / 128 320 / 128 320 / 128 320 / 128
Game Clock 2039 MHz 2610 MHz 2044 MHz 2359 MHz 2424 MHz 1815 MHz 2015 MHz 2015 MHz 2250 MHz TBA
Boost Clock 2321 MHz 2815 MHz 2491 MHz 2589 MHz 2581 MHz 2105 MHz 2250 MHz 2250 MHz 2345 MHz 2435 MHz
FP32 TFLOPs 3.5 TFLOPs 5.7 TFLOPs 9.0 TFLOPs 10.6 TFLOPs 13.21 TFLOPs 16.17 TFLOPs 20.74 TFLOPs 23.04 TFLOPs 24.01 TFLOPs 24.93 TFLOPs
Memory Size 4 GB GDDR6 + 16 MB Infinity Cache 4 GB GDDR6 + 16 MB Infinity Cache 8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache 8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache 12 GB GDDR6 + 96 MB Infinity Cache 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache 16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache
Memory Bus 64-bit 64-bit 128-bit 128-bit 192-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit
Memory Clock 14 Gbps 18 Gbps 14 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 16 Gbps 18 Gbps 18 Gbps
Bandwidth 112 GB/s 144 GB/s 224 GB/s 256 GB/s 384 GB/s 512 GB/s 512 GB/s 512 GB/s 576 GB/s 576 GB/s
TDP 53W 107W 132W 160W 230W 250W 300W 300W 330W 330W
Price $149 US? $199 US $329 US $379 US $479 US $579 US $649 US $999 US ~$1199 US ~$1199 US

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