AMD RX 6500 XT

The AMD RX 6500 XT has all the makings of a new budget GPU, including underwhelming performance. Unfortunately, the price only qualifies as "budget" in today's world of radically inflated GPU prices, and even then, it will likely sell for far more than its official $199 MSRP.

All we can say in closing is – please don’t buy this graphics card. If you know anyone thinking about buying it, tell them to wait, or get something else. At the expected retail prices once the initial batch of MSRP cards has sold out, consumers would be getting both a cheaper and overall better product by purchasing the six year-old RX 480 than AMD’s newest graphics card, something which can only be described as an utter travesty, and frankly, an insult to gamers.

While the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT does deliver on what it’s looking to do, namely 1080p gaming at medium-high settings, it fails to improve performance over its last-generation counterpart, which makes this graphics card feel more like a stagnation than an actual new product.

The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT brings ray tracing and affordable GPUs to the masses, but doing so requires some unorthodox tweaks that can affect performance. If it stays in stock near MSRP and you stick to settings it’s intended for, this is a solid mainstream 1080p graphics card, and a good option for new PC gamers.