Gamers looking to upgrade their rigs now have a fantastic opportunity to grab the XFX AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE at a discounted price at Best Buy. Down from its original price of $570, this particular GPU is currently selling for $520, saving buyers $50, which is not the lowest-ever price for a RX 7900 GRE, but it is the lowest-ever price for this model.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a performance powerhouse, featuring 16GB of GDDR6 memory and AMD’s advanced RDNA 3 architecture, delivering exceptional performance for 1440p gaming. In our testing, we found that the RX 7900 GRE can deliver 88.1% of the performance of the fastest card, the RTX 4090, at a much lower price point. In our GPU benchmark hierarchy, the RX 7900 GRE gives solid competition to Nvidia's RTX 4070 Super in 1440p and 4K gaming, which is comparatively priced higher.

The GPU originally made its first appearance in 2023 as a China exclusive but was later introduced globally in February 2024. Based on the Navi 31 architecture, if we glance over the spec sheet the RX 7900 GRE is a cut-down version of the RX 7900 XT.

The GPU also offers features such as AV1 encoding support, DisplayPort 2.1 outputs, and improved AI hardware acceleration. While the AI capabilities like frame generation and ray tracing might not be as good as Nvidia, the recent driver improvements with FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) and AFMF (AMD Fluid Motion Frames) should offer a noticeable performance boost depending on the game title.

Considering its performance and the current price drop, this deal represents exceptional value in the premium GPU market. Whether you're building a new gaming PC or upgrading your existing setup, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a great choice for delivering top-notch gaming experiences. The discounted price may not last long, so visit Best Buy today to secure this powerful GPU at a great price.

We are working hard to find the best deals for you this Black Friday. If you're looking for other products, check out our Black Friday Computer Hardware Deals Live blog for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals Live blog, Monitor Deals Live, Graphics Card Deals, or CPU Deals pages.

A premium AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT graphics card with custom easy-swap magnetic fans is on offer at its lowest-ever price on Amazon. The XFX Quicksilver AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Magnetic Air Gaming Graphics Card boasts all the usual features you can expect of such a card – plus more – at an enticing $479.99.  

You may be wondering what on earth ‘Magnetic Air’ is, and why you might want it. XFX’s video, embedded below, makes the functionality irritatingly clear. However, the instant swap tech might have had more appeal if a spare fan or three were supplied in the box. The packing list only mentions an included warranty card and support bracket.

To stand apart from other RX 7800 XT contenders, XFX’s Magnetic Air GPU has a few extra tricks beyond the magnetically attached tool-less double ball bearing fans. The firm also uses a Honeywell PTM7950 Phase Change TIM pad on the GPU for longer service life. This augments the XFX Ghost Thermal design with a multitude of heatpipes, finned cooling block, and floating shroud.

Another feature here you won’t find on the cheaper RX 7800 XT alternatives is a dual BIOS. The hardware switchable video BIOS provides peace of mind when updating, or using one of your configurations for experimentation.

The XFX Quicksilver AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Magnetic Air GPU has 3,840 SPs, a game clock up to 2,124 MHz, and a boost clock up to 2,430 MHz. Its 16GB of GDDR6 is attached via a 256-bit bus and runs at 19.5 Gbps for up to 624 GB/s. All these specifications match the reference design card we reviewed a little over a year ago, but the cooling solution here might allow for more generous overclocks, if you care to fiddle. Overall, though

Earlier in the week we saw a range of AMD Radeon RX 7000 family price cuts occur, with multiple GPUs from ASRock and PowerColor at great prices at Newegg. This XFX brand RX 7800 XT seems to be a step above the ASRock Challenger in build, features, and frills, though. An extra $10 doesn’t seem so much of a premium for this model.

it is probably worth checking how this GPU fits into the overall graphics card hierarchy, as compiled by our esteemed graphics card editor. Also, if you are interested in this card you can read more, and see user reviews of this specific product on the Amazon product page. We don’t know when / if this price cut will expire, but with Prime Day around the corner, it will be interesting to see if prices slide further - as long as stocks hold up.

XFX has launched a new AMD Radeon 7800 XT GPU variant— with a familiar dual-fan cooler design courtesy of the Speedster SWFT 210 cooler we've previously seen on seven other XFX GPUs, dating back to AMD's RX 6000 series. 

The XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 7800 XT Core (RX-78TSWFTFP) is based on a reliable XFX design, which we most recently saw with its RX 7600 XT 16GB model. So, how different is the XFX Speedster SWFT 210 RX 7800 XT from the reference AMD design?

Not very different at all. The central core specification difference between the designs is a longer-length XFX cooler design. The reference design is also dual-fan, but the fans are placed closer to the center on the XFX Speedster SWFT 210 cooler than the more spread-out dual fans on the reference design. The XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 7800 XT Core edition features a 2.5-slot design with a length of up to 11.1 inches (283mm).

XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 7800 XT Core Specifications

Most performance characteristics between this model and other Radeon 7800 XTs should be the same— though the sleek design may appeal compared to the (generally) more gaudy approaches of other AIB partners. The graphics card features the Navi 32 silicon with 60 CUs. 

The clock speeds on the XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 7800 XT Core mirror that of AMD's reference specifications. The graphics card runs with a 2,214 MHz game clock but can boost up to 2,430 MHz in ideal situations. Meanwhile, the 16GB of GDDR6 memory runs at 19.5 Gbps and, combined with a 256-bit memory interface, outputs a memory bandwidth of up to 624 GB/s.

The graphics card comes with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. XFX recommends a 700W power supply as a minimum for the graphics card. Meanwhile, display outputs include ‍three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI 2.1 port.

When writing, the XFX Speedster SWFT 210 RX 7800 XT is listed on Newegg for an MSRP of $489.99. However, it's not in stock. The AMD-powered graphics card has yet to be listed on Amazon.

The XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 7800 XT Core's pricing aligns with other RX 7800 XT models. If your case has room for a triple-fan cooler, the XFX Speedster QICK319 RX 7800 XT is currently listed for even cheaper at just $449 on Amazon, making it the cheapest RX 7800 XT. The SWFT 210 RX 7800 XT will remain the better option for those who can't fit a triple-fan GPU in their case, though, particularly many SFF/Mini ITX PC users.

XFX posted a teaser via X (formerly, Twitter) that suggest it will be releasing graphics cards with swappable fans for the global market, unlike its Phoenix Nirvana series that was originally announced to be exclusive for the Chinese market.  

It is highly likely that each of the Phoenix series models, including the RX 7900 XTX, 7900 GRE and the AMD Radeon 7800 XT will feature these swappable fans. The rather limited information afforded by the post means that we don't know anything about its performance or bearing type but it does suggest that this series will be available globally. Aftermarket fans may provide alternative performance or be purely aesthetic and provide different colours- either from XFX or otherwise. In any case, removable fans give the ability to clean the fan blades and get better access to blow the dust away from the heatsinks once the fans are removed. But likely these are not  purely offered as the means to allow better cleaning. They could also provide an easier repair path should a fan stop working.

While such features are useful, it is not a key selling point since users don't replace GPUs unless needed. Graphics cards have fan curves that keep the fans off until it reach a certain threshold, enhancing the lifespan of its fans. Hence the primary purpose is likely to provide customization options. Sapphire had a similar concept which was showcased during Computex 2017 under its Nitro Gear series of accessories where it offered swappable 95mm LED backlighted fans with translucent blades and used dual-ball bearings. But it was never featured in subsequent models after the RX 400 and RX 500 series.

This isn't new for XFX either as it did sell HSF 100 swappable fans which had built-in LED lights with three colour options eight years ago.

One of the other interesting features of the XFX's Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana is the use of Honeywell's PTM7950 phase-change thermal pad to provide the best possibility of thermal conductivity. One would be curious if XFX is planning to use the same thermal pad on these variants for the global market, and maybe not exclusive to its flagship AMD Radeon graphics card.

Regardless, perhaps providing better fans with quieter operation would be preferred by users over swappable fans? The best example of this would be a collaboration between Asus and Noctua that began two years ago and has been showcasing newer models to date. In any case, either one of the features would command a certain premium.

AMD graphics card partner XFX has launched a new flagship. We first saw the XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana graphics card at the end of April, but now it has been listed on China’s JD.com retail portal. VideoCardz spotted this product release, which differentiates itself with a brand-new cooler and color scheme.

If Nirvana can be reached by becoming one of the best graphics cards, then the new XFX looks like it has a good chance to get there. It is even larger than the XFX MERC 310 design, boasting a significantly heavier triple fan heatsink taking the card up to 4-slots in thickness. In addition to the challenging girth, PC DIYers will have to pay attention to the card’s 346mm length and 130mm height.

One of the highlights of the Phoenix Nirvana that XFX wants to make buyers aware of is the so-called ‘Fengling Cooling Architecture 4.0.” This cooling system features the aforementioned triple fans, which are modular and magnetically attached, with six heatpipes, a 216 ultra-matrix fin heatsink, and a cast aluminum vapor chamber base. Moreover, XFX uses a 15,000W/mK Honeywell PTM 7950 phase-changing thermal pad.

The new XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana may be a China exclusive. We haven’t seen any PR or social media teasing of this model in the West, but it may just be a matter of time. Priced at ¥7,899 in China, a direct currency conversion indicates a U.S. price of roughly $1,100.

Lastly, in its introduction of the Phoenix Nirvana, the source suggests it may be an XFX design that was prepared for an upcoming high-end RDNA4 graphics card which has since been canceled. We have seen some indications that RDNA4 GPUs are being prepared to focus on lower-tier parts, but it was far from conclusive.

We have reviewed several RX 7900 XTX samples previously. However good the new cooler is, it probably won’t move the needle too far from the reference and Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro+ Vapor-X models we have previously had in the labs.

XFX has quietly introduced the Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana graphics card that comes with a huge 3.5-wide slot cooling system and an innovative thermal pad made of phase-change (PCM) material (via VideoCardz). The new card — which can well become one of the world's best graphics cards — is available in China, though it is unclear why XFX decided to release a new Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics board 1.5 years after the launch of the GPU. 

The card has a 17-phase digital voltage regulating module and is equipped with three eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors. These connectors are meant to deliver up to 450W of power, a decent amount of power that will be instrumental for overclocking the graphics processor. 

Speaking of overclocking, the XFX Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana is outfitted with a huge 3.5-wide cooling system with a vapor chamber, eight 6-mm heat pipes, and 216 aluminum fins. One of the standout features of this cooler is Honeywell's PTM7950 thermal pad, which is made of a phase-change material designed to ensure the best thermal conductivity possible.  

This PCM thermal pad from Honeywell could be one of the reasons why XFX decided to launch this graphics card this late in the lifecycle of AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX product and Navi 31 graphics processor. By launching this add-in-board, XFX can test how Honeywell's PTM7950 performs and whether it is a good thermal interface for a high-volume product. If XFX is satisfied with the results, it can start using PTM7950 for higher volumes of products and get a competitive advantage over rivals.  

Just like other Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards, XFX's Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana board is based on AMD's Navi 31 graphics processor with 6144 stream processors and 24 GB of memory. The GPU is clocked at up to 2615 MHz, which isn't the highest frequency in the industry.

As for display outputs, just like many other Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics boards, XFX's Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phoenix Nirvana has three DisplayPort 2.1 connectors and one HDMI 2.0 connector. The card is now available in China, but it isn't clear when, or if, it will come to Western markets. 

Even the best graphics cards can fail sometimes. Digitec Galaxus AG (via TechEpiphany), one of the largest Swiss online IT providers, openly shares its statistics on which graphics card vendor has the highest failure rates and the time it takes to process a warranty claim.

It's important to remember that the collected data is limited to Digitec Galaxus AG's sales. Therefore, the data does not portray the number of cases globally. For obvious reasons, Digitec Galaxus AG doesn't fully divulge the total amount of units sold. Sadly, that also means we don't have the whole panorama for the charts. For example, a lower value of failure rates doesn't necessarily mean the brand is better than the competition if it only represents a small portion of the global sales. According to Digitec Galaxus AG, the compiled information corresponds to brands that have sold at least 300 units over the last two years. The company also didn't specify whether the data is based solely on gaming graphics cards or also included professional graphics cards.

The charts reveal that Gainward has the lowest number of defective graphics cards, with a 0.4% RMA rate. Gainward, which has belonged to Palit since 2005, is largely unknown outside the European market. Meanwhile, Palit is in third place on the chart with 0.8%. 

Companies such as Lenovo and HP rank second and sixth place. They don't sell graphics cards individually. However, they are prebuilt system vendors that sometimes make their own graphics cards or leverage units from other brands. That's probably why Digitec Galaxus AG included Lenovo and HP charts. Furthermore, the Swiss store sells some standalone Lenovo- and HP-branded graphics cards, but they're mainly professional SKUs.

The statistics show that AMD graphics cards are in eighth place with a failure rate of 1.4%. Since AMD doesn't make graphics cards, Digitec Galaxus AG is likely referring to the reference models, now more commonly known as MBA (Made By AMD). PC Partner, who also makes products for Sapphire, Dell, or Samsung, is the vendor that manufactures AMD reference graphics cards. Curiously, Zotac, a PC Partner subsidiary, has a 1.8% failure rate.

PowerColor is seemingly the best AMD partner, with a defective rate of 1.2%. Sapphire has the most significant RMA rates, with a 2.5% share, out of the three AMD-exclusive AIB partners. XFX was close behind with 2%.

Inno3D (0.9%) appears to be the best Nvidia partner. Of course, the company has a strong presence in Europe but is little known in the U.S. market. Meanwhile, EVGA, which no longer makes graphics cards, sits in 12th place with a 1.8% RMA rate. Regarding the other big-name brands, Asus and MSI are tied at the eighth position with 1.4% defective rates, while Gigabyte (1.9%) and ASRock (2.1%) are at 14th and 16th, respectively.

Digitec Galaxus AG also recorded the manufacturer warranty case duration, considering when the graphics card gets to the service center until it returns to the customer. In this aspect, Gigabyte is the worst vendor regarding RMA times, as it takes 17 working days to complete the RMA process. Meanwhile, ASRock and Palit RMA service is top-notch, requiring two working days.

Whether the Radeon RX 7900 GRE deserves a spot on the list of best graphics cards remains to be seen. With the latest Navi 31-based graphics card starting to be globally available, it may not be long before we see how it stacks up to AMD's other RDNA 3 offerings.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) retails for $649 in the Chinese market. However, the graphics card is slowly becoming available outside China via system integrators. German retailer MemoryPC has as many as six different prebuilt gaming systems powered by the latest Radeon RX 7900 GRE. Pricing varies between $1,098.25 to $1,922.76, including value-added tax (VAT) and free shipping.

The cheapest prebuilt system revolves around the Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and an Adata Legend 710 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD. Meanwhile, the high-end systems feature the Ryzen 7 5800X3D or the Core i9-12900K, two of the best CPUs for gaming. The former has 32GB of DDR4-3600 with a WD Black SN850X 1TB SSD, while the latter comes with 32GB of DDR5-5600 and a WD Blue SN570 1TB drive. As for the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, MemoryPC is utilizing the XFX-branded MBA (Made by AMD) reference design for its gaming PCs.

The Radeon RX 7900 GRE has also made its way over to Australia. PLE Computers is currently selling a prebuilt PC for a whopping $2,277.54. The price tag is a bit excessive for what's inside the gaming system, but computer hardware is typically more expensive in Australia.

The Australian gaming PC comprises the Ryzen 7 7700 paired with 32 GB of DDR5-5600 and a 2 TB Crucial P3 Plus SSD. Like MemoryPC, PLE Computers has used the XFX Radeon RX 7900 GRE for the prebuilt machine. Besides XFX's reference model, Sapphire and PowerColor have announced their Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE and Red Devil AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE, respectively so there are at least two more custom options for system integrators. Unlike the MBA model, the custom SKUs will likely carry a slight premium due to their aggressive design and factory overclock.

Thus far, we haven't seen any U.S. system integrators offering Radeon RX 7900 GRE-based gaming PCs. For the impatient, you can always buy the retail Radeon RX 7900 GRE off one of the Chinese online retail platforms, such as JD.com, but you'll end up paying more than the $649 due to customs duty and shipping. Give it some time, and we'll probably be able to purchase the Radeon RX 7900 GRE through a third-party merchant at Newegg or eBay, like countless other hardware.

Demand for GPUs is unquestionably ramping up again as prices eclipse $70,000 per GPU in some China locales (that's for a data center H800 GPU), and leaders in the U.S. computing industry are taking to social media to complain that cloud-based GPU resources are fully booked and GPU hardware supplies are all reserved for the year ahead. Drastic times call for drastic measures, and we are beginning to see evidence that GPUs that should be heading to home desktop PC rigs are instead being snapped up by the AI industry players.

Naturally, gamers and enthusiasts will be worried about a repeat of the cryptomining craze, which decimated consumer GPU supplies: Are the crypto-bros of old destined to be replaced by the AI-bros — snapping up our precious gaming GPUs?

The first solid evidence of AI-focused businesses buying up consumer GPUs comes from a boast Tweeted by iconic IT hacker and entrepreneur George Hotz (AKA geohot).

Above, if you expand the tweet, you can see Hotz, who is currently leading an automated AI-driven driving assistance business called Comma AI, talk about buying up cases of AMD gaming GPUs.

The image shows a partly unpacked purported "7.38 PFLOPS of compute." We can clearly spy an XFX MERC 310 GPU in the photo, and the box reads "AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX." That's an XFX design based around AMD's flagship consumer GPU and the second-placed Best Graphics Cards for Gaming in 2023 in our frequently updated roundup.

Our calculations from the Hotz statement and image are that there are 60 GPUs in this "7.38 PFLOPS" batch (based on FP16 performance). Each of these RX 7900 XTX cards costs $979.99 on Amazon, at the time of writing. Thus, Hotz apparently just splashed out around $60,000 on this modest stack of GPU power.

