Compact Radeon RX 6500 debuts with Navi 24 RDNA 2 GPU, doesn't need external power

When AMD released the RX 6500 XT in January 2022 in the middle of the cryptocurrency mining-driven GPU crisis, some outlets blasted the card as a horrible product that should never have been made. TechSpot’s Steven Walton, for instance, called the RX 6500 XT “the worst GPU release” of their career. The reason why the RX 6500 XT was much maligned had to do with the card’s performance and price.

At $200 and featuring a woefully inadequate 4 GB of RAM over a 64-bit bus, the RX 6500 XT was a disappointing value proposition for playing modern AAA games at the time. Three years later, the non-XT Radeon RX 6500 has now surfaced with equally limited specs.

Radeon RX 6500 specifications

Zephyr, a Chinese AIB, has now unveiled the “4G Dual ITX” RX 6500 non-XT with the same memory and core configuration as the RX 6500 XT. We are looking at a Navi 24 GPU with 1,024 Stream Processors, a 2,066 MHz boost clock, 4 GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 VRAM, a 64-bit wide bus, and a TDP of just 55 W. Since the RX 6500 appears to have slower memory than the RX 6500 XT, the memory bandwidth will be lower than the already low 144 GB/s.

While there is little to be excited about the RX 6500, some users might appreciate the low 55 W TDP of the GPU, which will allow the RX 6500 to be powered entirely through the PCIe interface. A small power budget and no outside power cables mean fans of low-profile PC builds will be able to use the RX 6500 to make super compact systems.

So, if you are on the hunt for a basic display adapter to power a PC monitor or a GPU to play lighter AAA/indie titles, the RX 6500 could be an ideal choice.

However, there is currently no indication that the RX 6500 will launch in the Western markets. Folks interested in low-cost GPUs should, therefore, look at options like the RX 6500 XT, RX 6600, and the RX 7600 (All available on Amazon).