The Best GPUs 2022: New & Used Graphics Cards

[Watzupken]

So let's see.

January 19 2022 6500XT gets review score 20/100 https://www.techspot.com/review/2398-amd-radeon-6500-xt/

Then February 11 2022 6500XT is recommended as best alternative for Entry-level GPU.

Wtf am I reading here? Like I commented on 6500XT review thread, no matter how "bad" that product is, it's both affordable and available. And on today's market that pretty good combo. It makes me wonder why Techspot staff had to argue when I told them that. Because now they seem to agree

I feel the recommendation makes sense to me. At that particular price point, the RX 6500 XT is the only new card one can get. But that does not automatically make it a great card.

We should not be confused between no choice/ only available choice, as it being a good card. To me, the RX 6500 XT is a bad misfire from AMD because the completely missed the target market, which are generally budget gamers. If the conditions are met, sure, it performs well enough, but even so, it barely outperforms its predecessor. In short, the product is mostly stagnated in performance, and regressed in features. From a consumer standpoint, I don't think we should be praising AMD because they threw us a bone when there are little options.

 

[Watzupken]

The 3080Ti is not talked about in-depth at all. They just say it's $500 more than the 6900XT. This article is 75% about prices and 25% about performance. The article never talks about the 3080Ti's performance. That was the purpose of my comment - the article leaves out A LOT of valuable information when it comes to these products and makes arguments nonstop about why you should buy AMD. I'm pretty sure the only reason the author listed to buy NVidia was if you liked better ray tracing and/or the DLSS feature (completely ignoring other features like DLDSR that allow my 1440p monitor to produce an image that resembles 4K with a 2% performance cost).

They don't talk about why NVidia even exists... If I was new to graphics cards and I saw all of these arguments made in favor of AMD, I would be so confused as to why people are keeping these expensive NVidia cards around.

And, other than mining, these cards are around people NVidia has a reputation for making a very good product.

Have you ever taken apart a GPU or watched videos taking apart an AMD GPU versus an NVidia GPU? The AMD GPU literally looks like it was put together as fast as possible with no effort at all because they just want that profit. NVidia is obviously guilty of wanting a massive profit, as well. But, if you take apart their products and see how they're built...it's like apples and oranges.

NVidia objectively makes a better product. This is not solely based on my life experience. It has been documented on tech forums, taught by college professors for those who wish to get in the field of making computer technology, and if you're looking to be lazy you can watch for yourself on various YouTube videos.

AMD puts the bare minimum in their products so that they can function and of you're lucky, you will get 40% of the life span that an NVidia product has. I'm not saying everything NVidia produces is perfect - there will always be defective products no matter where you look.

I'm saying, overall, if you buy AMD, it should be for one of two reasons: 1.) You can't afford a more stable, reliable GPU or 2.) You plan on replacing your GPU as soon as the next generation comes out and even then you're rolling the dice because you'll be lucky if the card holds out for that long.

I suppose if you rarely game, you could add that in as a 3rd option, as well. I have a streaming PC that uses an RX 580 as the encoder. I would never use that GPU to reliably game on for 4 years.

When I disassemble a GPU, I don't really feel that there is a substantial difference between builds, whether its Nvidia or AMD. If you want to see classic cost cutting, look at the reference design RTX 3080/ 3090 board where the board size was cut in half for the supposed passthrough cooling solution. As a result, all the hot components are so close, they are basically cooking themselves. Good design? Questionable. I think when Gamer Nexus took apart the reference RX 6800/6900 series at launch, I don't recall Steve saying that the design is bad.

And to correct you, this article explains the reasons why they pick the GPU as a recommendation. They don't show performance, that's because you are expected to know or meant to refer to past reviews to know where each product sits. The reality is that when you look at just pure rasterization performance, both the RTX 3090/ 3080 vs the RX 6900/ 6800 XT, have their strengths and weaknesses, depending on game titles. Feature wise, you lose DLSS and RT performance with the AMD cards. But one will need to pay an Nvidia tax to get these features generally. So just by looking at raster performance, I think AMD 6900/6800 tend to appear better from a cost to performance ratio. Anything from the RX 6700 XT and lower, I cannot comment as I feel AMD have cut too deep and the product tend to be less competitive vs Nvidia's solution.

 

[HardReset]

I feel the recommendation makes sense to me. At that particular price point, the RX 6500 XT is the only new card one can get. But that does not automatically make it a great card.

We should not be confused between no choice/ only available choice, as it being a good card. To me, the RX 6500 XT is a bad misfire from AMD because the completely missed the target market, which are generally budget gamers. If the conditions are met, sure, it performs well enough, but even so, it barely outperforms its predecessor. In short, the product is mostly stagnated in performance, and regressed in features. From a consumer standpoint, I don't think we should be praising AMD because they threw us a bone when there are little options.

What you and reviewer/one who gives review score (two different persons) totally miss is overall situation and lack of choices on AMD's part.

First, making new desktop GPU takes at least 1 year (assuming architecture is ready). If AMD would have wanted new desktop GPU, design process must have started over year ago. Because this pandemic is very unpredictable situation, TMSC's 6nm process capacity was unknown at that time and RDNA3 is coming, designing new GPU for desktop was unrealistic. Even Nvidia didn't do it.

Secondly, 6500XT is still laptop GPU and should be considered as that. It has Very Small die area that explains lack of features. However that also partially explains good availability. Reviewer has been moaning ages about poor GPU availability and when finally someone makes ultra small die GPU that has good availability, it gets mocked because it has no features. Totally forgetting that more features means more die space and worse availability.

Now if 6500XT launch sucks, what AMD should have done better? Yeah, what? Design new desktop GPU? Put more features that are useless on laptop GPU and worsen availability? Something else, what? Blaming AMD for something and same time failing to give any reasonable alternatives is just stupid. And no, Nvidia didn't do anything better.

Basically, AMD had two choices. 1. AMD takes Navi24 laptop chip and sells it as 6500XT desktop card. 2. AMD does not release 6500XT at all. There are no other choices. As we have seen, option 1 was better one.

I'm not saying that 6500XT is good card. But at situation month ago it was just unrealistic to expect either Nvidia or AMD to release new GPU design that is both cheap and has good availability. Keeping that in mind, 20/100 for 6500XT is something unbelievable. Even more when 20/100 card gets recommendation few weeks later