Obviously this is a mere drop in the ocean, as the Comma AI founder and president says that there are "exaFLOPS more to come." For reference, one exaFLOPS is 1,000 petaFLOPS of performance. If we assume that Hotz aims to buy up to 7.38 exaFLOPS of GPU compute (1,000 x the first batch), he may have budgeted ~$60 million for this consumer graphics card buying spree. Or perhaps only ~$20 million, if he's only after around 2 exaFLOPS of AI compute.

One interesting aside with the above purchase of AMD GPUs is that certain AI workloads can use a lot of memory. While paying nearly $1,000 per GPU for an AMD 7900 XTX that packs 'only' 122.88 teraFLOPS of FP16 number crunching prowess might seem odd, given the RTX 4060 costs $300 and can provide around 121 teraFLOPS of FP16 compute (with sparsity), the AMD GPU provides three times as much VRAM. So, if the workloads need memory, you'd need three RTX 4060 cards or two RTX 4070 cards to get the same 24GB — plus the servers to hold all those GPUs.

The Tweeted statement from George Hotz isn't the first warning sign we have seen of AI-industry demand for GPUs heating up. A few days ago, we reported on the rapid inflation of GPUs in China. Fears of further US sanctions on China are thought to have helped stoke up prices of accelerators like the A800 and H800 GPUs. A few weeks earlier, the price of an A800 jumped 20% almost overnight due to impending sanction fears.

Given other recent indicators, we can clearly see that the rise of AI is having a profound impact on the supply of compute-focused GPUs. Now the only question is how far that insatiable demand will bleed over to gaming GPUs, too.

We reviewed our first AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card only a month ago. At the time, we noted that AMD and its AIB partners had dropped the official MSRP of 'standard' models from $299 to $269. Today, we can see that these cards have a new starting price of $249 on Amazon. We think a combination of this GPU, having had a month to 'bed in' to the market, and the imminent release of the GeForce RTX 4060 (non-Ti), which will vie for a spot on the list of best graphics cards, will have significantly influenced the price drop.

The best-priced Radeon RX 7600 model we see on Amazon today is from MSI. We haven't had an MSI 'Mech' product in the labs for a while, but it is well known that this is a value line with cheaper / lighter cooling assemblies than other MSI models like the Gaming X and Suprim lines.

The MSI Radeon RX 7600 Mech 2x Classic is a dual-fan card, like the reference model, and leverages the following cooling technologies: Torx Fan 3.0, Zero Frozr, Core Pipe, and Thermal Padding. It is good to see a protective 'brushed' backplate at a price, but it is probably plastic (not metal) if inherited from other Mech models. Amazon's listing says the GPU clock speed is 2,695 GHz, but it will be 2,695 MHz. The AMD reference model we reviewed had a GPU boost clock speed of 2,625 MHz, just 2.6% slower than the MSI.

The RX 7600 Mech 2x has a code for Resident Evil 4, a nice bonus. However, it will take a month until Amazon delivers, which is a long wait time.

Faster delivery of a below MSRP Radeon RX 7600 graphics card can be had for a little bit more cash at the time of writing. We note an XFX Speedster SWFT210 Radeon RX 7600 graphics card is currently listed at $257.99 on Amazon, with a delivery date in the first week of July. RE4 is also free with this model. However, for faster GPU thirst satisfaction, you must pay MSRP (i.e., $269) for a card with rapid delivery.

In the intro, we put these improved prices in the perspective of the impending launch of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4060. We know that the green team's most budget-minded card so far is supposed to debut at $299, but there may already be some pressure on that pricing decision.

Checking the 1080p Rasterization Ultra gaming scores of the RX 7600 from our review, the AMD RDNA 3 card was 14.4% faster than the RTX 3060. According to Nvidia's newest tease of RTX 4060 performance, the new card will be just 20% faster than its predecessor "without frame gen" technologies turned on. This hints at only a slight 1080p Rasterization Ultra performance benefit to the RTX 4060 over the recently launched Radeon RX 7600. However, the RTX 4060 cards will be asking a ~$50 premium at launch for that slight advantage.

We will, of course, have a better picture of the GeForce RTX 4060 performance and, thus, more precise comparisons with the Radeon RX 7600 later in the week. We will also be updating our extensive GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy 2023 data, covering 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, so you can see where the cards end up sitting at your regular monitor resolution.

Right now on Amazon US, there are some highly attractive deals on the AMD Radeon flagship graphics cards. An AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX can be had for as little as $881.99 using an instant discount coupon. This graphics card, based on the AMD RDNA 3 architecture, ranks highly in our list of the best graphics cards and sits very close to the top of our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

The hard to resist headlining offer is on the XFX Speedster MERC310 AMD Radeon RX 7900XTX Black. If you click through, you can see this model is listed at 5% off, nominally $979.99 on the XFX store on Amazon. However, a quick click of the $98 discount coupon (you may need to click on the list of available options) brings down the price to $881.99. Customers get free delivery and can apply for the free Resident Evil 4 code as well.

If you want other options, a little more cash can instead get you a Sapphire model. On the Sapphire Technology Store on Amazon you can see listed a Sapphire 11322-02-20G Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX. The base price reads $999.99, but a quick coupon click delivers a $100 discount, bringing the total to just under $900. That's $20 more than the XFX card, but both of these may sell out.

The Sapphire card also qualifies for Prime shipping, which means you can get it in one or two days. The XFX seems to only allow slower shipping, with an ETA of next week. There's also a free code for Resident Evil 4 with the purchase of this GPU.

Both of the graphics cards above come with a factory overclock, though you can tweak them further if you like. The XFX GPU has a default boost clock of 2,615 MHz, while the Sapphire has a boost clock of is 2,525 MHz. The reference boost clock for AMD's GPU is 2,500 MHz.

Bang-for-the-Buck Considerations

We maintain a performance and street pricing table in our Best GPUs for Gaming feature. However, discount coupons are tricky to keep an eye on, as they come and go. Let's consider the average 4K FPS figures achieved by some top-end GPUs vs their street price for this exercise.

• AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX: 4K FPS average of 56.3FPS, best online price of $882, FPS/$ is 0.0638.
  
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: 4K FPS average of 84.8FPS, best Amazon price of $1,599, FPS/$ is 0.0530.
  
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Ti: 4K FPS average of 50.0FPS, best Amazon price of $799, FPS/$ is 0.0626.

While there's news swirling around Nvidia's upcoming RTX 4060 (non-Ti) debuting at some silly pricing in Europe — as high as €499 ($550) for an Asus ROG Strix model — we're seeing established top-tier cards with impressive discounts right now. Moreover, previous gen gems like the Radeon RX 6800 XT can now be found for as little as $467 in the US.

The best values will inevitably be on lower priced GPUs, but with the current discounts, the RX 7900 XTX moves up the ladder. If you've been looking at AMD's halo 7000-series GPU, the latest discounts might be the best we'll see in the near term.

AMD's new Radeon RX 7600 officially launches today, starting at $269. If you're interested in buying one, we've compiled a list of all the AIB partner cards that are currently available. This launch has turned out to be very different from other AMD (and Nvidia) launches, with almost none of the RX 7600 models appearing in advance on AIB partner websites, making it difficult to figure out what cards are coming out and when. Many graphics card manufacturers are also revealing just a single RX 7600 SKU for now, suggesting this was a rushed launch.

The RX 7600 is now available at Amazon, Newegg, Best Buy, and other retailers. All the usual brands are present, including Gigabyte, Sapphire, XFX, PowerColor, MSI, Asus, and ASRock — though some models may already be sold out. We've updated our listings and links for your convenience.

There are plenty of cards starting at AMD's base $269.99 MSRP. The most expensive model we've seen so far comes from Asus, with the ROG Strix card priced at $339.99. Considering this is a midrange GPU and there are plenty of faster options available for under $350 (like the RX 6700 XT), we wouldn't suggest buying a higher cost card unless you really go in for the excessive RGB bling.

To quickly recap, the RX 7600 is AMD's new mainstream GPU for the sub-$300 price bracket, offering RX 6650 XT-like performance based on our testing. The RX 7600 features the RDNA 3 architecture, 2048 cores, 32 CUs, 64 AI cores, 32 Ray Accelerators, a boost clock of 2625MHz, 32MB of Infinity Cache, and 288 GBps of memory bandwidth operating on a 128-bit wide bus. It also has AV1 encoding/decoding hardware support and DisplayPort 2.1 outputs.

Here's the shortlist, in alphabetical order, but we have pictures and further descriptions below:

• $269: ASRock RX 7600 Challenger (Newegg)
• $289: ASRock RX 7600 Phantom Gaming OC (Newegg)
• $289: ASRock RX 7600 Steel Legend (Newegg)
• $279: Asus RX 7600 Dual OC (Amazon, Newegg)
• $339: Asus RX 7600 ROG Strix OC (Newegg)
• $269: Gigabyte RX 7600 Gaming OC 8G (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)
• $269: MSI RX 7600 Mech 2X OC (Newegg, $304 at Amazon)
• $269: PowerColor RX 7600 Fighter (Amazon, Newegg)
• $289: PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound (Newegg, $457 at Amazon)
• $269: Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse (Amazon, Newegg)
• $269: XFX RX 7600 QICK308 (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)
• $269: XFX RX 7600 SWFT210 (Best Buy, Newegg)

ASRock Radeon RX 7600

ASRock has three RX 7600 models out on the market right now, including two triple-fan SKUs and a dual-fan SKU. The triple-fan models are rather large for this GPU, and appear to be the same base design but with a different shroud on the Steel Legend variant. They're 305mm long with a 2.4-slot thickness and cost $20 extra, though they come factory overclocked. The dual-fan version stays with a compact design like most other RX 7600 models.

$269: ASRock RX 7600 Challenger (Newegg)
$289: ASRock RX 7600 Phantom Gaming OC (Newegg)
$289: ASRock RX 7600 Steel Legend (Newegg)

Asus Radeon RX 7600

Asus currently has two variants of the RX 7600, both dual-fan solutions. The base model Dual OC is a no-frills design, while the ROG Strix has RGB lighting and costs $70 more. It's currently out of stock at Newegg.

$279: Asus RX 7600 Dual OC (Amazon, Newegg)
$339: Asus RX 7600 ROG Strix OC (Newegg)

Gigabyte Radeon RX 7600

For now, Gigabyte only has one RX 7600 SKU available to see on its website, a factory overclocked triple-fan Gaming card, with black and silver accents — similar to that of Gigabyte's other "Gaming" branded graphics cards.

$269: Gigabyte RX 7600 Gaming OC 8G (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)

MSI Radeon RX 7600

Currently, MSI also has one RX 7600 SKU available, the RX 7600 Mech 2X. It's a relatively compact two-slot dual-fan graphics card with a black and silver theme.

$269: MSI RX 7600 Mech 2X OC (Newegg, $304 at Amazon)

PowerColor Radeon RX 7600

PowerColor has two RX 7600 models available. The base model Fighter features a compact dual-fan design with no RGB lighting or extras. The Hellhound meanwhile has a 2695 MHz boost clock and comes with blue LED fans with a 2.2-slot width. (It's currently backordered on Newegg, while the Amazon price is a seriously inflated third-party seller.)

$269: PowerColor RX 7600 Fighter (Amazon, Newegg)
$289: PowerColor RX 7600 Hellhound (Newegg, $457 at Amazon)

Sapphire RX 7600

Like Gigabyte and MSI, Sapphire has only prepared one 7600 SKU at this time, the RX 7600 Pulse with two fans and a red and black paint scheme. It's running reference clocks as well.

$269: Sapphire RX 7600 Pulse (Amazon, Newegg)

XFX Radeon RX 7600

Rounding out the list, XFX has two RX 7600 graphics cards, the triple-fan QICK308 and dual-fan SWFT210. The numbers (308 and 210) refer to the length of the card, if you're wondering. Both cards have stealthy matte black finishes that would go well with any computer build.

$269: XFX RX 7600 QICK308 (Newegg, $279 at Best Buy)
$269: XFX RX 7600 SWFT210 (Best Buy, Newegg)

AMD's RX 7900 XT is gaining traction in the GPU market and has now become the second-best-selling graphics card on Amazon, thanks to a 17% discount below MSRP at the time of this writing. This makes AMD's 7900 XT one of the best bargains in the high-end GPU market, as well as one of the Best GPUs in general, with superior value to Nvidia's RTX 4070 Ti.

The specific model in question is the XFX RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC310, which is being sold for $787. At this price, the 7900 XT undercuts the RTX 4070 Ti by $12, while outperforming it by 9% in rasterized games. It also features 8GB more video memory with a total of 20GB compared to just 12 on the 4070 Ti. This will be important for driving AAA titles at maximum settings and resolutions for years to come.

The card itself is a massive triple-fan, triple slot graphics card, with a length of 13.5 inches. The shroud is painted in a stealthy matte black finish, with silver accents. Clock speeds range from 1775MHz base to a maximum boost frequency of 2535MHz. The card also features two PCIe 8-pin supplementary power connectors, with XFX recommending a 750W PSU at a minimum to run this card.

With this killer deal, it's not surprising that AMD is getting a lot of sales with its RX 7900 XT. Nvidia's high prices for its RTX 40 series graphics cards, paired with the underwhelming memory configuration of the 12GB RTX 4070 series, is not an inspiring combination for gamers. The rather low memory capacity is especially concerning since 12GB is the minimum requirement to drive 4K gaming at ultra settings on new 2023 titles, including Resident Evil 4 and The Last of Us Part 1.

To re-iterate, the 7900 XT's performance is excellent for rasterized games, with a 9% lead over the RTX 4070 Ti at 1440P. This sandwiches the 7900 XT's performance in between the RTX 4070 Ti and the much more expensive GeForce RTX 4080, while being cheaper than both those competitors. The only exception to this rule is in RT performance, where the RTX 4070 unsurprisingly yields an 18% lead due to its superior ray tracing hardware. Nvidia also has an advantage in DLSS support, with far more games supporting the super sampling tech compared to AMD's FSR counterpart.

But if Nvidia's fancy tech isn't your cup of tea, or you just don't mind making some sacrifices for superior value, AMD's RX 7900 XT is a killer deal that's hard to pass up for high-refresh esports, native 1440P, and 4K gaming.

AMD’s exclusive board partners are readying their Radeon RX 7600 designs for Computex, according to Igor’s Lab. That means AIBs like ASRock, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX should be expected to show their RX 7600 designs at the world’s biggest PC tech show, which kicks off at the end May. However, it is strange to see AMD release its desktop GPUs out of order like this, as we are still waiting for RX 7800 (XT) and RX 7700 (XT) designs – where are they?

Igor's Lab contends that the Radeon RX 7600 cards from the above-named closest partners of AMD will be finished and ready for Computex, just a few weeks away. Interestingly, he adds that those board partners who also support Nvidia GPUs (e.g., Asus, Gigabyte, MSI) have decided to wait and see how well the RX 7600 desktop GPUs sell before dipping their toes in the market.

Igor hints that the Radeon RX 7700 XT has been left on the back burner for now as AMD (and/or its partners) foresee a shift in mid-range pricing. The idea appears to be to launch the lower tier RX 7600 and see how it fares, then price gap up to the RX 7700 XT. For now, Igor’s Lab doesn’t mention the RX 7800 (XT).

We hope the Radeon RX 7600 can bring a new level of affordability to the latest-gen graphics cards. It is expected to be much more economical to produce than the flagship RDNA 3 graphics cards we have seen thus far, those with their chiplet-based designs and lashings of VRAM, etc. The Radeon RX 7600 will be a small (Navi 33?) According to the latest information, GPU has 28 Compute Units (1,792 SPs) and a modest 8GB of VRAM. It is widely expected to be very much the same as the Radeon RX 7600M but with the benefit of desktop power/thermals for much more impressive clocks and, therefore, performance.

If the rumors are correct, the new RX 7600 desktop graphics card aims to compete with the GeForce RTX 4060, not the RTX 4060 Ti or the known quantity of the RTX 4070.

While on the topic of mid-range green team desktop graphics cards, in the same report, Igor’s Lab says that the RTX 4060 Ti will also debut at Computex. With the slow RX 4070 market and Nvidia reportedly slowing GPU supplies for this SKU, the source indicates that the initial supply of RTX 4060 Ti cards will be lower than the RTX 4070.

Igor sees strong polarization of the desktop GPU market. He explains this observation by noting that the GeForce RTX 4090 was a strong seller among enthusiasts who absolutely must have a flagship graphics card. Meanwhile, consumers of traditional mid-range graphics card buyers have seen Nvidia’s pitches, and many are keeping their powder dry with hope for the new entry-level offerings.

Of course, there are steady sales of some options in the current Ada Lovelace product stack, but the overall downward pricing pressure continues. The sweetest spots for Nvidia sales so far are said to be the RTX 4090 for halo buyers and the RTX 4070 Ti for pragmatic performance enthusiasts.

Last, but not least, remember to add a pinch of salt to the above morsels from Igor, but don’t let the salt douse your excitement for Computex.

Today marks the day you can finally buy AMD's all-new Radeon RX 7900 XTX and 7900 XT graphics cards. Reference models and AMD's AIB partner models are now available to purchase from the usual retailers like Newegg, Micro Center, and even AMD's own store — assuming you can find any still in stock.

From what we're seeing online, there's plenty of demand for AMD's new cards, and Newegg has already sold out of almost all RX 7900 XTX models and some RX 7900 XTs. AMD's store is also taking a big hit, with a queue time of around 45 minutes at the time of this writing. But AMD is featuring combo deals, of which some are in stock, so it may be worth the wait.

Update: Most of the cards we've found online are now out of stock, though some are "early listings" with a "Notify" option. We'll update this page as we find additional listings, and in the coming days we expect some of the cards will come back in stock. And on that note, Newegg has four models of the 7900 XT currently in stock, and Amazon shows three XFX cards — though the Amazon listings are all slated to arrive in 2–4 weeks.

