Radeon RX 6500 XT GPUs Are Selling Below MSRP In Europe

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No, this isn't a dream.

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT below MSRP
(Image credit: ASRock)

Did you expect consumer gaming-grade graphics cards to sell under MSRP in February 2022? It has happened. Mindfactory, one of Germany's most prominent online tech retailers, has published a page full of special offers this weekend. It contains AMD partner graphics cards that are selling below MSRP. This news might be exciting, but before you start dreaming about GPU upgrades, playing the latest PC games with real-time raytracing in 4K, and rushing off to find your credit card - both these sub-MSRP treats are AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT designs.

Stocks of the RX 6500 XT models are reasonably healthy. Our screen capture says that 58 of the €199 ASRock ITX models are available, and 32 of the €229 models are available. So they aren't exactly flying off the shelves, and that is very likely why these are the first sub-MSRP graphics cards we have seen for many months.

Mindfactory listings show two AMD Radeon RX 6500 XTs models available for purchase. The ASRock Radeon RX 6500XT Challenger ITX and the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6500 XT Eagle were available at €199 when we first checked, but now the Gigabyte model has gone up in price to €229. The other discounted RX 6500 XT on the Mindfactory specials page is an ASRock Radeon RX 6500 XT Phantom Gaming D OC at €229. This dual-fan model used to sell for €249.

Putting the prices into context, the German MSRP for the base model AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics cards is €209. In addition, Germany applies a VAT of 19%, which makes the ASRock ITX model about €160 before sales tax. If we convert this sum to USD, we get $182 before sales tax.

(Image credit: Future)

If you haven't been watching PC graphics cards very closely in 2022, you might have missed the arrival of two new challengers at the entry-level end of the market. These were, of course, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and the topic of our sub-MSRP pricing story, the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT.

In our review of the XFX RX 6500 XT QICK 210, we noted the PCIe 3 Gen3 vs. PCIe Gen4 performance problem and various other compromises (like VRAM and memory bus) about pricing and availability. However, the most important takeaway was that this card doesn't beat aging GPUs like the GTX 1650 Super or even older cards like the GTX 1060 or RX 580.

About a week after launch, retailers had quickly replenished the first stocks of sold-out RX 6500 XTs, but the asking prices were about 50% higher than MSRPs in the US.

We are checking major US online retailers today. The cheapest Radeon RX 6500 XT we could find in stock retails for $259, still $59 above the US MSRP. However, we hope what we see in Germany is the start of a trend that extends beyond the lowest-end RDNA 2 architecture graphics card from AMD.

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Mark Tyson
Mark Tyson
News Editor

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.

13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • saltweaver
    It isn't really good framewise in Elden ring. I wonder how would perform in holiday blockbuster releases. 6500XT should be better budget product. They stripped it too much.

    KdM_sjPBIcUView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdM_sjPBIcU
    Reply
  • alceryes
    This is good for those that really need a mid-level gaming GPU. I would just caution those buying one to make sure they know what they're getting.
    This is NOT a high performance GPU. In fact, a GTX 1070 (released over 5½ years ago) beats the RX 6500 XT in almost every game, by a nice margin. However, for the price and decent performance with mid-level settings, this is a decent deal.
    Reply
  • btmedic04
    thats because nobody wants this garbage. imagine how much better of a gpu it could have been had it had an 8x pcie interface, 128 bit memory bus and encoding/decoding support. there could have been a 4gb version and an 8gb version too at different price brackets. instead, we got a lazy cash grab from AMD when they poached this laptop part and tried to pass it on to the consumer
    Reply
  • King_V
    Unfortunately, if it were a worthwhile card, there would probably be free fewer of them made (less cut-down die) plus it wouldn't been snatched up by scalpers, bots, and miners.

    EDIT: because my fingers don't always type the word that my brain tells them to type.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    King_V said:
    Unfortunately, if it were a worthwhile card, there would probably be free of them made (less cut-down die) plus it wouldn't been snatched up by scalpers, bots, and miners.
    It is a worthwhile card when nothing comparable is available for a remotely reasonable price and you are desperate for a slot-stuffer.

    There is no "less cut down" version of the RX6500 since the crap we got as the new $200 desktop tier is the full die intended for use with next-gen mobile APUs, not desktops and especially not IGP-less and PCIe 4.0-less ones. Hopefully AMD won't cut as many corners on the RX7500's design.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    saltweaver said:
    It isn't really good framewise in Elden ring
    to be fair that video is using a lower tier cpu than min req & the game on pc has a known issue of frametime and stutter (why many ppl give it bad reviews atm)
    Reply
  • msgnyc
    The card is trash, that s why. It's on par with the rx470/480s from 6 years ago.
    Reply
  • saltweaver
    hotaru251 said:
    to be fair that video is using a lower tier cpu than min req & the game on pc has a known issue of frametime and stutter (why many ppl give it bad reviews atm)
    True. But game itself has quite low system requirements as well. In holiday season next gen games will come out probably even more GPU intensive.
    6500XT users should consider upgrading to 7500XT next year to keep up with performance. Quite a hefty investment for this budget entry card.
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    msgnyc said:
    The card is trash, that s why. It's on par with the rx470/480s from 6 years ago.
    I wouldn't necessarily say it's "trash", it was just arguably overpriced at its MSRP, as AMD likely increased their pricing for the product over what was originally planned to get their cut of the profits in the current mining-afflicted market. If this hardware were released at a price point a lot closer to $100, it might have been considered a decent option, though board partners and resellers would have undoubtedly pushed it's street price up to similar levels anyway.

    Looking at current market prices, practically all cards on the market right now could be considered "trash" if we compare their value against what you could have found in the same price bracket just over a year ago. In the US, RTX 3050s are mostly priced over $500 currently, but perform worse than an RTX 2060 you could have picked up for around $300 new in 2020. Outside of DLSS and RT support, the 3050 is not much better than the 1660 SUPER that launched for just $230 over two years ago. The card's "$250" MSRP might technically look like a much better value than what the 6500 XT offers for its "$200" MSRP, but you can't find the cards for anything remotely close to that MSRP, so it doesn't matter.

    The card that's currently most similar in street price to the 6500 XT in Nvidia's lineup is the GTX 1650 (non-super), a card that generally performs worse than the 6500 XT. So while the card's MSRP would clearly be bad in a normal market where cards could actually be found near their MSRPs, the real-world pricing is par for the course with other graphics cards currently available.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    InvalidError said:
    It is a worthwhile card when nothing comparable is available for a remotely reasonable price and you are desperate for a slot-stuffer.

    There is no "less cut down" version of the RX6500 since the crap we got as the new $200 desktop tier is the full die intended for use with next-gen mobile APUs, not desktops and especially not IGP-less and PCIe 4.0-less ones. Hopefully AMD won't cut as many corners on the RX7500's design.
    I agree. At this point when prices of GPUs are slowly on the decline, I feel the demand for this card is going to drop drastically. I would have thought that this card can be good for HTPC/ work based system (if one is using a CPU with no iGPU), but AMD had to gimp it so hard that it’s not even good for such use cases.
    Reply