AMD has been fighting a two-front war against Intel and Nvidia for some time now. Team red came roaring back with revisions to their incredibly popular Ryzen line this year. Their offerings outperformed the Intel products of a similar class in several areas. This led to a major boom period for AMD, who is enjoying the kind of resurgence rarely seen in the PC hardware space.
Nvidia also revealed its own entries into the current GPU market in 2022. The 3090 Ti offers a new flagship card, with the 3050 bringing up the budget option. When compared with the RX 6500 XT and 6400 cards, AMD looks a bit behind the 8 ball. But really, they’re offering a fairly competitive GPU when you think about it. The 6500 XT is said to have “the fastest clocks in a gaming card,” according to AMD’s product page.
Both cards sit as comparative budget options against both the 3060 and 3050 from team green. Neither Nvidia nor AMD divulged many hard technical details about their new budget graphics cards, but we expect an MSRP of around $200-$300 for the AMD options. AMD claims they will launch the 6500 XT at an MSRP of only $199, but they didn’t say it would stay at that price. It’s far more likely that AMD will raise the price shortly after launch. Nvidia is trying to get their 3050 out the door at $249, although no one is actually going to get it at that price without bots.
In comparison to the 3090 Ti, AMD actually lags behind with their 6900 XT. It remains to be seen how the RX 6500 XT and 6400 cards stack up with their direct competitors. Both cards go on sale on January 22.
The 6500 XT has 1024 GPU cores, a 16 MB Infinity Cache, and 4 GB of DDR6 VRAM. All pretty standard in terms of budget GPUs. Performance metrics provided by AMD promise 60+ FPS at 1080p gaming in various titles. They tested Fortnite, Resident Evil Village, and several others, all hitting that mark.
Scalpers and crypto mining have made the market for GPUs a pure bloodsport. There’s basically no way to reliably get a GPU for anywhere near MSRP, and gamers are out for blood. Everyone hates these two groups, and the problem doesn’t look to be getting any better. There are a lot of reasons why graphics cards cost so much right now, and those reasons have only gotten harder to decipher as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to ravage the supply chain.
With the delay of the Steam Deck, there will be even more competition in Q1 2022 for PC gamers’ attention and money.