Details of a new AMD Radeon gaming GPU have seemingly just appeared, but it looks like one to avoid if you’re looking for a budget graphics card for gaming. The GPU in question is the AMD Radeon RX 6500 (without the XT on the end), which hasn’t been officially announced by AMD, but the leaked specs paint a picture of an underpowered Radeon RX 6500 XT with lower clock speeds and slower memory.
There are many reasons why you won’t find the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT on our best graphics card guide, not least the fact that it’s based on tech that’s now two generations old, using the RDNA 2 GPU architecture. Perhaps more importantly, though, this GPU was also massively underpowered when it came out in January 2022. AMD wouldn’t even send me one for review then, and neither would any of its board partners.
You only need to look at the Radeon RX 6500 XT reviews that did come out to see why, with Hardware Unboxed describing it as the “worst GPU” and Gamers Nexus saying it was even worse than GPUs that came out in 2016. Problems with it ranged from its super-tight 64-bit memory bus to its lowly 4GB allocation of GDDR6 VRAM, as well as its meager count of 1,024 stream processors, and now it looks as though an even worse version is on the way.
Tech site IT Home has reproduced some marketing slides for a new AMD Radeon RX 6500 graphics card from Chinese firm Zephyr. According to the leak, the 6500 is based on the same Navi 24 GPU as the Radeon RX 6500 XT, and also still has all of its compute units enabled, meaning it has 1,024 stream processors.
The key differences concern substantial drops in the clock speed, with the game clock apparently tumbling all the way from 2,610MHz to just 1,728MHz, and the top boost clock dropping from 2,815MHz to 2,066MHz. Meanwhile, the VRAM speed has reportedly fallen from 18Gbps to just 16Gbps.
One key advantage of this drop in clock speeds, however, is a substantial fall in the power draw from 107W to 55W, meaning the card can pull all its power from the PCIe slot without needing an extra power cable. This has seemingly enabled Zephyr to squeeze the Radeon RX 6500 into a single-slot, low-profile card with just one small cooling fan on it, as well as a standard dual-slot card with two fans.
Basically, the Radeon RX 6500 looks like an attempt to squeeze a fully-enabled Navi 24 GPU into small form factor systems that are tight on space and require low power draw. You do have to ask why we need this rumored new GPU, though.
AMD already makes the Radeon RX 6400 for these systems if you want a very basic card to handle display outputs and basic GPU features – having the extra stream processors is hardly going to turn it into a gaming GPU with these speeds. When AMD is already making CPUs with more power and newer tech in their integrated GPUs, I doubt there’s going to be much appetite for the Radeon RX 6500.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Navi 24 GPU rear its head in supposedly new products recently either, with Asus releasing a Radeon RX 6500 XT 8GB in 2024 as well. Where AMD has struck the right balance, however, is with its latest RDNA 4 GPUs, and you can read my AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT review to see why this is now a great graphics card for the price.
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