AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q1 2022 with a MSRP of $199. It is built on the RDNA 2.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Navi 24) and is manufactured on a 6 nm process.

Memory

The RX 6500 XT has 4 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 2,248 MHz memory clock and a 64 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 143.9 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RX 6500 XT includes 1,024 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 2,310 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 2,815 MHz. It usually operates at 2,610 MHz during typical gaming workloads. Complementing the processing units are 64 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 32 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing. Additionally, the GPU features 16 ray accelerators dedicated to real-time ray tracing calculations.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RX 6500 XT occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 300 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 107 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RX 6500 XT has the 102nd best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 21.94% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 22,954 score and $199 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 115.35. This is the 9th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.