In any case if you want a RX 7900 XTX or XT right now, act quickly before stock runs out completely. This launch appears to be different from the RTX 4080 launch, with significantly more demand from consumers. That or AMD just didn't supply enough cards for launch day.

Amazon

XFX RX 7900 XT for $899.99
XFX RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC310 Black for $949.99
XFX RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC310 Ultra for $979.99

PowerColor RX 7900 XT for $899.99 — Out of stock

Newegg

RX 7900 XTX

ASRock RX 7900 XTX Aqua for $1449.99 — Out of stock
ASRock RX 7900 XTX Taichi for $1199.99 — Out of stock
ASRock RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming for $1099.99 — Out of stock
ASRock RX 7900 XTX for $999.99 — Out of stock
Asus RX 7900 XTX for $999.99 — Out of stock
Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX Gaming for $999.99 — Out of stock
Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX for $999.99 — Out of stock
PowerColor RX 7900 XTX Red Devil for $1099.99 — Out of stock
PowerColor RX 7900 XTX Hellhound for $999.99 — Out of stock
Sapphire RX 7900 XTX Nitro for $1099.99 — Out of stock
Sapphire RX 7900 XTX for $999.99 — Out of stock
XFX RX 7900 XTX Gaming for $999.99 — Out of stock
XFX RX 7900 XTX Speedster MERC310 for $1099.99 — Out of stock

RX 7900 XT

PowerColor RX 7900 XT Hellhound for $899.99 — In stock
Sapphire RX 7900 XT for $899.99 — In stock
XFX Gaming RX 7900 XT for $899.99 — In stock
XFX RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC310 for $979.99 — In stock

Asus RX 7900 XT for $899.99 — Out of stock
ASRock RX 7900 XT Taichi for $999.99 — Out of stock
ASRock RX 7900 XT Phantom Gaming for $949.99 — Out of stock
ASRock RX 7900 XT for $899.99 — Out of stock
Gigabyte RX 7900 XT Gaming for $1,099.99 — Out of stock
Gigabyte RX 7900 XT for $899.99 — Out of stock

AMD Store (With a Potential Queue)

AMD Store link

RX 7900 XTX and XT Reference Cards

AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX for $999.00 — Out of stock
AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT for $899.00 — Out of stock

RX 7900 Series and Ryzen 7000 Series Combo Deals

AMD RX 7900 XTX + Ryzen 9 7950X Bundle for $1698.00 — Out of stock
AMD RX 7900 XTX + Ryzen 9 7900X Bundle for $1,548.00 — Out of stock

AMD RX 7900 XT + Ryzen 7 7700X Bundle for $1298.00 — Out of stock
AMD RX 7900 XT + Ryzen 5 7600X Bundle for $1198.00 — Out of stock

Best Buy

RX 7900 XTX

Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX Gaming OC for $1099.99 — Out of stock
Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX for $999.99 — Out of stock
XFX RX 7900 XTX Speedster MERC310 for $1099.99 — Out of stock

RX 7900 XT

Gigabyte RX 7900 XT Gaming OC for $999.99 — Out of stock
XFX RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC310 for $979.99 — Out of stock

B&H Photo

XFX RX 7900 XTX Speedster MERC319 for $1,099.99 — Notify when available
XFX RX 7900 XT Speedster MERC310 for $979.99 — Notify when available

Micro Center (in store only)

RX 7900 XTX

ASRock RX 7900 XTX for $999.99
Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX Aorus for $1,149.99
Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX Gaming for $1099.99
Gigabyte RX 7900 XTX for $999.99
PowerColor RX 7900 XTX for $999.99
Sapphire RX 7900 XTX for $999.99

RX 7900 XT

ASRock RX 7900 XT for $899.99
Gigabyte RX 7900 XT Gaming OC for $999.99
Gigabyte RX 7900 XT for $899.99
PowerColor RX 7900 XT for $899.99
Sapphire RX 7900 XT for $899.99

Availability of AMD's incoming Radeon RX 7900-series graphics card starting December 13 has primarily become a byword given the spread of unofficial information never addressed by AMD or its partners. Finally, however, XFX has something to offer, and this is custom designed —  Merc 310 — Radeon RX 7900 XT, and Radeon RX 7900 XTX boards at Amazon (as noticed by @momomo_us). The listings are no longer available, but both products appear to have steep price tags, though.

Now, for the XFX Merc 310, we have two graphics cards priced at $979 and $1,099. They're more expensive than than AMD's MSRP. Is it bad? Not exactly, some graphics cards are more costly, and but there is a crowd that buys them.

XFX's cards are indeed custom designs of AMD's Radeon RX 7900 series based on the RDNA 3 architecture. They feature AMD's Navi 31 graphics processors in XTX and XT configurations and 24GB and 20 GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory, respectively. While our own Jarred Walton has yet to test these graphics cards, something in the air tells us that we are indeed about to admire some of the best graphics cards available (well, in a couple of weeks).

XFX's background would have been little but surprising for this company not to offer any reference RDNA 3-based premium graphics cards. Meanwhile, since we are performance PC enthusiasts here at Tom's Hardware, we look forward to custom graphics cards based on the RDNA 3 flag carrying Navi 31 GPU.

We have seen reports that Sapphire, PowerColor, and XFX are to offer custom high-end Radeon RX 7900-series products on Day 1 — which is December 13 for the RDNA 3 architecture — but these reports yet have to prove themselves.

The global economy may be experiencing inflation, but the price of key PC components is actually quite low and, in many cases, going lower. Because GPU prices are dropping rapidly while SSDs, RAM (at least DDR4 RAM) and power supplies remain inexpensive, there has rarely been a better time to build a low-cost gaming PC than right now. With today’s prices,you can configure a solid, 1080p-capable gaming PC for under $500 that includes both discrete graphics and a 12th-gen Intel CPU. We’re also able to configure a very-capable gaming PC for under $400 using AMD integrated graphics.

Below, we’ll show you how to build a gaming PC for under $500, or even under $400 using parts available from major U.S. retailers today. Please note that the prices we list were current when we wrote this, but may go up or down slightly by the time you read this. Because these lists are based primarily on pricing, we have not tested every specific part listed, nor have we tested them all together. The cost of an operating system is not included, but you can get Windows 10 or 11 for free or cheap. And, if you are willing to spend much more than $500, please check our list of the best PC builds for more powerful recommendations.

Gaming PC Under $500 With Discrete Graphics

Our under $500 gaming PC is built around two key components: an Intel Core i3-12100F CPU and an AMD Radeon RX 6400-powered graphics card (ours is from XFX but any RX 6400 should perform similarly). While the other parts are good values for the money, you can easily substitute a similarly specked PSU, SSD, RAM kit or H610M motherboard and get the same performance.

With 4 performance cores, a 4.3-GHz boost speed and a budget price, Intel’s Core i3-12100 is the best cheap CPU right now and the Core i3-12100F is a variant that comes without integrated graphics (which we won’t need). In writing our Intel Core i3-12100 review, we put Intel’s processor through a bevy of benchmarks and found that its single-threaded performance – the type which matters most for gaming – was better than processors which cost twice as much, including the Ryzen 5 5600X and Intel’s last-gen Core i5-11600K. The Core i3-12100F also comes with a CPU cooler in the box, so you don’t need to spend more money there. 

We’re going with the Radeon RX 6400, because it’s the cheapest current-gen GPU on the market, not because it’s one of the best graphics cards. In our tests, the RX 6400 averaged a very-playable 56 fps when we benchmarked it in 8 popular games at 1080p resolution with medium settings. That’s not blazing fast, but it’s good enough to play AAA titles without stutter.

We chose the RX 6400 so we could configure a gaming PC for under $500, but if you can stretch your budget just another $20, the much-faster Radeon RX 6500 XT is available for as little as $179 and is 30 percent faster and a much better buy. Both GPUs have a boost clock of 2.8 GHz and 4GB of VRAM, but the 6500 XT has 1024 GPU cores to the 6400’s 768, and its VRAM operates at 18 Gbps instead of 16 Gbps.

To support our 12th-gen Intel CPU, we need an inexpensive motherboard with an LGA 1700 socket. The lowest-end chipset with that socket is Intel’s H610 and we found it cheaply in the $89 MSI PRO H610M-G. This is a basic board with just two RAM slots and a single M.2, PCIe Gen 3 slot for storage. We saw a board that was $10 cheaper but iy didn’t have the M.2 slot we needed for our choice of SSD.

Our storage drive of choice is the TeamGroup MP33 at 512GB capacity. We reviewed the TeamGroup MP33 back in 2020 and found that it offers really good performance for the money, and it’s more affordable now than it was back then. This NVMe SSD boasts rated sequential read and write speeds of 1,700 and 1,400 MBps respectively, about triple what you get from a SATA SSD.

To hit our $500 price, we had to stick with a modest 8GB of RAM, in the form of a 2x4GB DDR4-3200 kit from Crucial. Any low-cost kit of DDR4-3200 RAM would fit the bill here. However, if you can splurge just another $15 to $20, you can get 16GB of RAM as we spotted TeamGruop’s T-Force Zeus DDR4-3200 RAM in a 2 x 8GB kit for just $48. Considering that the motherboard only has two RAM slots, you’d be wise to spend a little extra now rather than upgrading later.

Our case is the Rosewill FBM-X2 which was $44 at Newegg at the time we wrote this. Admittedly, this is a very low-end case as it has no window for viewing your components. However, it does have enough room for four 120mm fans  or two 120mm fans and a 240mm radiator. Its slick, gunmetal gray color is, at least, solid-looking and you have to make some sacrifices to build a gaming PC for under $500.

The final piece of our under $500 gaming PC is a 430W power supply from Thermaltake. Any 400 to 500W power supply from a reputable brand will get the job done here. The Thermaltake Smart 430W is 80+ certified, though not Bronze or Gold, which means it has some degree of efficiency considerations.

If you can stretch your budget just a little bit father, up anywhere from $20 to $80, we recommend swapping out the RAM, GPU and storage for slightly better parts. Our first priority is going from 8GB of RAM up to 16GB, because the motherboard only has two DIMM slots so you’d have to throw away your current RAM if you wish to upgrade later on. Moving up to TeamGroup’s $48, 16GB (2 x 8GB) kit costs less than $20 more and will make all aspects of your computing life easier, from surfing the web to document editing and gaming.

Adding another $20 to move up to a Radeon RX 6500 XT from the RX 6400 is another no-brainer. You gain about 30 percent more performance for a very minimal outlay. 

The lowest priority upgrade, though still a good one, is moving from a 512GB SSD to a 1TB capacity, which in the case of the TeamGroup MP33, is just $30 more. You can certainly get by with a 512GB SSD, but if you plan to install more than three or four AAA games, you’ll likely need the extra storage.

Gaming PC Under $400

If you want to build a gaming PC for under $400, there is no way that you can afford a graphics card. That’s why you need a relatively-cheap CPU with excellent integrated graphics, in our case the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G. The $160, 65-watt CPU has 6 cores, 12 threads and a maximum boost clock of 4.4 GHz. It also comes with a cooler in the box so you don’t need to spend money on one. 

In our multi-threaded application tests, the Ryzen 5 5600G beat the pants off of many competitors including the quad-core, Core i3-12100 we use in our under $500 gaming PC.

More importantly, the Ryzen 5 5600G’s integrated RX 7 Vega GPU is good enough to play games well at 720p and passably at 1080p. On our 720p gaming test suite, the 5600G averaged 75.4 fps, which is more than playable. When we bumped the resolution up to 1080p, the average fps dropped to a still-respectable 43.5 fps. But on many games, you’ll be able to dial down some more settings to get the frame rate higher.

Our motherboard for our under $400 gaming PC is the ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0. It’s important to note that, as the B450 chipset is older than Ryzen 5000 series CPUs, not all B450 motherboards will work the 5600G out of the box. All will support these CPUs after a BIOS update but, if you don’t have an older Ryzen CPU lying around, you’ll likely have no way to boot up and perform that update. However, the B450M-HDV R4.0 (make sure it’s R4.0) promises compatibility at first boot.

ASRock’s board has only two DIMM slots, so keep in mind that, if you go with the 8GB of RAM we need to stay under $400, you won’t be able to upgrade without replacing the memory. However, aside from that limitation, the B450M-HDV R4.0 has other basic features, including support for M.2 PCIe Gen3 SSDs.

Our case, RAM, storage and power supply are the same as on our under $500 gaming PC. That means we’re going with just 8GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, a modest 512GB SSD and a 430W power supply. The Rosewill FBM-X2 is a less-than-ideal case so, if you see another case on sale for less than $60, it would be well-worth considering.

As with the under $500 gaming PC build, the sub-$400 configuration will be significantly better if you spend another $20 to upgrade to a 16GB (2 x 8GB) kit or, less important for performance and more for game storage space, an extra $30 to move up to a 1TB SSD.

Related Content

• How to Build a PC
• Should You Build or Buy Your Next Gaming PC?
• Best PC Builds for Gaming

The AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT rounds out our trifecta of refreshed RX 6000-series cards, joining the Radeon RX 6950 XT and Radeon RX 6750 XT. So does the RX 6650 XT rank among the best graphics cards, and where does it land in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy? Let's find out.

Our test card comes courtesy of PowerColor, which sent its RX 6650 XT Hellhound Spectral White. There's also a 'normal' Hellhound in the more traditional black/gray motif. Like the other 6x50 XT third-party cards we've looked at, the Hellhound comes with a factory overclock. Here's the specs sheet for the PowerColor model alongside the reference designs from other competing GPUs. 

Thanks to the factory overclock and the color scheme, the PowerColor RX 6650 XT costs a bit more than the reference model. The GPU boost clock is 54 MHz higher and 100 MHz higher than the RX 6600 XT, but that's really about it. However, we don't have a reference RX 6600 XT, and in our gaming test, the XFX RX 6600 XT we used averaged higher GPU clocks than the RX 6650 XT. But the higher clocked GDDR6 memory does come into play, at least.

Unlike the 6950 XT and 6750 XT, which will coexist alongside the 6900 XT and 6700 XT, AMD has stated that it's phasing out the RX 6600 XT and replacing it with the RX 6650 XT. Right now, there's about a $25 price premium for the new GPU, which is basically in line with AMD's official MSRP, except you can find both the 6600 XT and 6650 XT for less than the recommended price.

Graphics card pricing and availability have also improved a lot since 2021, and you can find links to online resellers for the above GPUs. The AMD cards are selling at or below MSRP, while the competing Nvidia GPUs are still marked up by 20–30%. Prices continue to drop, however, and we wouldn't be surprised to see most if not all current-generation GPUs selling below their official MSRPs this fall — just in time for new cards to arrive.

We should also see RDNA 3 GPUs from AMD by the end of the year, but we expect both those and Nvidia's upcoming Ada GPUs to target gaming enthusiasts and extreme performance first. Unfortunately, that means we likely won't see an RX 7600 XT or RTX 4060 (or whatever they end up being called) until some time in 2023.

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

If you're looking for a change of pace from the traditional black, silver, and/or gray color schemes that have graced graphics cards since time immemorial, you might enjoy the Spectral White motif on PowerColor's card. It won't make your PC run any faster, but it could go nicely with a white case. However, fans of RGB lighting will be disappointed as the card has static white LEDs on the fans. Sorry, no technicolor light shows from this GPU.

The PowerColor RX 6650 XT is relatively lightweight compared to higher-end graphics cards. It measures 220x132x45mm and only weighs 740g. That's still heavier than the Sapphire RX 6600 XT Pulse but nowhere near the size of the triple-fan ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming. There will, of course, be other RX 6650 XT designs with triple fans, but the official TBP of 180W means we shouldn't need massive coolers — unless you want a quieter running card.

Speaking of which, there's a switch to toggle between OC mode and Silent mode on the Hellhound. Normally, such switches apply different clock speeds and other settings, but as far as we can tell from testing, this mostly impacts the temperature and fan speed targets. Nevertheless, performance remained effectively unchanged, so if you don't mind a slightly hotter running GPU, give the silent mode a shot.

While the white color scheme might be aesthetically pleasing to some users, the Hellhound design is otherwise pretty boxy, with right angles on most edges and no other sculpting of the shroud. That's not necessarily bad, just a bit simplistic compared to something like an Asus ROG Strix or MSI Gaming X design. Also, note that the fans don't have an integrated rim, so they'll generally have to spin faster to provide the same cooling performance as better fans.

There's a reflective rim surrounding the fans, which serves the same goal of directing airflow. The mirror finish looks pretty cool and helps spread the LED lighting. PowerColor also gets a few bonus points for orienting the heatsink fins perpendicular to the IO plate, which means at least some of the heat from the card will exit out the back of the case — probably not much, but it's better than nothing.

A single 8-pin PEG connector provides power for the card, and a metal backplate protects surface-mounted devices. As we've seen with so many other cards, you get the typical three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs and a single HDMI 2.1 connection, which should suffice for most people. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Our 2022 GPU testbed consists of a Core i9-12900K processor, MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 WiFi motherboard, and DDR4-3600 memory (with XMP enabled). We're running Windows 11 to ensure we get the most out of Alder Lake, and we're running the latest game patches and drivers for this testing — 22.5.2 in the case of the RX 6650 XT, which is supposed to boost DirectX 11 gaming performance. (We've retested the RX 6950 XT with the latest drivers, which netted a mere 2–3% increase overall.)

Our gaming tests consist of a "standard" suite of eight games without ray tracing enabled, and a separate "ray tracing" suite of six games that all use multiple RT effects. As this is a midrange card (even if it's at more of a high-end price now, thanks inflation), we've tested at 1080p medium and ultra, and 1440p ultra in our standard suite. We limited our DirectX Raytracing (DXR) suite to testing at 1080p medium and ultra.

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

The RX 6650 XT generally targets 1080p gaming, though it can often handle more than that, depending on the game. At 1080p ultra, the RX 6650 XT Hellhound averaged 86 fps, and was above 60 fps in every game except Total War: Warhammer 3. That's a good start, though comparing the 6650 XT with other GPUs puts a damper on things.

