Gigabyte Radeon RX 6500 XT 4GB Review

How Much Does It Cost?

The MSRP of these new cards is £179.99 or $199.99 and I fully expect some people will see the cards at that price. However, between scalping and an extremely thirsty market, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re being sold above that fairly quickly. Of course, that’s the base MSRP too, so some models from the likes of Gigabyte or ASUS with bigger coolers and more complex designs will come with a higher price tag. Of course, we strongly suggest shopping around, but keep in mind, stock, no matter how plentiful, is still likely to sell out relatively quickly. Overall though, at the MSRP or at least close to it, this card is worth the money. It’s nothing too fancy, but it’s going to get the job done. If the price pushes up to £300 and above… well, then it’s hard to get excited about it.

You can check for up to date pricing and stock at Amazon UK here and Overclockers UK here

Overview

This is a lovely little card for those on a tighter budget looking for an easy upgrade route. If you’ve spent the last few years sitting on an old RX480, 1050 Ti or iGPU, you’re really going to feel the upgrade. It’s going to take you from having lacklustre performance in modern games at 1080p, to properly playable framerates and increased quality settings. Of course, thanks to features like Anti-Lag, FreeSync Premium and FidelityFX you can fill in a lot of performance gaps even on this lower-end hardware, which is a welcome bonus. Of course, the ray tracing performance sucked, but that was pretty much expected.

That being said, the 4GB VRAM does feel like a limitation, with some games not maxing out even at 1080p. However, I fully expected that, and minor adjustments to the graphics settings are all that it takes to get things running smoothly. This is very much a graphics card of compromise for the enthusiast PC gamers out there, it has to be said. However, it’s a blessing for many others who have been waiting for an upgrade path from older hardware.

Of course, there are also all the first-time system builders out there. This is the new entry-level GPU and it’s still not going to be cheap. However, it’s a lot cheaper than the high-end gaming cards that are either out of stock or sitting in a mining rig somewhere, and we all know the second-hand market is still a minefield.

Without a doubt though, Gigabyte has what is likely to be one of the best examples of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT hitting the market. It’s a big overkill actually, but I do like the aesthetics of the larger design. Furthermore, having a triple fan configuration ensures it can keep things running nice and cool even when you’re gaming day and night. Really, I didn’t have any issues with noise or heat even after hours of demanding benchmarks.

Should I Buy One?

If you can get one at MSRP, I would happily suggest this card. Sure, I’d like more VRAM, sure I’d like more display outputs, and I’d like it to be a bit faster… however, it is what it is, and it’s still the best value for money (read: cheapest) new GPU on the market right now. I’m sure Nvidia will have their own counterattack, but performance be damned as I bet the winner comes down to nothing more than stock and prices. Either way, it’s good to have a somewhat more realistic and attainable card on the market, as flagship cards can be pretty tiresome for your average consumer’s bank balance.