AMD RX 6500 XT Review ft. Gigabyte Eagle

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte RX 6500 XT Eagle3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. Assassin's Creed Valhalla6. Cyberpunk 20777. Death Stranding8. Far Cry 69. Forza Horizon 510. Hitman 311. Horizon Zero Dawn12. Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy13. Red Dead Redemption 214. Resident Evil Village15. Total War Saga: Troy16. Watch Dogs: Legion17. PCIe 4.0 vs PCIe 3.0 Investigation18. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)19. Ray Tracing20. Cost Per Frame Analysis21. Clock Speed22. GPU Temperatures23. Acoustics24. Power Draw: 1080p25. Power Draw: 1440p26. Performance per Watt: 1080p27. Performance per Watt: 1440p28. Total System Power Draw29. Overclocking30. Closing Thoughts31. View All Pages

PCIe Testing

For our benchmarks today, we tested the RX 6500 XT at both PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 3.0 speeds. We feel this is crucial as the majority of those interested in a GPU of this class will likely be using a PCIe 3.0 platform.

For all of our 1080p benchmarks, we therefore tested the RX 6500 XT twice – once with PCIe 4.0 and once with PCIe 3.0. This will be reflected in the charts you see on the following pages. Due to time pressures we were unable to do the same for 1440p, where we only tested with PCIe 4.0, but as I think you all will agree, this is certainly not a 1440p card to begin with so those charts are really just a ‘bonus'.

Driver Notes

• All Nvidia GPUs were benchmarked with the 511.23 driver.
• All AMD GPUs (except RX 6500 XT) were benchmarked with the public Adrenalin 22.1.1 driver.
• RX 6500 XT was benchmarked with the Adrenalin 22.1.1 driver supplied to press.

Test System

We test using the a custom built system from Cyberpower, based on Intel's Alder Lake platform. You can buy your own system from Cyberpower HERE.

CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K
Motherboard	MSI MPG Z690 CARBON WIFI
Memory	Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR5 5200MHz (2 X 16GB) CL 40-40-40-77
Graphics Card	Varies
SSD	2TB Seagate FireCuda 530
Chassis	Corsair 5000D Airflow
CPU Cooler	Corsair H150i RGB Pro XT
Power Supply	Corsair 1200W HX Series Modular 80 Plus Platinum
Operating System	Windows 11 21H2

Resizable BAR is enabled for all supported graphics cards.

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• ASRock RX 5500 XT Challenger 8GB
• Sapphire RX 5500 XT Pulse 4GB
• Sapphire RX 580 Pulse 8GB
• ASUS ROG RX 570 Strix OC 4GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super Gaming 6GB
• Palit GTX 1650 Super StormX OC 4GB
• Gigabyte GTX 1650 Gaming OC 4GB
• Nvidia GTX 1060 Founders Edition (FE) 6GB

Software and Games List

• 3DMark Fire Strike & Fire Strike Ultra (DX11 Synthetic)
• 3DMark Time Spy (DX12 Synthetic)
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• Death Stranding (DX12)
• Far Cry 6 (DX12)
• Forza Horizon 5 (DX12)
• Hitman 3 (DX12)
• Horizon Zero Dawn (DX12)
• Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (DX12)
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition (DXR)
• Red Dead Redemption 2 (DX12)
• Resident Evil Village (DX12)
• Total War Saga: Troy (DX11)
• Watch Dogs: Legion (DX12)

We run each benchmark/game three times, and present mean averages in our graphs. We use FrameView to measure average frame rates as well as 1% low values across our three runs.

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