PowerColor Radeon RX 6500 XT Fighter 4GB Review

1. Introduction
2. PowerColor Marketing
3. RX 6500 XT 4GB Tech Specs
4. Detailed Look
5. Test System Specs
6. Benchmarks - Synthetic
7. Benchmarks - 1080p
8. Benchmarks - 1440p
9. Benchmarks - 4K
10. Power Consumption & Temps
11. What's Hot, What's Not
12. Final Thoughts

Introduction

AMD didn't really plan out its Radeon RX 6500 XT at all, with the Navi 24 inside being a GPU made for laptops and then kinda ported over to the desktop... and it shows.

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I've already reviewed the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6500 XT OC Edition, but now it's time for the PowerColor Radeon RX 6500 XT Fighter. Both of these cards are identical for the most part: Navi 24 on the 6nm process node by TSMC, joined by a not-good-enough-in-2022 amount of VRAM: 4GB GDDR6.

PowerColor does what it can with Navi 24 + 4GB GDDR6 with its custom PowerColor Radeon RX 6500 XT Fighter, offered in a much smaller mini-ITX form factor. The company uses two-ball bearing technology in its cooling fans, as well as "Mute Fan Technology" that will see the fans turning off if GPU temps are under 60C.

• Read more: ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6500 XT OC Edition 4GB Review

You know the situation when it comes to price: it's a mess... so it's not worth discussing. It's getting annoying typing this in every review, but that's just my life now. Let's get on with the review of PowerColor's custom Radeon RX 6500 XT Fighter graphics card.

PowerColor Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$595.00	$595.00	$459.99	$594.45	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 4/17/2024 at 7:12 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

PowerColor Marketing

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RX 6500 XT 4GB Tech Specs

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AMD's new Navi 24 GPU is the world's first 6nm discrete GPU, with a 107mm2 die size and 5.4 billion transistors, made by TSMC.

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The Radeon RX 6500 XT might not be an impressive graphics card for gaming, but for an RDNA 2-based graphics card the new Navi 24 has the fastest GPU clocks yet -- over 2.6GHz.

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Now, the nitty-gritty -- 16 compute units, 2610MHz GPU Game Clocks (reference), 4GB of GDDR6 @ 18Gbps on a 64-bit memory interface that has 231.6GB/sec memory bandwidth -- as well as some Infinity Cache lovin', too, while the TBP starts at 107W.

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If you've been waiting to upgrade, it could be your chance... maybe.

Detailed Look

The retail packaging on the PowerColor Radeon RX 6500 XT Fighter isn't the best, but this is a lower-end entry-level card... not surprised there.

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The card itself doesn't look like much of a fighter, but it does have a dual-fan cooler and no RGB lighting if that's what you're after.

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It's a thin dual-slot card, packing a single 6-pin PCIe power connector.

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A single DP + HDMI display connector... in 2022... the hell.

Test System Specs

Latest upgrade:

Sabrent sent over their huge Rocket Q 8TB NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD, which will be my new Games install SSD inside of my main test bed.

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I've got a new upgrade inside of my GPU test bed before my change to a next-gen test bed, where I will be preparing for NVIDIA's next-gen Ampere graphics cards and AMD's next-gen RDNA 2 graphics cards.

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Sabrent helped out with some new storage for my GPU test beds, sending over a slew of crazy-fast Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSDs. I've got this installed into my GPU test bed as the new Games Storage drive, since games are so damn big now. Thanks to Sabrent, I've got 2TB of super-fast M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD storage now.

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Anthony's GPU Test System Specifications

I've recently upgraded my GPU test bed -- at least for now, until AMD's new Ryzen 9 5950X processor is unleashed then the final update for 2020 will happen and we'll be all good for RDNA 2 and future Ampere GPU releases. You can read my article here: TweakTown GPU Test Bed Upgrade for 2021, But Then Zen 3 Was Announced.

