ASUS's new Radeon GPU is the old Radeon RX 6500 XT with 4G of VRAM

ASUS has launched a new version of its Radeon RX 6500 XT DUAL OC V2 graphics card. The V2 has the same physical design and dimensions as its predecessor (201 x 128 x 40mm). However, there looks to be a different aluminum fin-stack heatsink layout and no RGB lighting this time around. As an RDNA 2-era GPU, it still sports the older DUAL design.

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ASUS's Radeon RX 6500 XT DUAL OC V2 graphics card drops the RGB but keeps the 4GB of VRAM, image credit: ASUS.

ASUS's Radeon RX 6500 XT DUAL OC V2 is a compact card two-slot card, so it wouldn't have any issues fitting in a small form-factor case or build. Elsewhere, the Radeon RX 6500 XT DUAL OC V2 graphics card features the same overclocked 2820 MHz boost clock as its predecessor, a notable increase over AMD's reference spec of 2610 MHz.

Unfortunately, the underlying memory configuration has not been upgraded, as we saw with ASRock's recent Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming 8GB OC, launched a few weeks ago. As the naming suggests, it doubled the Radeon RX 6500 XT's VRAM capacity to 8GB compared to the 4GB of the reference design and ASUS's Radeon RX 6500 XT DUAL OC V2 graphics card.

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With 4GB on a 64-bit interface, the big bottleneck with the Radeon RX 6500 XT is memory, limited gaming performance to 1080p medium setting at most for blockbuster titles. Still, it's one of the most affordable Radeon SKUs, so it would be a decent entry-level option if it could be found for around $150 to $170.

If the price is right, ASRock's Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming 8GB OC edition would be the better option. The extra VRAM would come in handy when playing modern PC games, even though they use the same slow 64-bit memory interface.

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