AMDVLK 2022.Q1.1 Released With Radeon RX 6500 XT Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMDVLK 2022.Q1.1 Released With Radeon RX 6500 XT Support

After ending out 2021 with an AMDVLK update to fix poor performance on Wayland, AMD today issued AMDVLK 2022.Q1.1 with their first set of changes for the new year...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMDVLK-2022.Q1.1

[Smurphy]

So - they release a GPU that crypto-miners can't use because of the low specs...
But do we want to buy that? Will it run recent games?

[billyswong]

So - they release a GPU that crypto-miners can't use because of the low specs...
But do we want to buy that? Will it run recent games?

No, I don't see anybody sane will "upgrade" to this card. there is no market for it except pre-built PCs.

[birdie]

So - they release a GPU that crypto-miners can't use because of the low specs...
But do we want to buy that? Will it run recent games?

It's on par with RX 5500 XT/RX 570 which is just BS. Why call it 6500 XT then? Makes 0 sense.

If not the crisis in the industry this should have been RX 6300 XT and cost something like $75. After all it's a ~100mm die meant for laptops. WTF is AMD doing? Treating its customers as idiots? You'll be better off with buying a second-hand RX 580 XT.

[billyswong]

It's on par with RX 5500 XT/RX 570 which is just BS. Why call it 6500 XT then? Makes 0 sense.

If not the crisis in the industry this should have been RX 6300 XT and cost something like $75. After all it's a ~100mm die meant for laptops. WTF is AMD doing? Treating its customers as idiots? You'll be better off with buying a second-hand RX 580 XT.

No it is not "on par" with RX 5500 XT. RX 5500 XT got double the vRAM and support of hardware video *encode* for h264 / h265. Meanwhile what does RX 6500 XT have?
1) 30% less power draw
2) Minimal real time ray tracing support that probably nobody will enable as it would probably be too slow and weak
3) PCIe x4 nonsense which means anyone with a motherboard older than 2 years ago may bottleneck

Unless RX 6500 XT is priced a lot cheaper than RX 5500 XT, anyone who buy it is crazy.

EDIT: no comment for cypto-miners. They are another species.

[stormcrow]

No it is not "on par" with RX 5500 XT. RX 5500 XT got double the vRAM and support of hardware video *encode* for h264 / h265. Meanwhile what does RX 6500 XT have?
1) 30% less power draw
2) Minimal real time ray tracing support that probably nobody will enable as it would probably be too slow and weak
3) PCIe x4 nonsense which means anyone with a motherboard older than 2 years ago may bottleneck

Unless RX 6500 XT is priced a lot cheaper than RX 5500 XT, anyone who buy it is crazy.

EDIT: no comment for cypto-miners. They are another species.

Let me point out that if AMD gets their way at the retail price for the 6500 it's still considerably less than the street price for the 5500 if you can even find one. 5500s are going for 2x the price what I paid for mine just 2 years ago now, roughly $800 last I looked. If someone has a card go bad, card in hand is worth considerably more at $300 than card dead with same part replacement at 2-3x the price or not available.

Get over your performance high horses. That may have been fine in the pre 2020 market. But this is 2022 and video cards are practically their weight in gold, even if their performance might be less than what performance ****** may be wanting. Don't want it? Don't get it, but don't ***** when your desktop is unusable when you can't find a $400 MSRP GPU for less than $1000 from a reliable vendor.

[skeevy420]

I just feel fucked that it's my 2021 AMD APU that ultimately prevents me from being able to buy this. Thanks for selling me a PCIe 3.0 APU when you knew damn well that you had a PCIe 4.0 only GPU coming out. Fuckers.

[Slartifartblast]

A shame it's artificially kneecapped by a 64bit bus, could have been so much better with a 128bit bus for the same RRP or an arm and a leg in real world GPU desert prices.

[user1]

Hardware Unboxed tested how a 5500 XT that is limited to x4 will perform under PCIe 3.0. Basically exactly what I thought - around 50% perf loss on average. The Doom Eternal result is spectacular - 171% perf loss. Btw, the performance loss under PCIe 3.0 x4 is partly caused by 4GB Vram. The 8GB 5500 XT had a way lower performance hit.

[darkbasic]

Not having AV1 decoding is pretty stupid IMO.