Overall, the factory overclocked 6650 XT was only 2% faster than the factory overclocked 6600 XT. Other card models might perform a bit better than the Hellhound, especially if they raise the power limit beyond 180W, but there's little difference between the old and new AMD GPUs. AMD's newcomer also outperformed the RTX 3060 by 15%, but the RTX 3060 Ti was 13% faster overall.

There's no real need to drop settings down to medium, at least with our current gaming suite, but it's interesting to see how performance changes. Our standard suite averaged 150 fps, and while the RX 6650 XT was only 1% faster than the RX 6600 XT, its standing relative to Nvidia's GPUs improved slightly. It was 19% faster than the RTX 3060, and this time the RTX 3060 Ti was only 6% faster.

That's thanks to the 32MB Infinity Cache, which has higher hit rates as the amount of unique data requests decreases, boosting the effective bandwidth. Conversely, running at a higher resolution and settings will reduce the cache's efficacy, which happens at 1440p ultra.

The RX 6650 XT still averaged just a hair more than 60 fps at 1440p ultra, but half of the games fell below that mark. The gap between the 6650 XT and the 6600 XT remained the same 2% as at 1080p ultra, but the lead over the RTX 3060 shrank to 9%, while the RTX 3060 Ti increased its lead to 22%.

As long as you're not using ray tracing, 1440p gaming is still viable on the RX 6650 XT. Games with FSR 2.0 will also be quite playable, not that there are many of those right now, though more are coming. You could even play some games at 4K ultra, provided you're okay with mostly targeting 30 fps instead of 60 fps. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Flipping over to our ray tracing test suite, the RX 6650 XT doesn't look quite so compelling. It was 2% faster than the outgoing 6600 XT at 1080p medium, but the RTX 3060 — even without DLSS — was 25% faster overall, and the RTX 3060 Ti was 67% faster. The 6650 XT managed a playable 44 fps on average, though Cyberpunk 2077 still dropped below that mark, and Metro Exodus Enhanced was the only game to break 60 fps.

We've said this before, and it bears repeating: Ray tracing in games definitely isn't required. It can be a nice extra, but most gamers will take smoother frame rates over the improved visuals. Ray tracing only really starts to matter when you have excess GPU performance, like with an RTX 3090 Ti or similar. Even then, you're still often faced with running at lower resolutions to get smooth performance.

1080p ultra with ray tracing ended up being too much for the RX 6650 XT in most cases, at least for demanding RT effects — which is what we prefer, as the less demanding RT effects also tend to be less noticeable. Just two of the six games remained playable, Control and Metro Exodus Enhanced. The others dropped below 30 fps, and Cyberpunk even fell into the teens.

This is where AMD's smaller 32MB Infinity Cache and the narrower 128-bit memory interface prove insufficient. Ray tracing needs more memory and bandwidth, and the RX 6650 XT comes up short. The RTX 3060 was also 30% faster now, while the RTX 3060 Ti increased its lead to 73%. With DLSS Quality mode, you can tack on another 20–30% performance for the RTX cards with little loss in discernable image quality.

We're interested to see where AMD goes with RDNA 3. Intel doesn't appear to be putting much effort into the ray tracing hardware on its Arc GPUs, and considering the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X have a fixed hardware configuration, we likely won't see a major push from the game developers to go beyond what consoles can handle. But we might be wrong, and AMD might end up investing more resources into the ray tracing hardware with its next-generation GPUs. Time will tell. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

For our power, temperature, clock speed, and fan speed testing, we use Powenetics testing hardware and software. We capture in-line GPU power consumption by collecting data while looping Metro Exodus at 1440p ultra as well as while running the FurMark stress test at 1600x900. Our power testing PC uses an open testbed, as that's required for all the extra wires and riser card, and it's the same old Core i9-9900K that we've used for the past several years.

We tested the PowerColor card in both OC mode and Silent mode, powering off the PC in between mode changes. The only differences appeared to be in fan speed and GPU temperatures, with clock speeds, power, and performance remaining mostly unchanged (within the margin of error).

First things first, note that the power use of our sample RX 6600 XT card was significantly higher than the reference TBP (Typical Board Power). The 6600 XT was supposed to be a 160W card, but AMD sent us an ASRock Phantom Gaming D that looks more in the 215W range. That helps to explain some of the lack of performance differences earlier, not that it really matters now that the RX 6600 XT has officially reached end of life.

Clock speeds for the 6650 XT Hellhound are right in line with the advertised boost speed of 2589 MHz while gaming, just a bit below the RX 6600 XT. Clocks drop about 200 MHz with FurMark, though GPU power use hardly changed at all.

The fan speeds and temperatures on the Hellhound are perhaps the most interesting aspect of the design. In OC mode, temperatures stayed below 65C while the fans spun at about 2,000 RPM. On the other hand, silent mode limited the fan speed to around 1,400 RPM, with a temperature target of around 72C.

We measured noise levels at 10cm using an SPL (sound pressure level) meter aimed between the two fans. That helps to minimize the impact of the CPU cooling fans, and the noise floor (with the CPU fans running) of our test environment and equipment was <33 dB(A). OC mode resulted in fan speeds of 42% and 44.9 dB(A) noise, while silent mode dropped the fan speed to 35% with just 39.0 dB(A) — a very good result.

We also set the fan speed to a static 75%, just to see what the card might sound like when it's heavily overclocked. It reached 60 dB(A), which wasn't particularly good, though people should never see such high fan speeds during normal use. 

• MORE: Best Graphics Cards
• MORE: GPU Benchmarks and Hierarchy
• MORE: All Graphics Content

Of the three new GPUs in AMD's RX 6000-series May 2022 refresh, the RX 6650 XT feels the least necessary. Performance barely improved, though that's based on our comparisons with an RX 6600 XT that has a higher TBP and a rather large factory overclock. Regardless, it seems like AMD must have a steady supply of 18Gbps GDDR6, and it wanted more of a gap between the RX 6600 and the next GPU up the pecking order.

Right now, the least expensive RX 6650 XT we can find costs $385, compared to $360 for the least expensive RX 6600 XT. That's a 7% increase in price, for what will more likely be a 3–5% increase in performance if we were to compare similar card models. It won't really matter over the long term as the RX 6650 XT replaces the RX 6600 XT, with the latter being phased out.
Graphics card prices have dropped substantially in the first half of 2022, which is likely part of why the RX 6650 XT feels so unnecessary. At the end of 2021, the only place to reliably find the RX 6600 XT was on eBay, where you would pay upward of $600 — we tracked an average eBay price of $659 for December. Even as recently as March 2022, the RX 6600 XT still sold for close to $500. Today, cards are available at retail for as little as $360, and the average eBay price on a sold RX 6600 XT is only $340. That's how quickly things can change.

A $400 MSRP on the RX 6650 XT probably looked like a good idea in April. However, by the time May rolled around and the card launched, it already felt a bit too high, and not surprisingly, cards are now selling for less than MSRP. Ultimately, it's the real-world price and performance that matters, and the RX 6650 XT remains one of the best values — only the RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT rank ahead of it in terms of bang for the buck (FPS per dollar spent). Factor in ray tracing and DLSS, though, and you can certainly make a case for the RTX 3060.

AMD's Raise the Game Bundle is supposed to sweeten the pot, so if you're thinking of buying the Saints Row reboot or Sniper Elite 5, that's something else to consider. There will be other games added over the coming months as well, in case those games aren't on your wish list.

AMD's RX 6650 XT isn't a bad GPU by any stretch, but what you think of the card will ultimately be influenced by how much you have to pay for it. In the before times, this would have been a midrange GPU priced at under $300. Now our "midrange" offerings tend to cost $400 instead, and that's a bitter pill to swallow.

We didn't include Nvidia's older RTX 20-series GPUs in our charts, but the RTX 2070 from 2018 would compete pretty favorably against the RX 6650 XT, especially if you factor in DLSS and DXR performance. That card is now almost four years old, with a similar power draw. AMD might be 15% faster in standard gaming performance without DLSS, but that doesn't really feel like a win. Pandemics, supply chain issues, and cryptocurrency mining combined with inflation mean GPU values — meaning the amount of performance you can get for a set amount of money — have stagnated in the midrange to high-end markets compared to 2018.

As for PowerColor's RX 6650 XT Hellhound Spectral White, the aesthetics are the main selling point. If you want a white-themed graphics card, your options are limited. Zotac has a white RTX 3060, but among RX 6600 XT and RX 6650 XT GPUs, other than this PowerColor, the closest you can come would be the yin-yang Sapphire RX 6600 XT that has a white backplate and a white and black front shroud — and of course, it's discontinued now. We've done worse things than paying $50 extra for a specific color, so the Hellhound Spectral White is a viable option. If you don't care much about the color, just about any other RX 6650 XT should deliver roughly the same level of performance, perhaps at a lower price.

Overall, the RX 6650 XT doesn't really distinguish itself from the existing GPUs. You couldn't find an RX 6600 XT at a reasonable price last year, so if you haven't picked one up this year amid the falling prices, the RX 6650 XT may warrant a look. Prices will likely continue to drop, though the $400 MSRP limits how much more the RX 6650 XT can fall. It's a good card for 1080p and potentially 1440p gaming, with basically the same performance as what was already available. 

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

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.

One of the indisputable trumps of AMD's Radeon RX 6400 graphics boards is their low power consumption, enabling GPU makers to build miniature cards. This is indeed an advantage as most single-slot low-profile graphics cards on the market today are either aimed at professional applications or are outdated. This is perhaps why GPU makers are jumping on the Radeon RX 6400 bandwagon. 

Sapphire Technology's partners were among the first to leak details about the company's upcoming single-slot low-profile Pulse Radeon RX 6400 graphics card, but Sapphire will not be alone with a miniature card based on the Navi 24 graphics processing unit, as we already know. Apparently, XFX is also prepping a single-slot low-profile Swift 105 Radeon RX 6400 graphics board for the retail/channel market, reports VideoCardz. 

The XFX Swift 105 card has 4GB of 64-bit GDDR6 memory, two display outputs, and a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface (x16 mechanical/electrical) interface. While the board's box carries XFX's 'Play Hard' moniker, the Radeon RX 6400 is clearly not designed for any serious gaming and will barely handle outdated titles that are not hungry for graphics oomph. The board also does not support video encoding and AV1 decoding, so multimedia enthusiasts may want to avoid Navi 24.  

Yet, the main advantage of XFX's Swift 105 is its compatibility with virtually all systems that have a PCIe x16 slot (keep in mind that when installed into a PCIe Gen3 machine, the performance of the card may be lower due to limited PCIe bandwidth) as well as driver support that will continue for a few years down the road. By contrast, outdated products like AMD's Radeon RX 550 or Nvidia's GeForce GT 730 are outdated, so their proper support is not guaranteed. 

So far, we only know about single-slot low-profile Radeon RX 6400 graphics cards from Sapphire and XFX. Perhaps, other makers will follow suit. Meanwhile, since most desktop PCs can house dual-slot Mini-ITX graphics cards, there are several GPU manufacturers that plan to offer such products. ASRock, Biostar, and MSI are among them. These cards will feature 4GB of memory, two display outputs, a single-fan cooling system, and will lack extra power connectors, which will make them compatible even with the cheapest desktops from OEMs.  

Meanwhile, Asus is prepping its Dual Radeon RX 6400 4G (Dual-RX6400-4G) graphics card with two fans and presumably factory overclocking. While the performance of this product is something that remains to be seen, we doubt that this board will offer performance that is comparable to that of the best gaming graphics cards available today (after all, AMD's Navi 24 GPU was primarily designed with notebooks in mind), so we are not sure why install a relatively expensive cooler on such a device.

AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics cards are now being sold for far less than the manufacturer suggested retail price (MSRP) in Europe. One of Germany's biggest online PC tech retailers, Mindfactory, has a twin fan cooler PowerColor design advertised at €169 including VAT. This Euro price is equivalent to USD $189, and we must remember that Germany's VAT is quite an impactful sales tax at 19%. If we remove the added VAT to get to a price that would be advertised in the US, we would have $159.

Taking another view of the above figures, the Radeon RX 6500 XT sells about 35% below MSRP in Europe. If the same discount were applied to the US MSRP, we would be seeing these graphics cards advertised by retailers at about $130.

If you browse to the MindStar special offers section of the site, you can see there are two PowerColor models on special offer at Mindfactory today. The single-fan ITX model is €169, and the dual-fan Fighter model is just €10 more.

We visited this special offers section from the RX 6500 XT search results page, which had the same cards listed at a higher price. However, on returning to the search results page (with seven different models available) we noticed the prices had dipped to match the special offers. With these cookie-induced shopping shenanigans in mind, please check around the Mindfactory site and peruse the MindStar section if you're looking for the best prices.

Three weeks ago, we reported on Mindfactory being perhaps the first retailer of any significant size selling graphics cards beneath MSRP. At the time its best RX 6500 XT price was €199, so to drop to €169 in three weeks represents significant movement. 

PC enthusiasts and gamers might not be that interested in the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT due to its panning by reviewers. We reviewed the XFX RX 6500 XT QICK 210 and were disappointed at the MSRP and the fact that previous budget GPUs could easily outgun this new 4GB kid on the block.

That begs the question of whether the RX 6500 XT is a bellwether of trends in the graphics card market, or a special case. Looking at the data we have, it is indeed something of a special case due to how far it undershot expectations and how much it is improved upon by its nearest Nvidia Ampere competitor, the GeForce RTX 3050 (MSRP $250, just $50 more). However, there are have been plenty of other reports in recent days and weeks showing the house of cards that supports the crazy PC GPU pricing is starting to teeter.

Four days ago, we reported some welcome price reductions for GeForce RTX 3080 models and noted that EVGA's online store offered cards like the RTX 3080 12GB and RTX 3080 Ti at MSRPs. Taking a wider view, we also noted that GPU prices had dropped another 9% in the first half of March. Normally this overall market view has been a monthly update, but thanks to the accelerating rate of price drops, we thought it was worth keeping you up to date with the (good) news.

Chinese customs authorities have announced another instance of attempted technology smuggling of processors into the country. According to a Chinese Customs Office post on Weibo, a man attempted to smuggle as many as 160 Intel 11th- and 12th-gen CPUs whilst skirting customs verification and paying duties. The man, dubbed a "Walking CPU" by Chinese officials, caught the officers' attention due to his behavior and walking posture on camera, prompting a check. The inspection found him covered in expensive PC hardware.

The authorities found as many as 160 CPUs taped to various parts of the man's body, namely his calves, waist, and abdomen, a technique well-known by law enforcement. Besides the CPU bounty, the man was also smuggling 16 foldable smartphones, but details are scarce for both the CPU and phone models. Even so, it's easy to see why this could be a lucrative endeavor: Intel's 12th-gen Core 19-12900K, for instance, has a recommended retail price of $589.

A picture shared by the Chinese Customs Office identifies a CPU as being an Intel Core i5-12600KF part. It's unclear whether all the smuggled CPUs were of that model, but assuming they were and that there weren't any higher-tier CPUs in the mix, 160 Intel Core i5 12600KF CPUs would equate to $42,240 worth of silicon strapped to the smuggler's body. That's a substantial amount for a lightweight product that measures only 45.0 mm x 37.5 mm apiece, making it attractive for these smuggling attempts.

This is but another instance in the recent trend of high-value electronics smuggling, coming as the byproduct of the increasing market value (and market costs) of PC hardware as the world faces shortages of high-performance electronics. For example, earlier this weekend, Chinese customs identified a shipment of AMD Radeon XFX graphics cards that had been mislabeled in an attempt to reduce the overall declared value per graphics card and incur lower customs duties.

In 2021, another CPU smuggler was caught attempting to smuggle as many as 256 processors using the same technique (all of them Intel, as well). All the smuggled CPUs being Intel-based is likely motivated by pure transportation constraints and not by any sort of "selective fanboyism" from smuggler rings.

While Intel's CPUs feature an LGA (Land Grid Array) packaging and contact point design, AMD's AM4 socket CPUs feature a PGA (Pin Grid Array) design. This means the CPUs have pins extruding from the bottom, which could cause issues when smuggling (such as pins bending under pressure or upon impact), possibly adding another fault point that smugglers likely aren't too keen to explore. Perhaps AMD products too will be the stuff of smuggling headlines when AMD transitions to its AM5 socket, which has already been confirmed as also adopting the LGA form-factor.

A full transcription (machine translated) of the customs office announcement on Weibo follows:

[Walking CPU] On March 9, the gate customs seized an entry case of a passenger hiding a central processing unit (CPU). At about 1 a.m. that day, a man named Zeng entered the country through the customs “no declaration channel” at the travel inspection site of Gongbei Port. Customs officers found that his walking posture was abnormal and stopped him for inspection. After further inspection, customs officers seized a total of 160 CPUs and a total of 16 folded mobile phones tied with tape on the inner side of his calf, waist and abdomen. At present, the case has been further processed in accordance with relevant regulations. The customs reminds that the luggage items that individuals bring in and out of the country should be limited to their own use and a reasonable quantity, and should be subject to customs supervision. For those who evade customs supervision by means of personal concealment or item storage, which constitute smuggling, the customs will investigate legal responsibility according to law.

— Chinese Customs Office

Chinese customs authorities seized 5,840 XFX graphics cards on Friday. The GPUs were moving through Huanggang Port, in Shenzen, the transit point for people, vehicles, and goods leaving and returning to Hong Kong (Lok Ma Chau). Customs inspectors noticed that a consignment of graphics cards had several mislabeled boxes. Further investigation revealed that the total value of the graphics cards in transit was $3 million more than declared by XFX's paperwork.

Considering this story as written by the Chinese customs authority on its Weibo account, one might presume it was a simple but unsuccessful attempt by XFX to reduce the customs duty it would have had to pay to send its goods from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (low taxation) to mainland China. However, this might not be an open-and-shut case.

Chinese tech news site MyDrivers shares an interesting supplementary rumor, which might cast a new light on the import duty dodging story. The publication claims that XFX has a history of supplying consumer graphics cards direct to crypto miners, and sometimes these are taken back by XFX and sold on as new products.

