AMD released the Radeon RX 6400 today without much fanfare. Unfortunately, the Radeon RX 6400 may not have the necessary firepower to vie for a spot on the list of best graphics cards. However, Expreview took the XFX Speedster SWFT105 Radeon RX 6400 for a spin, and its review showed that the Radeon RX 6400 is a pretty good entry-level graphics card.
The XFX Speedster SWFT105 Radeon RX 6400 utilizes the Navi 24 silicon, a die that also powers AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT. Unfortunately, the chipmaker only enabled 12 compute units on the one inside the Radeon RX 6400, so the graphics card only has access to 768 stream processors. AMD has used this configuration before in the shape of the AMD Radeon 680M, the iGPU that resides in the company's high-end Ryzen 6000 (Rembrandt) mobile APUs. However, that doesn't mean that the Radeon RX 6400 will perform like a Ryzen 6000 APU since the former has higher clock speeds and a more relaxed thermal limit.
The Radeon RX 6400 operates with a 1,923 MHz base clock, 2,039 MHz game clock, and 2,321 MHz boost clock. XFX's single-slot, half-height Speedster SWFT105 Radeon RX 6400 adheres to AMD's reference specification. The maximum boost clock for the Radeon 680M is 2,400 MHz, so it's a bit below the Radeon RX 6400. Furthermore, the Radeon RX 6400 has a 53W TDP, whereas Ryzen 6000 tops out at 45W for both the processing and iGPU components. Given its lower power requirement, the Radeon RX 6400 gets all the juice from the PCIe expansion slot, so no external power connectors are required. As a result, it's an excellent design for users with old systems that need a fast upgrade.
The Radeon RX 6400 has 4GB of 16 Gbps GDDR6 memory; therefore, it won't perform well above 1080p (1920 x 1080) with demanding image fidelity. Like the Radeon RX 6500 XT, the Radeon RX 6400 sticks to a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and lacks 4K H.264/H.265 encoding and AV1 decoding capabilities.
Radeon RX 6400 Benchmarks
| Graphics Card | War Thunder | Final Fantasy XIV | World of Tanks enCore | Dota 2 | Far Cry 5 | Assassin's Creed Origins | Gears 5 | Dirt 5 | Far Cry 6 | Metro Exodus | Watch Dogs: Legion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Radeon RX 6500 XT | 190.3 | 84.9 | 116.4 | 152.7 | 83 | 52 | 64.5 | 29.8 | 51 | 37.6 | 27 |
| Radeon RX 6400 | 139.4 | 68.0 | 83.1 | 149.7 | 62 | 42 | 57.4 | 22.7 | 40 | 28.4 | 23 |
| GeForce GTX 1650 | 131.9 | 65.6 | 80.0 | 148.0 | 57 | 48 | 56.6 | 33.5 | 44 | 28.3 | 22 |
| Ryzen 7 5700G | 59.5 | 27.2 | N/A | 79.3 | 28 | 22 | 25.7 | 16.9 | 20 | 13.64 | 12 |
Expreview's test platform consisted of the Ryzen 7 5700G, MSI MPG X570S Carbon Max WiFi motherboard, and 32GB (2x16B) of DDR4-3600 memory. The news outlet did its testing at 1080p with the highest graphic preset but disabled ray tracing and FSR.
The results showed that the Radeon RX 6400 had no problems with older titles, such as Far Cry 5, Assassin's Creed Origins, or Gears 5. However, the Radeon RX 6400 struggled in some more recent games and those heavily reliant on memory. Remember that Expreview used the highest image settings, so lowering the eye candy can bring users a smoother gaming performance.
Cumulatively, the Radeon RX 6400 performed in the same ballpark as the GeForce GTX 1650. The Navi 24 graphics card beat its Turing rival in eight out of the 11 titles that Expreview used; however, the performance margins weren't very significant.
The Radeon RX 6500 XT has 33% more stream processors than the Radeon RX 6400. Nonetheless, the Radeon RX 6500 XT was approximately 24% faster than the Radeon RX 6400. For those curious about how the Radeon RX 6400 stacks up against integrated graphics, the Navi 24 delivered over two times higher performance than the Ryzen 7 5700G. However, it's important to emphasize that the Ryzen 7 5700G is still on AMD's hoary Vega graphics engine. As a result, the chipmaker hasn't brought its RDNA 2 graphics to a desktop APU.
Like the Radeon RX 6400, entry-level graphics cards benefit immensely from AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology. Coming back to Far Cry 6, the Radeon RX 6400 averaged 40 FPS without any help. Enabling FSR on the performance setting upped the average frame rate to 71 FPS, while the balanced setting pulled in 68 FPS. The quality and ultra quality settings netted the Radeon RX 6400 uplifts to 61 and 56 FPS, respectively. FSR gave the Radeon RX 6400 a nice 40% boost in frame rate even at the highest FSR setting.
We can see the Radeon RX 6400 succeeding in the current state of the graphics card market. Custom models are in stock and start at $159. whereas even that cheapest GeForce GTX 1650 retails for $220.