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (buy from Amazon)
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII HERO (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: CoolerMaster MasterLiquid ML360R RGB (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: G.SKILL Trident Z NEO RGB 32GB (4x8GB) (F4-3600C18Q-32GTZN) (buy from Amazon)
• SSD: Sabrent 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 (buy from Amazon)
• PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200W (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame 2.0
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike

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3DMark has been a staple benchmark for years now, all the way back to when The Matrix was released and Futuremark had bullet time inspired benchmarks. 3DMark is the perfect tool to see if your system - most important, your CPU and GPU - is performing as it should. You can search results for your GPU, to see if it falls in line with other systems based on similar hardware.

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3DMark TimeSpy

Heaven - 1080p

Heaven is an intensive GPU benchmark that really pushes your silicon to its limits. It's another favorite of ours as it has some great scaling for multi-GPU testing, and it's great for getting your GPU to 100% for power and noise testing.

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Benchmarks - 1080p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1080p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Performance is just not good at all at all resolutions on the Radeon RX 6500 XT, but it doesn't fair too badly at 1080p. But if you compare it against NVIDIA's competitor in the GeForce RTX 3050, the Navi 24-based GPU just doesn't hold up.

Benchmarks - 1440p

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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1440p Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Yeah, no... 1440p isn't good for the Radeon RX 6500 XT either... but again, you can get 30FPS+ out of AAA titles without an issue if you adjust some in-game visuals.

Benchmarks - 4K

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Assassin's Creed: Valhalla is the latest game to be inserted into our benchmark suite, with Ubisoft Montreal using its AnvilNext engine to power the game. It scales really well across the cards, and has some surprising performance benefits with AMD's new Big Navi GPUs.

You can buy Assassins Creed: Valhalla at Amazon.

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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a sequel to the popular Shadow of Mordor, which was powered by the Lithtech engine. When cranked up to maximum detail, it will chew through your GPU and its VRAM like it's nothing.

You can buy Middle-earth: Shadow of War at Amazon.

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Metro Exodus is one of the hardest tests that our graphics cards have to go through, with 4A Games' latest creation being one of the best looking games on the market. It is a serious test that pushes GPUs to their limits, and also features RTX technologies like DLSS.

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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of the latest games to join our graphics card benchmark lineup, with the game built using the Foundation engine as a base, the same engine in Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos Montreal R&D department made lots of changes to the engine during the development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider to make it one of the best-looking games out right now.

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4K Benchmark Performance Thoughts

Nope, no, don't do it.

Power Consumption & Temps

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What's Hot, What's Not

What's Hot

• The world's first 6nm GPU: Alright, so that's kinda cool... but it doesn't mean much at the end of the day.

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What's Not

• A complete mess: Say no more.
• RTX 3050 beats the RX 6500 XT, easily: You're better off buying NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 3050, which has 8GB of GDDR6 memory and is a superior card in its "price point".
• Only 4GB of RAM... WTF, AMD: 4GB of RAM... meanwhile, the Radeon RX 480 launched over 5 years ago now with 4GB of VRAM. Now, AMD's very latest GPU has just 4GB of GDDR6 -- it's not good enough in 2022 -- especially without an 8GB variant on offer.
• Limited to PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth

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• Only dual display outputs, another WTF, AMD: DisplayPort and HDMI... and that's it... that really sucks in 2022.
• No AV1, H264, and H265 video encoding support, another WTF: Seriously, what the fresh fork is that, AMD?!
• There's just nothing really new: Like, at all... just a 6nm GPU with newer, faster GDDR memory.

Final Thoughts

PowerColor can't impress here with the Radeon RX 6500 XT Fighter, as AMD under-cooked the Navi 24 GPU as it was... gimped it with 4GB of GDDR6... gimped it in multiple ways. The final product is a big, fat, meh.

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I have the same issues that I had with the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6500 XT OC Edition 4GB graphics card, it is just a sucky card for 2022. The new Navi 24 GPU is impressive in one part: it's the world's first 6nm GPU, but it was made for mobile and ported to desktop... and man, does it show.

There are only 4GB of GDDR6 in a world when NVIDIA is giving gamers 8GB of GDDR6 memory on its GeForce RTX 3050, which is superior in many other ways. PowerColor can't help this, so they can't be blamed for the bad product... AMD can... but ultimately it's your money.

If you find value in the card, then great -- but I wouldn't recommend it. I would buy the ASUS TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6500 XT over this, if I was forced to buy a Radeon RX 6500 XT at all.