If XFX is still involved in passing new GPUs to miners and then repackaging and reselling them later, this could be why some of the shipment boxes weren't labeled correctly and undervalued. The problem, of course, is whether XFX sells the used cards to informed and willing customers or the company subsequently sells them as new.

The source also noticed that, in the wake of the Chinese customs seizure, the XFX China website seemed to be closed, as did XFX's Tmall online flagship store. Perhaps the customs investigators wanted to stop sales as they worked along the distribution chain to check for further irregularities.

There are a couple of positives that we might take from the story. First of all, it shows that customs agents display a good level of curiosity concerning the specs of PC technology products like graphics cards. Secondly, the dispatch of these 5,840 graphics cards to China, with its harsh laws on crypto mining, and trading, is suitable for PC gamers there. It certainly looks like these cards were on their way to regular PC gamers in China before being stalled due to XFX's mislabeling.

Last but not least, this story is another sign that miners are deciding to offload consumer GPUs, helping bolster supplies for consumers and pushing down prices.

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.

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.

The release of Intel's Alder Lake processors and accompanying new motherboards seems to have inspired a significant wave of new benchmark world records. Of course, many of the achievements were stemmed from CPU-based tests, but over recent days some important 3DMark graphics benchmark world records have also fallen. Both the Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme world records have been claimed by overclocker Biso Biso wielding an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT. Meanwhile, the 3DMark2001 SE world record has been claimed by overclocker Rauf using an Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

3DMark Fire Strike / Extreme World Records

A 3DMark Fire Strike score of 62,389 was achieved by Korean OC expert Biso Biso on Thursday. This record is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it was done using the AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT pushed to a 3,147 MHz core clock. Secondly, it unseated a Quad-SLI Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti-powered record by Kingpin (61,206) that had stood for almost two years.

On Sunday, Biso Biso achieved another world record pole position, this time in Fire Strike Extreme 1x GPU, and validated by HWBot. Checking through the details of the feat, you can see it confirmed that the Korean overclocker used liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooling on both the Intel Core i9 12900K and XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT used in the benchmarks.

This Fire Strike Extreme record of 39,515 wasn't a big leap over the previous holders, and the top 10 all appear to use the same GPU, so this test looks like a sweet spot for AMD's top-end consumer GPU.

3DMark2001 SE World Record

Yes, people still compete fiercely over achieving the highest score in 3DMark2001 SE, which was released in, you guessed it, 2002. With such aging software, it might not be surprising that only older GPU architectures can run, using older OSes, to complete the benchmark successfully. The new world record, recorded on Sunday by Overclocker Rauf, stands at a 253,975 marks, as validated by HWBot.

Rauf used an Intel Core i9 12900K with eight P-cores active, on an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Apex motherboard, with DDR5 RAM, to grab this world record. The GPU behind his success was an Asus GeForce GTX 980 Ti Matrix Platinum Edition.

Interestingly, the CPU was cooled using LN2 and running at 7,125 MHz, but the GPU was air cooled. In the photo you can see that the GPU is covered in paper towel to prevent condensation from the CPU pot affecting or damaging it.

We have covered some other interesting benchmark and overclocking world records recently. Certain new Intel Alder Lake motherboards have a feature where users can unlock BCLK, which has inspired a flood of new records using chips you can't usually overclock, such as value-orientated Core i5, i3, Pentium and even Celeron CPUs.

In a surprising twist of fate, Nvidia's two-year-old GeForce GTX 1650 has become Newegg and Amazon's best-selling graphics card for the time being. Unfortunately, the GPU has a history of being a terrible value option and doesn't hold a place in our list of Best Graphics Cards. Still, thanks to shortages in the market today, the GeForce GTX 1650 has grown in substantial popularity.

The GeForce GTX 1650 launched over two years ago as Nvidia's successor to the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. But in our review of the GPU, it fell flat on its face compared to rivals from AMD like the widely loved Radeon RX 570 4GB and 8GB models. Simply put, its price to performance at the time could not match what AMD offered with the Radeon RX 570. The GeForce GTX 1650's only saving grace was in its shallow power consumption of just 75W, allowing some models to come to market without the need for any auxiliary power.

We suspect the GTX 1650's popularity is due to several factors, the biggest of which is Nvidia still produces its older Turing-based graphics cards such as the GeForce GTX 1650, GTX 1650 Super, GTX 1660, GTX 1660 Super, and RTX 2060.

Another essential factor to consider is the multiple SKUs that make up the GeForce GTX 1650 as we know it today. Currently, Nvidia makes four different GeForce GTX 1650 with three other dies. First, the launch version arrived with TU117 and GDDR5 memory. Then, Nvidia subsequently released an upgraded model with GDDR6 memory (giving it 50% more memory bandwidth). Finally, the chipmaker rolled out two more GDDR6 models utilizing the TU116 die with an upgraded NVENC encoder, a TU106 model with the same die used in the GeForce RTX 2060.

As confusing as all that sounds, this means Nvidia is utilizing three different dies and two different memory models for the GeForce GTX 1650, which we believe allows Nvidia to produce GeForce GTX 1650 in massive quantities relatively quickly. In addition, the chipmaker can recycle defective TU116 and TU106 dies and repurpose them into GeForce GTX 1650 graphics cards instead of scrapping, which wastes resources.

Despite the GeForce GTX 1650's popularity from both consumers and a manufacturing perspective, scalper prices for the GPU are not even remotely close to the Turing-powered graphics card's original MSRP of just $150. For example, Newegg's best-selling Geforce GTX 1650, the MSI GeForce GTX 1650 Ventus XS 4G OC, costs $354, and Amazon's Zotac Gaming GeForce GTX 1650 sells for $324. Even funnier is the fact that MSI's model is the original GDDR5 version, and it's more expensive than the GDDR6 equipped Zotac model on Amazon.

Even when comparing scalper prices, the GeForce GTX 1650's cost is pretty stale than other GPUs you can buy for "just $200" more. For $559 on Newegg (right now), you can buy a brand new XFX Speedster Swft 210 Radeon RX 6600 graphics card that will run circles around any GeForce GTX 1650.

Ultimately though, the real reason everyone is still buying the GeForce GTX 1650 in droves is that it is one of the cheapest graphics cards you can buy today at all, that can play the latest AAA games decently well.

Another AMD partner is shipping mining cards based on the company's silicon, this time via Aliexpress. From the listing we seem to have an XFX graphics card designed for mining workloads. The new XFX BC-160 card makes use of Navi 12, manufactured on 7nm silicon and packing 2304 Stream Processors across 36 Compute Units. It employs 8GB of HBM2 memory running over a 2048-bit bus.

XFX's BC-160 features a straightforward naming scheme that's unlike any other AMD product. According to spec sheets and marketing materials for the cards, decoding the product code results in a Blockchain Compute (BC) card, in the first generation (1), offering up to 69.5 MH/s typical ETH mining performance (BC-160) in a 150W TGP envelope. This hash rate was achieved under the RedHat release of Linux, which we assume refers to RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) as Red Hat Linux was discontinued in 2004. The cards also claim compatibility with the Ubuntu distro.

There are a lot of interesting elements to this card. For one, the Navi 12 silicon was primarily used in one other AMD graphics product: the Radeon Pro 5600M for laptops, specifically Apple's MacBook Pro 16-inch model. It was also used in the Radeon Pro V520, though likely in far lower quantities, and that seems to be the basis for the BC-160 design. It's interesting that there are now apparently enough surplus chips that AMD is allowing partners to repurpose the GPUs for mining cards. Then again, with Apple shifting it's MacBook Pro line to its own M1 Pro and M1 Max, there's a good chance it has no real desire for additional AMD GPUs from 2020.

Another interesting point is that these XFX mining cards are powered by two 8-pin PEG connectors. Considering a single 8-pin connector can supply 150W of power, and the PCIe x16 slot can deliver another 75W, putting two connectors on the cards seems overkill. Again, these were chips originally used in laptops, where they were tuned to consume far less than 150W — 50W, to be precise. The AMD Radeon Pro V520 had a 225W TGP, though, and similar to the BC-160 it used a single blower-fan cooling design, which should be adequate for cooling the cards considering the workloads they're meant to handle. Ethereum mining strains VRAM more than anything, and the screenshots indicate power use of around 120W.

The use of HBM2 is part of the Navi 12 design, but at least on the MacBook Pro models it was clocked at a relatively low 1540 MT/s. Even with a 2048-bit bus, that's just 394 GBps of bandwidth, while the desktop 5700 XT GDDR6 models had a 256-bit interface and ran at 14 Gbps for 448 GBps of bandwidth. The screenshots show the BC-160 mining at "1275," which looks slower than the MacBook Pro model, but it's likely double that speed in MT/s, meaning 652.8 GBps of bandwidth after overclocking.

That would explain how the card manages 70 MH/s in Ethereum mining, where the RX 5700 XT after tuning tops out at around 55 MH/s. At stock, the HBM2 likely runs at the same 2000 MT/s as the AMD Radeon Pro V520, which would put the hashrate at the target 60 MH/s. On other words, the BC-160 delivers more bandwidth than the otherwise similar Navi 10 GPUs that used GDDR6.

Being a mining card, these are headless designs, so there's no display output. That means these cards are unfortunately only ever going to fulfil a singular purpose and will never be among the best graphics cards for gaming. They're pretty much solely designed for miners, potentially keeping said miners away from the gaming-oriented RX 6000 series. That's too bad, and it shows once more than the graphics card companies are more than happy to prioritize mining cards if that's where they can make the most money on sales.

XFX's BC-160 joins Sapphire's X080 and X060 "unofficial" mining cards. Looking at how the cards differ in their design, it seems safe to say that AMD isn't providing AIB partners with a reference, blockchain-compute oriented design. Instead, AMD's partners are the ones that are designing these cards around AMD silicon. AMD likely makes the same bottom-line earnings whether the GPUs end up in RX 6000-series, RX 5000-series, or cryptocurrency mining products. Unfortunately, that also means less stock for gaming-oriented cards, as both XFX's Navi 12 and Sapphire's Navi 22 mining cards both consume 7nm chips that could otherwise have gone into the gaming segment.

Based on the mining performance and power use, the BC-160 would likely rank well in our list of the best GPUs for mining. Its HBM2 memory subsystem does increase the price, however. Sapphire's best-performing X080 has an estimated price of around $850, while the new XFX BC-160 is listed on Aliexpress for a cool $2,000. That's more than it costs for an RTX 3080 Ti, using eBay GPU prices, which can do around 80 MH/s. A video of the XFX BC-160 cards in their mining environment (and the hashrate report, at 3:38) is also available, which you can see below.

According to a new ECC listing, AMD appears to be developing three new graphics cards that might come to market soon (via @Momomo_us). A PowerColor listing from the Eurasian Economic Commission (ECC) reveals the RX 6500 XT, RX 6400, and BC-2235 graphics cards, the latter of which is likely a mining card similar to the recently discovered XFX BC-160. As always, ECC listings are often placeholders for potential products, so they aren't a guaranteed indication that a product will come to market. Take this information with a grain of salt, in other words.

The listings are bare of most specifications, though we can glean the memory capacities via the product name. For example, the BC-2235 mining card appears to come with 10GB of GDDR6 memory while the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 both come with 4GB of GDDR6 instead.

Based on the memory specs alone, the RX 6500 XT and RX 6400 should be AMD's entry-level products in its RX 6000-series gaming cards lineup and will probably compete with Nvidia's rumored desktop RTX 3050 graphics cards. 4GB of VRAM might be sufficient for medium to high settings at 1080p, but don't expect a lot from these cards. We've already seen games such as Battlefield 2042 rip right through 6GB of memory at 1080p ultra quality settings on midrange cards like the RTX 2060.

We don't know the expected core counts, core frequencies, or anything other fine-grained details, but we suspect the RX 6500 XT will be a good step below the RX 6600 in terms of performance and power draw, probably landing around the 100W mark, perhaps even less.

The RX 6400 should be even more of a power sipper, with the ECC listing also reporting an RX 6400 LP (low profile) edition card. These cards will be designed to slot into half-height PCIe chassis with a very compact PCB layout. Cards like this don't typically use supplementary power, so we can expect the RX 6400 to have a 75W power limit or lower.

Finally, that BC-2235 looks rather curious. 10GB of GDDR6 memory would suggest a scaled down Navi 21 GPU with only five of the potential eight memory interfaces active. That would yield a 160-bit memory interface with 2GB GDDR6 chips, but then there's the name. Based on the XFX BC-160 naming, BC is for "Blockchain Compute," the "2" indicates a second generation (RDNA 2) GPU, and the final 235 would be... the hashrate? But there's no way a card like this would hit 235 MH/s in Ethereum, so more likely the "22" is for RDNA2. Based on the RX 6700 XT and RX 6600 XT mining performance, we're probably looking at around 35-40 MH/s after tuning.

Two months back, AMD launched the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, the first card to use the Navi 23 GPU. Today, AMD follows up with its first truly mainstream priced RX 6000-series card, the Radeon RX 6600. Take the same GPU but with four of the CUs (compute units) disabled, clock it a bit lower and you get the RX 6600 non-XT.

Will it be one of the best graphics cards, or will it come up a bit short? A lot of that will depend on retail pricing and availability, as GPU prices remain inflated, but supply has been a bit better on the RX 6600 XT than on other RDNA2 graphics cards, so hopefully for gamers, AMD can supply a reasonable quantity of GPUs for this launch.

I talked about the lack of a vanilla RX 6700 prior to the Navi 23 launch, and that previously widely rumored card remains MIA. Presumably that's because any of the Navi 22 chips that aren't fully functional can be sold as one of the various mobile RX 6000M-series solutions. AMD isn't taking that same approach with Navi 23, though, and along with trimming off some of the performance, the RX 6600 reduces the power requirement to just 132W and also cuts the official starting price to $329 — the same price as Nvidia's RTX 3060, though with 'only' 8GB VRAM. That's basically mainstream pricing in today's market — actually, it's less than you'll pay for most actual mainstream GPUs — though we suspect AMD's partners and the various retail outlets will jack up the price as long as GPUs remain in short supply.

Besides reducing the CU count and reducing the GPU clocks — by a relatively large 315MHz if you look at the Game Clock — AMD also reduced the GDDR6 speed from 16Gbps to 14Gbps. Note that the 'maximum' boost clock of 2491MHz (technically the GPU can exceed even the boost clock) is quite a bit higher than the game clock, so we'll have to see how it all plays out in the benchmarks. But overall we'd expect the RX 6600 to be 10–25 percent slower than the RX 6600 XT, depending on whether a game needs more GPU power (up to 25% slower in theory) or more memory bandwidth (about 12.5% slower). Here's the rundown of AMD's latest RX 6000-series GPUs and their specifications.

Paper specs don't always match up with real-world performance, so we'll have to see how the RX 6600 fares against its main competition — which includes not just the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT, but also previous generation cards like the RTX 2060, RTX 2060 Super, and RX 5600 XT. Considering this card replaces the previous generation RX 5600 XT, it's unfortunate that generational pricing has gone up quite a bit, but then there's no sense in expecting AMD to launch at a price that few people will ever see. Again, we hope there will actually be a fairly decent supply of RX 6600 cards, both for the initial launch and going forward.

We mentioned the issue with AMD's game clocks vs. boost clocks already, and we've used AMD's game clocks for the above TFLOPS numbers. However, given the way things have changed with boost clocks on RDNA2 (i.e., RDNA2 GPUs often reach and exceed boost clocks while game), it might be better to compare performance using boost clocks rather than game clocks. If we do that, the RX 6600 can provide about 8.9 TFOPS of compute, while the RX 6600 XT delivers 10.6 TFLOPS of compute. That's a much lower 16% drop in theoretical performance, and it matches up better with the reduced memory bandwidth.

The Navi 23 architecture uses the same general formula as the other Big Navi and RDNA2 GPUs. It supports DirectX Raytracing (DXR) and implements the full DirectX 12 Ultimate features list, including Variable Rate Shading (VRS), mesh shaders, and sampler feedback. The smaller 32MB Infinity Cache on Navi 23 represents a compromise that mostly benefits 1080p and maybe 1440p, but mainstream GPUs generally aren't used at higher resolutions so that should be okay.

Meet the XFX RX 6600 Speedster SWFT 210

The Radeon RX 6600 will only be available from AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners. For the launch review, AMD sent us the XFX Radeon RX 6600 SWFT 210. We don't see a lot of XFX cards for review, though we've tested various models in the past. XFX is a tier-two graphics card manufacturer, basically the AMD GPU equivalent of a Zotac card. We can't say much about their support, but in general we'd expect the larger brands like Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, and Sapphire to be more readily available at retail.

AMD's Radeon Software reports a maximum boost clock of 2704MHz, but what the software says and what the official specs say doesn't usually match up — different ways of reporting boost, basically. The official boost clock for the card is 2491MHz, and that's pretty close to what we saw in our power and temperature testing later on. We're told that all the cards AMD sampled reviewers have the same game and boost clocks, so as far as we know this is as close as we'll get to a 'reference' design.

The XFX RX 6600 SWFT has a relatively compact design, which you'd expect from something with a 132W TDP rating. It's a dual-slot card that measures 243x114x39 mm and weighs 615g, a featherweight compared to some of the chunkier graphics cards we've tested. The card's equipped with two custom fans, both 95mm in diameter. The fans are unremarkable, meaning they should get the job done but they're not high static pressure designs and don't feature integrated rims.

Aesthetically, this card defines barebones. There's no RGB lighting, or any lighting at all. Some will appreciate that fact, but fans of bling will want to look for other options. Video ports consist of three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.1 outputs. There's a single 8-pin power connector, more than enough for the card's needs. There's also a toggle switch that appears to swap between two VBIOS chips — it's not labeled but the manual says, "If your card comes equipped with a dual BIOS…"

Speaking of the manual, the small pamphlet doesn't tell you much. It's a generic pamphlet that's apparently for all XFX graphics cards, not for this specific model. For most users, that's not important, but including a digital file that's specific to the card model would be better. Like I was saying, though, this is a very barebones card and packaging, and I'd assume it's one of the $329 models that will go on sale today.

