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

Hassan Mujtaba

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.

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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

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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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.

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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 CardAMD Radeon RX 6950 XTAMD Radeon RX 6900 XTAMD Radeon RX 6800 XTAMD Radeon RX 6800AMD Radeon RX 6750 XTAMD Radeon RX 6700 XTAMD Radeon RX 6700AMD Radeon RX 6650 XTAMD Radeon RX 6600 XTAMD Radeon RX 6600AMD Radeon RX 6500 XTAMD Radeon RX 6400
GPUNavi 21 KXTXNavi 21 XTXNavi 21 XTNavi 21 XLNavi 22 KXTNavi 22 XTNavi 22 XLNavi 23 KXTNavi 23 (XT)Navi 23 (XL)Navi 24 (XT)Navi 24 (XL)
Process Node7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm7nm6nm6nm
Die Size520mm2520mm2520mm2520mm2336mm2336mm2336mm2237mm2237mm2237mm2107mm2107mm2
Transistors26.8 Billion26.8 Billion26.8 Billion26.8 Billion17.2 Billion17.2 Billion17.2 Billion11.06 Billion11.06 Billion11.06 Billion5.4 Billion5.4 Billion
Compute Units808072604040363232281612
Stream Processors51205120460838402560256023042048204817921024768
TMUs/ROPs320 / 128320 / 128288 / 128240 / 96160/64160/64144/64128/64128/64112/6464/3248/32
Game Clock2116 MHz2015 MHz2015 MHz1815 MHz2495 MHz2424 MHz2330 MHz2410 MHz2359 MHz2044 MHz2610 MHz2039 MHz
Boost Clock2324 MHz2250 MHz2250 MHz2105 MHz2600 MHz2581 MHz2495 MHz2635 MHz2589 MHz2491 MHz2815 MHz2321 MHz
FP32 TFLOPs23.80 TFLOPs23.04 TFLOPs20.74 TFLOPs16.17 TFLOPs13.31 TFLOPs13.21 TFLOPs11.50 TFLOPs10.79 TFLOPs10.6 TFLOPs9.0 TFLOPs5.7 TFLOPs3.5 TFLOPs
Memory Size16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache16 GB GDDR6 +128 MB Infinity Cache12 GB GDDR6 + 96 MB Infinity Cache12 GB GDDR6 + 96 MB Infinity Cache10 GB GDDR5 + 80 MB Infinity Cache8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache8 GB GDDR6 + 32 MB Infinity Cache4 GB / 8 GB GDDR6 + 16 MB Infinity Cache4 GB GDDR6 + 16 MB Infinity Cache
Memory Bus256-bit256-bit256-bit256-bit192-bit192-bit160-bit128-bit128-bit128-bit64-bit64-bit
Memory Clock18 Gbps16 Gbps16 Gbps16 Gbps18 Gbps16 Gbps16 Gbps17.5 Gbps16 Gbps14 Gbps18 Gbps14 Gbps
Bandwidth576 GB/s512 GB/s512 GB/s512 GB/s432 GB/s384 GB/s320 GB/s280 GB/s256 GB/s224 GB/s144 GB/s112 GB/s
TDP335W300W300W250W250W230W220W176W160W132W107W53W
Price$1099 US$999 US$649 US$579 US$549 US$479 USTBD$399 US$379 US$329 US$199 US$159 US?
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