Test Setup for Radeon RX 6600

Our test hardware hasn't changed (yet… waiting for either Alder Lake or Zen 4 before making the switch and retesting everything). We're still running Windows 10 (21H1, build 19043.1237). We're also using motherboard BIOS version 7B12v1B1, which includes beta resizable BAR support (aka, 'ReBAR'). We tested the RX 6600 XT on both AMD Ryzen 5900X and Intel Core i9-9900K system, but the differences were generally small so we'll confine our testing to just the usual Intel PC this time. We did notice that the x8 PCIe Gen4 connection on Navi 23 does seem to hinder performance a bit, so you can probably eke out a bit better performance with a more recent platform that supports PCIe Gen4.

We're sticking with the same 13 games we've been using since the RTX 3080 launch, all with DXR (DirectX Raytracing) disabled. We have a second test suite that includes DXR in ten games (plus we've also tested Far Cry 6, with and without DXR) for those curious about how the RX 6600 holds up with maxed out graphics settings and ray tracing. This card definitely isn't built for that sort of workload, unless maybe you're running at 1280x720, but we gave it a shot anyway. We're also skipping the FSR and DLSS testing for this review, as we've covered that elsewhere in the past and things haven't really changed.

We're also getting ready to revamp our test suite that we use for both the GPU benchmarks hierarchy as well as individual graphics card reviews. Many of the games are several years old, and frankly testing 24 different games at various settings is a bit much. This will very likely be the last new GPU launched in 2021, unless Nvidia decides to finally trot out RTX 3050 desktop cards, so at least that should give us a chance to retest everything for the new suite — using Windows 11 and potentially a new CPU platform, if all goes to plan.

For now, we've trimmed down the charts to only show ten more or less comparable GPUs. We have a mix depending on which set of charts — medium, ultra, or ray tracing — that you're looking at, but the full set of results will also be available on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy and best graphics cards guides soon.

If you have any suggestions on games you'd like to see included in our updated suite, feel free to let me know in the comments. I want to keep the total under ten, if possible, but I do want a broad selection of genres, as well as both AMD and Nvidia promoted games. And with that out of the way, let's hit the benchmarks.

Radeon RX 6600 1080p Gaming Performance

Like its big XT brother, the Radeon RX 6600 is primarily intended for 1080p gaming. Older games and some lighter esports fare can run at higher resolutions and still break 60 fps, but more demanding games already struggle at maxed out 1080p settings. Which is why we're also including our suite of 1080p medium results for this review.

The problem with mainstream GPUs is that they generally don't offer anything new in terms of performance and features. Instead, you're supposed to get better performance and more features than the previous generation hardware, but the cards will be substantially slower than more expensive offerings. As a trimmed down Navi 23 variant, we expected performance to be 10-20% slower than the RX 6600 XT, and overall the RX 6600 falls right in that range: It was 11% slower than XT model at 1080p medium across our nine game test suite.

Perhaps more importantly, we need to look at how the RX 6600 stacks up against the RTX 3060. These cards nominally start at the same $329 price point, though in practice Nvidia's card tends to hover closer to $700 on places like eBay, or if you get lucky in the Newegg Shuffle you might be able to snag one for under $500 (with a potentially questionable bundled item). The RX 6600 XT meanwhile sells for around $600, and outside of games that use ray tracing and DLSS, it tends to be the faster card. We expect the RX 6600 will sell for at least $50 less than the 6600 XT, which means we could see prices of around $450–$550 in the current market.

In terms of performance, the RX 6600 was 4% slower than the RTX 3060. 1080p also represents something of a best-case scenario for the RX 6600, and we expect the gap to widen as we increase the quality and resolution since the Infinity Cache benefits go down at higher resolutions. 1080p medium probably sits well below where most people buying the card will play, so let's also look at how the cards fare at 1080p ultra — and generally speaking, 1080p high will land halfway between the two results.

Another point of comparison that's not shown in these charts is the RX Vega 64. The RX 6600 performed about 6% faster at 1080p and uses about half as much power, so efficiency has improved dramatically, prices are lower, and performance is roughly the same.

With 8GB of VRAM, 1080p ultra shouldn't pose much of a problem, and it doesn't. The RX 6600 averaged 95 fps across our 13 game test suite, and once again fell 13% behind the RX 6600 XT. It was also 2% slower than the RTX 3060, again reinforcing the fact that most games don't need more than 8GB of VRAM at this resolution.

Generally speaking, 1080p ultra runs quite well on the RX 6600, delivering roughly the same level of performance as the RX 5700 at 1080p (it was 2% faster). That card came out over two years ago and originally cost $349, though it was regularly available for around $310 for the better part of a year after launch — right up until the pandemic inspired shortages kicked in. As with the XT variant, we're not getting better performance for less money, but you do get roughly the same level of performance with a more efficient architecture.

Let's also take a deeper dive and look at the individual games. The RX 6600 leads Nvidia's RTX 3060 in several AMD promoted games (Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3, and Dirt 5) along with Forza Horizon 4. Everything else favors the RTX 3060 by anywhere from 2% to as much as 14%. The RTX 3060 would easily win out if both cards were available for their MSRPs, but we'll have to wait and see what street pricing looks like on the RX 6600 over the next few weeks.

We're not going to do a separate page for DXR this time, because as you can see in the above charts, the less said the better. The more complex ray tracing games really don't do too well on the RX 6600. AMD's RDNA2 architecture doesn't have hardware accelerated BVH traversal, instead relying on shader code to do that part of the ray tracing algorithm, and that may be part of what causes performance to suffer — something for RDNA3 to fix. Whatever the case, games that use multiple ray tracing effects, and in particular games that aren't AMD promoted (looking at you, Godfall and Dirt 5) tend to perform quite poorly on the Navi 23 GPUs.

We didn't use DLSS or FSR upscaling here, so all of these results were run at native 1080p. Even then, multiple games were extremely unplayable at these settings. Of course, you wouldn't use maxed out settings with ray tracing if the result is sub-20 framerates, but we use the same settings across all GPUs. Also note that the games where performance really tanks (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077, Fortnite, Minecraft, and Watch Dogs Legion) can get a bit weird on minimum fps — the RX 6600 actually outperformed the RX 6600 XT from a couple months back, likely due to driver differences, but we're not going to get excited about either card when both are running at single digit framerates.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but AMD's RDNA2 GPUs simply don't work very well at ray tracing when they only have a 128-bit memory bus and a 32MB Infinity Cache. That appears to be the major sticking point, and it's a bit interesting as we've seen quite a few games where even the RTX 2060 with 6GB VRAM still does okay. For whatever reason, AMD's RX 6000 GPUs often need more VRAM than Nvidia's GPUs in order to get serviceable ray tracing performance.

Radeon RX 6600 1440p Gaming Performance

Stepping up to 1440p might be asking a bit too much of the RX 6600, depending on the game and settings used. As before, we'll start with our legacy test suite running at medium quality (which is one of the inputs used for the GPU benchmarks hierarchy), and then we'll move on to the expanded test suite and 1440p ultra settings, and wrap up with some ray tracing charts.

1440p at medium quality often ends up performing about the same as 1080p at ultra quality, which means the games in our slightly older test suite still run quite well. Better than that, really, as the RX 6600 averaged 106 fps, 15% behind the RX 6600 XT and 9% slower than the RTX 3060. Also, none of the games tested here fell below 60 fps.

The smaller Infinity Cache size generally means less benefit at higher resolutions, but even at 1440p the Infinity Cache clearly helps a lot. Considering the RTX 3060 has 50% more memory and memory bandwidth, the fact that the RX 6600 is even in the same ballpark shows how beneficial that large L3 cache is.

Using the RX 6600 at 1440p ultra wasn't nearly as compelling. All of the games were still playable, provided you think 30 fps or more is "playable," but multiple games came in far short of 60 fps. You can probably get by with high quality settings, or some mix of medium and high settings, and 1440p will still run fine, but don't be surprised if more games arrive in the next few years where 1080p is a far better choice for the RX 6600.

The RX 6600 again loses to the RTX 3060 by about 9%, though flipping through the individual games shows some variation. Far Cry 5 and Strange Brigade favor the RTX 3060 at 1440p ultra, even though they're formerly AMD promotional games, while newer releases like Valhalla are strongly in AMD's camp, and most Nvidia-promoted games still favor Nvidia hardware years after release. Considering the added memory and generally faster performance, it's only the street price of the RTX 3060 that keeps it from being a clear victor.

There's really nothing good to say about 1440p ultra with ray tracing enabled on the RX 6600. Dirt 5 was the sole bright point, averaging 56 fps — but that's largely because the visual difference between the ray traced shadows and rasterized shadow mapping techniques just isn't all that meaningful. Godfall also had issues at 1440p ultra with ray tracing, and performance fluctuated a lot between runs — that's a problem we've noticed on multiple GPUs with less than 12GB VRAM.

We also saw some pretty significant fluctuations in Cyberpunk 2077, though when you're getting under 10 fps it really doesn't matter. Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Metro Exodus also barely managed to stay above 30 fps, but again, that's because they're only using one RT effect and they're both first generation ray tracing games — more recent RT games perform quite a bit worse.

Radeon RX 6600 4K Gaming Performance

The RX 6600 really isn't intended for 4K gaming, at least not in the more demanding games like many of the titles we use for our benchmarks. But we ran the numbers, since we include these scores in our GPU benchmarks hierarchy and best graphics cards guides, so we're including the charts in this review with very limited commentary.

For most GPUs, going from 1440p to 4K at the same settings will cut framerates in half… unless you exceed a card's VRAM capacity, in which case performance can plummet. The smaller Infinity Cache also provides less benefit at 4K, since a lot of it ends up being used by the various 4K buffers — each of which requires 32MB of storage. Spatial locality means there will still be plenty of cache hits, but there's far less room for other data (like textures) to stay in the cache.

The RTX 3060 was only slightly faster than the RX 6600 at 1080p and 1440p, but once we get to 4K the added memory and bandwidth become more important. In our legacy suite, the RTX 3060 was 17% faster, and that same margin of victory holds at 4K ultra as well.The RTX 3060 came out ahead in all of the games in our legacy suite using 4K medium, while Dirt 5 was the only game that favored the 6600 at 4K ultra. But considering both cards fall well short of 60 fps in most games at 4K, it's a bit of a pyrrhic victory.

Radeon RX 6600 Power, Temps, Noise, Etc.

The Radeon RX 6600 reference TDP is 132W, 28W less than the 6600 XT. AMD says the XFX card we received sticks to the reference spec, so let's see how it looks when we hook it up to our Powenetics testing equipment to measure in-line GPU power consumption and other aspects of the cards. We collect data while running Metro Exodus at 1440p ultra and FurMark stress test at 900p.

Power use during the Metro Exodus benchmark loop was just a bit more than the official TDP at 137W — nothing to worry about. Also notice how the card clamps down pretty hard at the power limit, whereas on the RX 6600 XT (an ASRock card) there was more available headroom. FurMark shows similar behavior, only with a slightly higher average power use of 140W. In both cases, the RX 6600 is a pretty big step down from the next lowest power GPU, the RTX 3060.

Clock speeds show a pretty big difference between FurMark and Metro, with the latter averaging 2485MHz while FurMark only averaged 2080MHz. AMD basically has two sets of behavior with FurMark clocks: The RX 6600 XT and RX 6700 XT run at around 2350MHz, and all the other RX 6000-series GPUs run at around 2080MHz. There's a lost more variation in clock speeds when running an actual game, with the RX 6600 hitting nearly 2.5GHz — it basically matches the boost clock of 2491MHz almost perfectly.

Despite having very different card and cooler designs, the fan speeds on the XFX RX 6600 are very similar to the ASRock RX 6600 XT. We don't see the nearly instant drop to 0dB mode between the Metro loops, but average RPMs are a bit lower than the larger 6600 XT card. In FurMark, the two cards are basically matched at 1340 RPM. That doesn't mean the cards behave the same at all, however. Fan speeds directly affect temperatures, and while the XFX card didn't run hot by any stretch, it was about 3–4 degrees Celsius hotter than the ASRock card.

Along with the Powenetics data, we also measure noise levels at 10cm using an SPL (sound pressure level) meter. It's aimed right at the GPU fans, in order to minimize the impact of other fans like those on the CPU cooler. The noise floor of our test environment and equipment measures 33 dB(A), and the XFX RX 6600 measured 39.4 dB while running Metro with a fan speed of 40%. I don't think the fan will normally go above 50%, but we also tested with a static fan speed of 75%, at which point the card generated 60.9 dB of noise and was quite loud. In normal use, however, it will likely stay closer to the 40 dB range.

Radeon RX 6600 Mining Performance

Ethereum mining continues to have an impact on GPU prices, and we ran some quick tests to see how the RX 6600 fares. We used NiceHashMiner to check mining performance with a variety of algorithms, though most of the tests failed to complete. The best option was Ethereum, not surprisingly, where after tuning we were only able to get about 28.5 MH/s.

The RX 6600 XT can reach about 32 MH/s, but it also comes equipped with 16Gbps memory, which can be overclocked to around 17.2Gbps. The RX 6600 in contrast comes with 14Gbps memory and we could only get that up to 15.12Gbps. That's about 88% of the memory bandwidth, after tuning, which dovetails nicely with the difference in hash rates.

Radeon RX 6600: It All Depends on Street Prices and Availability

If the GeForce RTX 3060 were available at anything close to Nvidia's official starting price of $329, the Radeon RX 6600 would be in a bad way. With the same nominal price, the RTX 3060 almost always comes out ahead in gaming performance, plus it has 50% more memory. On top of that, it has better ray tracing performance and also has the benefit of Nvidia's software ecosystem (DLSS, Broadcast, and GeForce Experience). In a straight up punching match, the RX 6600 is woefully outclassed.

But it's nigh on impossible to acquire an RTX 3060 for under $500, unless you get lucky, and AMD's RX 6000-series graphics cards tend to be slightly closer to their MSRPs than Nvidia's RTX 30-series cards right now. We'll need to see what actual street prices and availability look like before we can really determine the winner. On paper, Nvidia has the lead, but I can write a lot of things down on paper that simply don't hold up under scrutiny.

Given the RX 6600 uses harvested Navi 23 dies that couldn't qualify to work as fully enabled RX 6600 XT GPUs, it's little surprise that the GPU has to clock lower and performs measurably worse. The use of slower 14Gbps GDDR6 memory also has an impact on performance, and the net result is a card that's about 15% slower than the RX 6600 XT in most cases. That also puts it right around the level of the RX 5700 (non-XT), and ahead of the RX 5600 XT (except at 4K), even though it has to get by with a lot less memory bandwidth. Thanks to AMD's Infinity Cache, that's not as much of a problem as you would expect. With half the memory bandwidth, the RX 6600 still keeps up with the previous generation card.

That's the good news. The bad news is the price of the RX 6600 jumped around $75 compared to the previous generation card it sort of replaces. The RX 5600 XT launched at $279, and for a while you could pick them up for as little as $250. If only I had had the foresight to stock my basement with cheap GPUs back in 2019… and then paid the interest on my credit card for a year. But really, it's the RX 6600 XT that replaced the RX 5600 XT, while the non-XT vanilla variety we're looking at today represents a lower tier of performance.

Outside of the part names, the story hasn't changed much relative to what we thought last year. Nvidia's Ampere GPUs continue to deliver superior ray tracing performance and also support DLSS. For everyone that doesn't care much about ray tracing, AMD's RDNA2 GPUs work quite well. Now we just need AMD — by way of TSMC — to be able to produce about ten times as many GPUs, and then we might see prices get back to normal. Call us in late 2022 and we'll hopefully have some good news on that front.

AMD's Radeon RX 6900 XT already delivers impressive performance, ranking among the best graphics cards (that you still can't easily buy). Part of that comes thanks to the impressive clocks on AMD's RDNA 2 architecture, and XFX has partnered with EK Water Blocks to deliver XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Zero WB graphics card with promised overclocking capacity reaching beyond 3.0 GHz.

XFX uses a custom PCB with AMD's Navi 21 XTXH GPU, then pairs it with with a custom waterblock. Out of the box, the card boasts a 2200 MHz base clock and a boost frequency of 2525 MHz — a 12% increase over the reference card's 2250 MHz boost frequency. The card supposedly can reach over 3000 MHz when overclocking, according to XFX, though the information is quite vague and doesn't specify whether that's sustained or peak frequency.

Naturally, all that clockspeed requires more power, and the XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Zero WB comes equipped with three 8-pin connectors. The reference card has a 300W TGP while the Zero WB requires 350W, and that's before pushing beyond the factory clocks. Combined with the PCIe slot, the triple PEG connectors can deliver up to 525W of power, which can only be dealt with effectively with extreme cooling solutions.

XFX partnered with Slovenian cooling specialist EK Water Blocks on the Zero WB graphics card. It features a nickel-plated copper cold plate with clear acrylic and RGB lighting to make the coolant glow. It also carries a laser-engraved X branding. The design isn't an all-in-one liquid cooler either, like we've seen with cards like the Asus ROG Strix LC, MSI Seahawk, and EVGA Hybrid cards. You'll need your own custom liquid loop, which means actual cooling potential largely depends on the specific setup.

XFX didn't reveal any pricing or availability details for the card yet, but we expect we'll see few cards and extreme prices. Our GPU price index currently shows an average eBay price of $1,620 for the RX 6900 XT, but that's for any card, and there were still only 64 sold in a two week period. Halo products like custom liquid cooling cards can easily go for $2,000 or more.

Are you a Linux user? Do you like the look of Microsoft's newest Windows 11 operating system but still fancy running a Linux kernel-based OS? Well, for all 12 of you out there, the Brazilian Linux distribution LinuxFX version 11 might be for you. This distribution is all Linux under the hood, but the UI looks impressively close to what you'll see on Windows 11.

LinuxFX is a Linux distribution based on KDE Plasma, which itself is based on Ubuntu Core, with KDE desktop environment (DE) placed on top of it. This specific KDE DE uses the WX Desktop theme, which represents a heavy set of modifications to the whole look and feel of the operating system meant to make it look more like Windows. Version 11, as you might expect, is the version that apes Windows 11. Previous versions have instead aimed to copy Windows 10.

This update to the WX Desktop theme uses a custom set of icons, as well as some custom animations like the centered taskbar and many other elements that the Windows 11 user interface possesses. This is, of course, the main advertising point of the LinuxFX distro.

As it greatly mimics the look and feels of Microsoft's latest operating system, it allows users to have the Windows 11 look, with all of their favorite Linux features still available. Given that it uses Ubuntu at its heart, it utilizes the very strong base that Ubuntu 21.04  “Hirsute Hippo” offers.

Of course, the new LinuxFX 11 distro just focuses on cosmetics and doesn't depart much from the software core that's usually used in other Ubuntu-based distributions. It uses the same kernel as Ubuntu 21.04, and the same package manager, resulting in a very wide range of pre-compiled software ready to be installed in a few simple commands. But if you want to preview what Windows 11 might feel like before diving into Microsoft's OS proper, it's a clever solution.

This OS has ISO images that support both x86 and Arm architectures, meaning instantaneous compatibility for a wide range of computers. For Raspberry Pi support, version 11 is still not there, as the only version available for Pi is 10.8.4. An updated version 11 for Raspberry Pi devices is expected to follow soon, so Raspberry Pi Linux tinkers can celebrate. Learn more about LinuxFX version 11 here.

Hungarian publication PROHARDVER has uncovered XFX's crafty strategy to put AMD Radeon Instinct accelerators into the hands of Chinese HPC customers. While the graphics cards can function as mining products, they actually serve a higher purpose.

The whole show started with an obscure Navi 22 graphics card that recently emerged in China. For starters, it had all the traits of a Radeon Instinct accelerator, including the passive cooling system and location of the PCIe power connectors. However, the anonymous user provided a screenshot of the graphics card mining Ethereum, leading many to believe that the Navi 22 device was a mining product. This raised many questions, because mining graphics cards are typically installed in racks and require their own cooling. The Navi 22 graphics card hit 92 degress Celsius during mining.

According to PROHARDVER, the Navi 22 graphics card in question is a custom-made model that XFX is selling to HPC consumers in China. The final assembly, which includes internal components and the passive cooler, is allegedly done in Vietnam to circumvent U.S. restrictions on technology exports to China. Radeon Instinct accelerators are reportedly on the blacklist, so customers and vendors had to get creative.

PROHARDVER claims that China previously obtained AMD's accelerators through Middle Eastern countries. However, the U.S. was quick to detect that route and closed it down. Consequently, AMD's partners are allegedly utilizing Vietnam to put in their orders. The scheme supposedly consists of AMD shipping the GPUs to a store in Vietnam, where the factories put everything together before shipping the accelerators to Chinese HPC projects. The Hungarian news outlet believes that the U.S is aware of the new route and will likely find a way to block it in the near future.

AMD's Navi 22 silicon powers some of the best graphics cards on the market. Apparently, one of the chipmaker's partners has repurposed the die for cryptocurrency mining. VideoCardz today shared photographs of an alleged Navi 22-powered mining graphics card.

In screenshots VideoCardz shared, most of the graphics card's specifications are blurred out, but Navi 22 (aka Nashira Summit) is visible, letting us know that the card was fabricated on TSMC's 7nm FinFET process node. The manufacturing date is March 17, so the graphics card recently came out of the oven. The XFX logo is also clearly stamped on the card. The Navi 22 device reportedly features 2,304 stream processors, pointing to either a rewarmed Radeon RX 6700 or Radeon RX 6700M.

The mining graphics card operates with a fixed 1,300 MHz base clock, which is understandable, since you don't really need high clock speeds for mining Ethereum. It features 10GB of GDDR6 memory at 16 Gbps across a 160-bit memory interface. This is the same memory configuration as on the Radeon RX 6700M, leading us to believe that XFX probably recycled the mobile graphics card into a desktop unit.

According to the screenshot, the Navi 22 graphics card delivered at hash rate of 39.06 MHps in Ethereum. It got as hot as 92 degrees Celsius, which is to be expected for a passively cooled graphics card. For comparison, the mining graphics card's performance is on par with the Radeon RX 5600 XT (39.6 MHps) and in the same alley as the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti LHR (42.9 MHps).

The mysterious graphics card, which appeared in China, features a passive cooler with two 8-pin PCIe power connectors situated at the rear. It's an interesting design because the cooling system and the position of the PCIe power connectors are typically used in AMD's high-performance computing (HPC) products, such as the Radeon Instinct accelerators.

AMD has made it clear that it doesn't have any problems with consumers using its RDNA 2 graphics cards for mining. Although the chipmaker designed Big Navi specifically for gaming, clever people have found ways to adapt RDNA 2 for mining. For example, the Radeon RX 6600 XT has demonstrated a high level of efficiency at mining Ethereum with a hash rate of 32 MHps at a mere 75W.

Now that Nvidia has given the Lite Hash Rate (LHR) treatment to its GeForce RTX 30-series (Ampere) graphics cards, we wouldn't be surprised to see AMD partners looking to compete. Nvidia also has its Cryptocurrency Mining Processor (CMP) lineup to compete with though.

The question remains if this Navi 22-based graphics card is the only one that XFX is releasing or if more models are on the way. More importantly, it'll be interesting to see if AMD's other major partners also jump on the Big Navi mining bandwagon.

AMD's rounding out its Navi graphics card lineup with a new GPU targeted at 1080p performance, the AMD RX 6600 XT. It's technically out today, coming in at a $379 MSRP, but AIB models and stock shortages mean finding one at that price is going to be difficult.

The best graphics cards go fast these days, although according to our RX 6600 XT review, this GPU is lacking. While it tends to beat the last-gen RX 5700 XT and Nvidia's RTX 3060 on benchmarks, it's still expensive for 1080p and has poor ray-tracing capabilities.

Even so, those faults haven't saved the card from the same low stock issues as its competitors, plus some AIB models are pushing prices up even higher. That's why we're keeping track of the best places to buy an RX 6600 XT, so you can help mitigate these problems and get your hands on one at the best price possible.

Where to buy an RX 6600 XT — at a glance

US RX 6600 XT retailers: Amazon | B&H | Best Buy | Micro Center | Newegg | AMD

UK RX 6600 XT retailers: Amazon UK | Currys PC World | eBuyer | Overclockers

Update August 11 — 8am PST/4PM BST

On the RX 6600 XT's launch day, most stores don't even have stock listed. Those that do are mostly already sold out. It's the same song and dance of all GPU launches in 2021, but there's a catch. A couple of British stores do actually have live add-to-cart buttons, for now.

Where to buy RX 6600 XT in the US

Where to buy RX 6600 XT in the UK

A very interesting Radeon RX 6600 XT has popped up over in the Baidu Tieba ( via Chiphell) forums. The Navi 23-based graphics card, which will fight for a spot on the list of best graphics cards, appears to hail from a new AMD Add-in-Board (AIB) partner.

It's not unusual to find unreleased hardware on sale in China. One seller even had the audacity to list a Radeon RX 6600 XT for $1,099.99 on Newegg before the retailer eventually removed the listing. As spotted by a Chiphell forum user, a mysterious merchant was selling a Radeon RX 6600 XT that doesn't seem to belong to an existing brand.

The Internet users from the forum ultimately traced the graphics card back to a recently created company under the name of Peng Yu (Shanghai) Digital Technology Co., Ltd. The seller claimed that XFX is the OEM behind the graphics card, but it hasn't been confirmed. Nonetheless, it should be highlighted that the Peng Yu isn't related to XFX in any way.

Peng Yu has a couple of pending trademarks, including the Vastarmor moniker that the company is utilizing for graphics card products. The additional photographs show that the Peng Yu will launch the Starry Sky and Alloy series under the Vastarmor branding.

The Radeon RX 6600 XT in question is from the Starry Sky series and features a triple-fan cooling solution. The black shroud sports a red-and-white color theme and lacks any sort of RGB lighting. It also comes equipped with a metal backplate that adds rigidity to the PCB. Like many other Radeon RX 6600 XT models, Peng Yu's unit also depends on a single 8-pin PCIe power connector for supplemental power.

The Chinese seller  had the RDNA 2 graphics card up for purchase at 2,999 yuan or $462,  a 22% premium over AMD's $379 MSRP. According to the original listing, the Starry Sky Radeon RX 6600 XT comes with a limited three-year warranty. Peng Yu seems to be a domestic brand for the Chinese market, but living in a globalized world, it wouldn't surprise us if the company's products made it to other countries as well, perhaps even the U.S.

Graphics card merchants (via Expreview) are getting ever more creative in China to profit from less informed consumers. The new modus operandi consists of posing as AMD and XFX to issue a fake Radeon RX 580 recall to deceive customers to trade in their recent Radeon RX 580 purchases for a GeForce equivalent that has no cryptocurrency mining value.

Chinese dealers were spreading a phony letter that AMD and XFX were recalling Radeon RX 580 graphics cards due to instability issues that were product of a manufacturing defect. It's common knowledge that the Radeon RX 580 has been discontinued for a while, and scammers were taking advantage of its retirement. The swindlers convinced legitimate customers to accept a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or GTX 1060 3GB as a replacement, arguing that the GeForce models offered better performance. The merchants even went as far as offering compensation in exchange for the Radeon RX 580.

Both AMD China and XFX China have released official statements stating that the so-called Radeon RX 580 recall is completely bogus. The four-year-old Polaris-powered graphics card doesn't present any factory defects with the PCB design as the sketchy document suggested. AMD will pursue legal action against the perpetrators for spreading misinformation and making illicit use of the AMD branding.

The elaborate scam offered Radeon RX 580 owners two different schemes. The trade-in option consisted in a one-to-own swap with the dealers replacing the Radeon RX 580 4GB and Radeon RX 580 8GB with a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti and GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, respectively. The recall option offered owners with a sum of money was a little over two times that of the Radeon RX 580's street price. According to the document, the 4GB and 8GB variants are priced at 400 yuan (~$61) and 800 yuan (~$122), respectively. Therefore, owners would be receiving up to 900 yuan (~$138) and 1,700 yuan (~$260), respectively.

Getting a GeForce GTX 1060 3GB in return for a Radeon RX 580 isn't a horrible deal if you're an average gamer. The Pascal graphics card's performance is relatively close to the Radeon RX 580 — our GPU benchmarks peg it at 72% of the performance. However, the Pascal graphics card does boast a substantial lower power consumption. For comparison, the GeForce RTX 1060 3GB is rated for 120W, while the Radeon RX 580 has a 185W TDP. It comes down to a 35.1% power reduction.

The real reason behind the scam is Ethereum mining. With the cryptocurrency mining business booming again, merchants want to flip the Radeon RX 580 for a considerable profit. The graphics card's real value lies in its cryptocurrency mining abilities. Where the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB can earn around $1.20 per day via NiceHash, the Radeon RX 580 8GB can net can more than double that. The Radeon RX 580 is ranked as one of the best mining GPUs thanks to its price to performance ratio.

The Radeon RX 580 has aged like fine wine, which is not something that happens a lot in the graphics card world. Originally debuted in 2017 at $229, custom Radeon RX 580 models are currently selling for over $500 in the used market, an incredible price hike of 118%. The GTX 1060 3GB by comparison goes for around $225, basically matching its launch price, meanwhile GeForce GTX 1060 6GB graphics cards go for between $300 and $400, as they're far better for mining.

AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 (Big Navi) are two of the best graphics cards that money can buy right now and rank at the top of our GPU benchmarks. However, the custom models are where the real performance is really at. AMD's partners have launched their personalized iterations today, which are available for purchase at different retailers around the country.

It goes without saying that there is a vast offering of Radeon RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 graphics cards on the market now. We've put together a roundup of models whose specifications are available, for those of you who want to know which vendor offers the fastest graphics cards. The graphics cards are ranked them according to their rated clock speeds without taking into consideration their aesthetics, cooling solution or pricing.

It is undoubtedly difficult to find these cards in stock. For your best chance, see our article on how and where to buy a Radeon RX 6800 XT or RX 6800.

Fastest Radeon RX 6800 XT On The Market

The top Radeon RX 6800 XT models come with a 2,110 MHz game clock and 2,350 MHz boost clock. The ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X, Asus Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming, Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT SE and Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT stand out from the crowd.

At $769.99, the Sapphire Nitro+ AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT is the least expensive one out of the four. The special edition of Sapphire's model retails for $829.99, while the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 XT Taichi X and Asus Strix LC Radeon RX 6800 XT Gaming cost $829.99 and $899.99, respectively.

Fastest Radeon RX 6800 On The Market

With the Radeon RX 6800, the list of speediest models jumps up to seven, which is good since consumers have more options to choose from. The candidates share the same clock speeds, promising a 1,980 MHz game clock and 2,190 MHz boost clock.

Admittedly, retailers haven't listed the majority of the custom Radeon RX 6800 models. Out of the list of seven models, the ASRock Radeon RX 6800 Phantom Gaming D and the Asus TUF Gaming Radeon RX 6800 seem to be the most affordable at $679.99.

Since AMD does not want its add-in-board (AIB) partners to publish actual specifications of their custom Radeon RX 6800-series graphics cards (see our Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT review), but it allows select media to do unpacking videos of these products. XFX was not exactly the first company to start teasing its proprietary Big Navi design, but its Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 (an interesting name, isn't it?) is among the first one to be examined by video bloggers, including those at VideoCardz.

In a bid to comply with the 'Big Navi' moniker, the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 is indeed big. The board comes with a triple-fan, 2.5-wide (which essentially means you need three spare slots to install it) cooling system featuring several heat pipes and a backplate. The middle fan is smaller than the other two, something we have already seen on graphics cards from other makers. In fact, a triple-fan cooling system seems to be a de-factor standard for the Radeon RX 6800-series.

The rather huge cooling system makes the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 bigger than previous-generation products from XFX, so customers planning to purchase this card should ensure that they have enough space inside their chassis. Meanwhile, the PCB of the board is shorter than the cooling system. Meanwhile, the card has two 8-pin PCIe auxiliary power connectors, just like reference designs. 

In the I/O department, the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 includes two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.1, and one USB Type-C connector. 

Now that we know what the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 looks like, we still have to find out the exact clocks of its GPU and memory as well as how much faster this graphics card is when compared to AMD's reference design. The good news is that the wait is almost over as the product is expected to hit the market on November 25, 2020, just several days from now. If you're looking for a Radeon 6000 series card, be sure to check out our story on how and where to buy a Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT.

 Meanwhile, the author of the Tech of Tomorrow channel mentioned that the board could cost in the ballpark of $749 (i.e., about $50 more expensive when compared to reference adapters). Whether or not the $50 premium will actually bring significant performance benefits is something that is to be seen, but it definitely buys a very sophisticated cooling system.

 Source: Tech of Tomorrow (via VideoCardz)

After making its new Zen3 CPUs official, AMD also announced its RDNA 2 based RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT graphics cards. Not long after, the AIC partners started teasing their GPU designs, and now XFX is raising its hand to note down its presence, too.

Of course, this is just a 15-second clip, of which the first 11 seconds are completely useless beyond pretty scenery. It's only for a split second that anything useful is shown on screen, so let's not make more of it than there is.

What we do see is the end of a cooler, which shows a single fan and a bit of another, though we can extrapolate and presume this is a triple-fan cooler. The heatsink also looks thick enough (or as XFX likes to say, THICC) to occupy almost three slots, and we're seeing some fresh design language. Also visible is a cutout in the back of the graphics card, so it will have some kind of flow-through ventilation like many other cards that are due to land soon.

The other vendors that have teased their designs include none other than Sapphire with its Nitro+ and Pulse RX 6800 XT models, as well as PowerColor. Later, Sapphire showed off full details on its RX 6800 XT Pulse GPU.

AMD's new GPUs are set to be launched on November 18th, though the board partner's custom cards will likely launch a little later. Of course, what will happen with availability remains to be seen. AMD is trying to do things to help prevent bots and scalping, but so far with Zen 3, the measures have proved ineffective.

For more information, see our article on everything we know about the Radeon RX 6000 series and RDNA 2 architecture.

Graphics card manufacturers have been releasing new firmwares that upgrade the Radeon RX 5600 XT's memory speed from 12 Gbps to 14 Gbps. Finally, AMD has officially started promoting the upgrade to existing Radeon RX 5600 XT owners.

The Radeon RX 5600 XT was originally scheduled to debut with 12 Gbps memory. Just a few days before launch day, AMD mysteriously pushed out an updated firmware to its partners that raises the graphics card's TBP (typical board power) and memory speed. Nvidia was also slashing the GeForce RTX 2060's prices at that time, so AMD's move was believed to offset Nvidia's price cuts.

Various manufacturers have resorted to launching updated Radeon RX 5600 XT models that already have their memory running at 14 Gbps right out of the box. But if luck has it that you picked up or own one of the previous 12 Gbps models, you can manually upgrade the graphics card's firmware to enable the faster memory.

Chinese publication Expreview has put AMD's China-exclusive Radeon RX 590 GME gaming GPU through its paces. The XFX Radeon RX 590 GME 8GB Black Wolf featured in the review is the fastest Radeon Rx 590 GME on the market right now.

The graphics card utilizes the same dual-fan cooling solution as the Black Wolf editions of the Radeon RX 590 and Radeon RX 580. What enthusiasts have really been waiting to see is what silicon is under the shroud. The popular theory is that the Radeon RX 590 GME would either be based on AMD's 12nm Polaris 30 or 14nm Polaris 20 silicon. After dismantling the Radeon RX 590 GME 8GB Black Wolf, Expreview discovered that the graphics card utilizes the Polaris 20 XTX die, the same silicon inside the Radeon RX 580. 

• Best graphics cards for gaming 
• The official 2020 GPU Hierarchy
• Nvidia next-gen graphics cards could use TSMC's CoWoS packaging

Radeon RX 590 GME Specifications

The Radeon RX 590 GME shares the same amount of shading units and memory configuration as the Radeon RX 590 and RX 580 with the boost clock speed being the key differentiator. In XFX's case, the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf carries a 1,460 MHz boost clock, which places it right between the Radeon RX 590 and RX 590 Black Wolf. 

When it comes to power connectors, the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf takes after the Radeon RX 590 Black Wolf. It employs a combination of a 6-pin and 8-pin PCIe power connectors (the Radeon RX 580 Black Wolf only needs one 8-pin PCIe power connector). 

Curiously, XFX rates the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf with a 135W TDP (thermal design power), which is lower than both the Radeon RX 590 and RX 580 Black Wolf. We can't find a reason for the extra 6-pin PCIe power connector, so we suspect that XFX might be recycling Radeon RX 590 PCBs with some slight changes for the Radeon RX 590 GME.

In summary, it looks like the Radeon RX 590 GME is essentially an overclocked Radeon RX 580 or a gimped Radeon RX 590, depending on how you want to look at it.

Radeon RX 590 GME Benchmarks

Expreview tested the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf on a platform using an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor, Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Formula motherboard and 16GB of DDR4-3600 RAM with CAS latency timings of 16-16-16-36. 

The publication pitted the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf against the Radeon RX 590 Black Wolf, Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB Black Wolf and Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1650 Super WindForce OC 4G. Unfortunately, Expreview didn't add the Radeon RX 580 Black Wolf to the comparison.

Expreview conducted the gaming tests at the 1080p resolution across eight different games on the highest quality preset except for Metro Exodus and Hitman 2, which were on ultra and high quality. Expreview used the games' corresponding in-game benchmarks. The results are shown in average frames per second (fps).

According to these results, the Radeon RX 590 Black Wolf is 5-8% faster than the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf, depending on the game. In Assassin's Creed Odyssey, the Radeon RX 590 Black Wolf delivered up to 19.4% better performance than the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf.

The Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf is typically slower than the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB Black Wolf, the benchmarks show. Out of the eight games that were tested, the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf only managed to beat the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB Black Wolf in two of them.

With these numbers, it's fair to say that the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf and the GeForce GTX 1650 Super WindForce OC 4G are in the same performance bracket. The graphics card tied at four games a piece.

For the power consumption test, Expreview turned to the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmark and recorded the power draw during 1 minute and averaged the results.

The Radeon RX 590 Black Wolf and Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf on average drew around 15W at idle. Surprisingly, the latter pulled up to 225W on an average load, which is 10W more than the former. When it came to peak power consumption, the Radeon RX 590 Black Wolf and Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf sucked up to 275W and 254W, respectively.

Expreview also evaluated the Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf's overclocking potential. It's important to keep in mind that each sample is different,  so overclocking headroom still comes down to the silicon lottery.

AMD's Adrenalin automatic overclocking feature pushed Expreview's sample to 1,540 MHz. However, the reviewer noted that performance was actually worse when compared to the factory boost clock. He tried to increase the GPU voltage and TDP limit but to no avail. The reviewer concluded that the Radeon RX 590 GME is binned to a point where there is no headroom for manual overclocking.

Radeon RX 590 GME Pricing

The Radeon RX 590 GME is supposed to fill the gap between the Radeon RX 590 and RX 580. In China, the Radeon RX 590 GME is approximately 100 yuan (~$14) cheaper than the regular Radeon RX 590. Overall, you're sacrificing up to 8% of performance.

At the current price point, we don't expect the Radeon RX 590 GME to succeed in the Chinese market. The Radeon RX 590 GME Black Wolf, which is the cheapest, sells for 1,199 yuan (~$173). The Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB is faster and more power efficient but, more importantly, retails for below the 1,000-yuan (~$144) mark. Therefore, we see no reason to pick the Radeon RX 590 GME over the Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB.

By now, we know (as far as rumors go) that AMD’s Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics cards are set to launch tomorrow, but it seems that Amazon has beat even AMD to the punch and listed the XFX RX 5500 XT Thicc II Pro as well as the Sapphire Radeon Nitro+ RX 5500 XT.

This also confirms a few of the specifications that have been in the rumor stage, although sadly, the listings don’t cover everything. The gist of it is that the units will have 8 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 14 GHz, and that the GPU of the XFX unit will boost at up to 1845 MHz. The Sapphire listing didn’t specify a boost clock, or any significant detail, for that matter.

To fill in those gaps, the other rumors thus far have pointed to a 1408 RDNA core count on the GPU, along with PCI-Express 4.0 support and a 128-bit memory interface.

Pricing for the XFX 5500 XT Thicc II Pro is set at $229.99, and the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 5500 XT is listed for $259.00. Both are available for pre-order and will ship out tomorrow, however, we would like to emphasize: do not buy the cards at these prices or make a decision yet before reviews are up. With the release slated for tomorrow, you should be able to make a well-informed decision soon.

A well-known hardware leaker called @KOMACHI_ENSAKA on Twitter has tweeted a screenshot of what appears to be the specifications for the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT graphics card. However, the specs suggest that the card will merely be an overclocked version of the AMD Radeon RX 5500 graphics card that AMD has already detailed but not released. 

A fully-unlocked Navi 14 die has up to 1,536 Stream Processors (SPs). The one that's inside the Radeon RX 5500 has 1,408 SPs. AMD will seemingly not enable the full die on the Radeon RX 5500 XT either. This would mean that AMD is saving the best silicon for Apple, since the AMD Radeon Pro 5500M, which sports 1,536 SPs, is exclusive to Apple systems.

Like the RX 5500, the RX 5500 XT will reportedly be available with 4GB or 8GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 1,750 MHz (14,000 MHz effective) across a 128-bit memory interface. The only noticeable difference in comparison to the RX 5500 are the higher operating clocks. AMD lists the RX 5500 with a 1,670 MHz base clock and 1,717 MHz game clock. The leaked RX 5500 XT specs point to a 1,685 MHz base clock and 1,737 MHz game clock. The difference is less than 2%; however, there will probably be higher clocked custom models once AMD officially launches the RX 5500 XT.

According to a short and early review of the RX 5500 by a German publication, the RX 5500's performance is roughly in the same ballpark as the last-generation AMD Radeon RX 580. Heise's testing also showed the RX 5500 being effectively more power-efficient than an RX 580. The XT variant should perform identically if not a tad faster.

Chinese retailer JD.com has already listed plenty of custom RX 5500 XT graphics cards from big names, including ASRock, PowerColor, Sapphire and XFX. This lends credence to the early speculation that the RX 5500 is strictly for OEMs, while the RX 5500 XT is open to any of AMD's partners.

The RX 5500 XT graphics cards on JD.com are currently priced at 1,499 yuan, which is approximately $212. China has a standard VAT (value-added tax) rate of 13%, meaning RX 5500 XT models could start at around $183.

Custom RX 580 graphics cards start as low as $145. Therefore, the RX 5500 XT could be competitive if the chipmaker prices it around $150.

Another piece of useful information from JD.com's posting is the release date. The RX 5500 XT reportedly goes on sale on December 12, which coincides with the timeframe from an earlier report.

The RX 5700 is our favorite graphics card for 2K gaming, but at its $350 MSRP, it faces increasing competition from Nvidia, making it a hard pick at that price for our Best Cyber Monday Graphics Card Deals. Many models are still priced around that MSRP or higher, so it's refreshing to see XFX's Radeon RX 5700 DD Ultra available on Newgg for $329.99. To get it for even less, you'll need to enter promo code 9BFCMPC528 bringing the price down to $299.99.

The RX 5700's GPU comes with 2304 stream processors, which on XFX's card run at 1565 MHz and boost up to 1750 MHz. Due to the chunky dual-fan cooler, it should boost at those high frequencies for longer than a reference card would.

The memory on board is the standard 8 GB of GDDR6, which runs at the standard 14 Gbps. XFX named the card after its cooler: Double Dissipation, for its two fans. The chunky cooler also extends around the back of the card, forming a backplate with XFX lettering on it. 

Display outputs are handled by one HDMI 2.0b port and three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors. You'll need one six-pin and one eight-pin PCI-Express power connector to give the card the power it needs, with a PSU recommendation of 600W. 

If you're looking for a great card for very competitive Full-HD gaming, or great performance at 1440p, the XFX 5700 DD Ultra might well be right for you. We certainly haven't seen the RX 5700 for sale at a lower price. But keep an eye on our AMD Radeon Deals page to see if one pops up at a lower price.

Any budget PC build is going to be an exercise in compromise. Prices have come down on components like storage and RAM considerably in 2019. But if you only have $500 to spend, it’s still nigh-impossible to build an ideal rig for gaming or other mainstream PC purposes beyond basic productivity--even if you’re getting your copy of Windows 10 for free.

So for this round of our budget build challenge, we took two different approaches. The first, our “Budget Battle Box,” aims to get you up and gaming with AAA titles at the best possible settings on day one, with a pairing of a Core i3 CPU and an AMD RX 570 graphics card. Our second build foregoes the graphics card for now, by opting for an AMD Ryzen 5 3400G. That APU has an integrated GPU that, while it can’t compete with a dedicated card like the RX 570, will still let you play plenty of AAA titles at reduced settings and lower resolutions. 

Given that the RX 570 is now over two-and-a-half years old, skipping the dedicated GPU until cards like AMD’s Navi-based RX 5500 and Nvidia’s GTX 1650 Super settle into the market (and perhaps come down from their launch prices) makes sense. And removing the GPU from our $500 budget frees up enough money that our APU-based build can pack an impressive 1TB of SSD storage and 16GB of RAM--both double the amount we were able to jam into our $500 Budget Battle Box. For that reason (and for the sake of an abundance of alliteration) we’ve dubbed our integrated GPU build the “Ample APU Invader.”

Here’s a quick look at the parts we chose for each system, and the total Newegg pricing at the time of purchase. Interestingly, both systems came in just $4 shy of our $500 budget.

 Once we outline the parts below and why we picked them  (and after assembling them into functioning PCs), we’ll benchmark the two machines and see how they compare. While there’s no denying that the Budget Battle Box is going to stomp the APU-based build in many of our tests, this round isn’t a competition. It’s more about the performance you could get right now for $500 versus performance that might (or might not) be good enough to tide you over until you can afford a graphics card upgrade. Alternatively, if gaming isn’t your priority and you need space for your media library, the APU Invader build could serve you quite well as is. It’s certainly a pretty system for $500, with enough CPU and graphics muscle for many mainstream tasks. 

Budget Battle Box (Core i3/RX 570)

If you only have $500 to spend and your primary interest is gaming, this build will handle most AAA titles at 1080p, albeit at reduced settings. Its Core i3 CPU is also no slouch for productivity tasks, but the 8GB of RAM isn’t ideal (we think 16GB is the sweet spot and 32GB is ideal), and the 512GB SSD is going to get cramped pretty quick once you start installing games. The system looks good from the outside, though, thanks to an attractive DIYPC case that includes a tempered-glass side panel and a tasteful amount of RGB lighting. 

Intel Core i3-9100F $90

 If all you truly care about is gaming and you’re looking to spend the least amount of money on your CPU, you could opt for a Pentium Gold G5400 for $60-$65. But we decided instead to spend a little more ($89 at the time of purchase) for a Core i3-9100F, which gives you four actual cores (versus two cores and Hyper-threading on the Pentium), and a higher max Turbo frequency of 4.2 GHz, compared to 3.7 GHz and no Turbo on the cheaper Pentium. Note that there’s no in-box cooler with the Core i3. But we wanted something quieter than Intel’s stock cooler anyway.

XFX RS XXX Edition Radeon RX 570 $130

Gaming performance was a priority with this build. But with a budget this low, 1080p at high settings really isn’t an option. At $129.99, XFX’s RS XXX Edition of the RX 570 is plenty capable of AAA gaming. You’re just going to have to turn down some in-game settings. The 4GB of memory is also a limiting factor, but so long as you keep your expectations modest and your resolution below 1440p, this card should serve you well for the near future. At medium/normal settings, the system with this card delivered between 56 and 91 frames per second in our three test titles. 

Patriot Viper Elite 8GB (2x 4GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4-2666 $43

Given that the B365 platform we’re building on here is locked, fast RAM above DDR4 2666 isn’t supported. So we went for affordability--with a nod to style. For $43 when we bought it (down to $38 when we wrote this), Patriot’s Viper Elite kit supports the platform’s maximum 2666 speed, along with some grey heat spreaders that look a lot better through our glass side panel than bare green PCBs. 

Intel 660p SSD (512GB) $62

Say what you will about the reduced endurance of QLC flash and how it can (and does) slow down drastically if you manage to chew through the cache. But the latter is never likely going to be an issue during mainstream use and gaming. And the former is unlikely to be a problem for most people during the 5-year warranty period of Intel’s 660p. And for the $62 we spent on the 512GB version of this drive, you’re not likely going to find anything as spacious and speedy as this NVMe drive from Intel. Opting for an M.2 SSD also simplifies the install process (as long as you don’t lose the tiny screw inside the case when installing), while cutting the number of cables, making for a cleaner, simpler build than opting for a 2.5-inch SATA drive.

ASRock B365M-HDV Motherboard $65

 ASRock’s motherboards are often hard to beat on the budget end of the board spectrum, and with a price that often dips below the $65 we spent, the B365M-HDV is no exception. The Micro-ATX form factor means there’s at least room for adding an x1 card down the line for a sound card or Wi-Fi. And if you want to stick to Ethernet, you get a Gigabit port from Intel here. There’s also a PCIe M.2 slot, which we used for the boot drive. We’d love to see USB-C, but that’s clearly not happening at this price point. Also, there are no RGB headers, which would have come in handy for controlling the case lights. But sacrifices always have to be made when your budget is just $500. 

DeepCool Gammaxx 400 CPU Air Cooler $21

Budget-priced air coolers are also plentiful, with legions of builders heaping praise on the Cooler Master Hyper 212. But we found the newer Hyper 212 Black Edition to be a bit disappointing on the performance front. And even the original 212 sells for around $35, which would have pushed us over our build budget. So we went with this similarly designed Gammaxx model from DeepCool, which sells for under $20. It gets the job done without kicking out an annoying level of fan noise, and the blue-LED fan adds a nice glow through our case’s glass side.

DIYPC VII-BK-ARGB $40

There are no shortage of budget PC cases, many with higher-profile names than DIYPC. But the company’s VII-BK-ARGB has a lot to offer for under $50, including decent stealthy looks, a tasteful amount of RGB lighting (a strip in the front plus a fan in the rear), and a tempered-glass side panel. It also supports large graphics cards (up to 12.6 inches) and 240mm radiators. Neither of those are in the purview of this budget build, but it’s always nice to have upgrade options. 

Seasonic S1 12III 450 SSR-450GB3 $45

Prices of low-end power supplies have been creeping up in the last several months, likely at least in part due to tariffs. That means we couldn’t find a modular power supply around $50, but thankfully our case has a large PSU shroud that can hide unused cables. Settling for a non-modular PSU meant we could opt for this Seasonic model, which has enough extra wattage for a few future upgrades, reasonably quiet operation, and an 80 Plus Bronze efficiency certification, along with a five-year warranty. 

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Ample APU Invader (Ryzen 5 3400G/1TB SSD)

For our second budget system, we’ve opted to lean more into storage and less into graphical horsepower. This time we’re coupling AMD’s latest Ryzen 5 3400G quad core APU with 16GB of high-spec memory and a whopping 1TB of M.2 PCIe SSD. The Intel build may have the legs on the GPU side of things, but for those not interested in topping out frame rates in AAA titles, but who spend their days and nights playing eSports and MOBA games instead, our $500 AMD build might be exactly the right fit.

One big advantage of this setup is that it’s roomy enough to house a fair amount of files and software. There’s far less storage anxiety with a 1TB drive than there is with a 500GB gaming system. After all, throw a healthy Windows 10 OS on to a new PC, install a few basic programs and you’re immediately looking at 100GB disappearing into vital system functions alone. Combine that with most AAA titles now sitting pretty in the 50-100GB range per game, and at most you’ll likely only be able to house 4-8 games on your new rig with its dedicated GPU.That’s not exactly a small number of titles of course, and yes you could upgrade the SSD or add a hard drive at a later date. But our AMD 1TB rig offers a far more palpable upgrade platform than that of the Budget Battle Box, as well as twice the memory for future proofing and the ability to keep more browser tabs open. All you really need to do to make this thing shine as a true gaming rig is throw in budget GPU such as Nvidia’s latest GeForce GTX 1660 Super when you can afford it, and you’re all set. 

AMD Ryzen 5 3400G $144

It may not be on the same 7nm silicon and Zen2 architecture found in pricier Ryzen 3000 siblings CPUs, but that doesn’t stop the Ryzen 5 3400G from being a fine processor for those on a budget. This quad-core, eight-thread part clocks in at 3.7 GHz, turboing up to 4.2 GHz given enough cooling, and it also packs in 11 of AMD’s Vega cores. Couple that with an included CPU heatsink, better performance with higher frequency memory (up to 3200 MHz), and a low TDP of 65W and there’s a lot to like about this processor. Go back a few years and a quad core processor with hyper threading from Intel would’ve set you back $330 or more.

The 3400G does have one downside we’d like to point out though, and that’s the PCIe lanes. Similar to the last-generation APUs from AMD, this chip still only supports 8x PCIe 3.0 lanes directly to the chip. That means if you do upgrade at a later date, you may run into some bandwidth issues when it comes to graphical performance.

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x 8GB) DDR4-3200 $83

Some of the Tom’s Hardware staffers may swear that 32GB is the new 16GB, but honestly when it comes to builds on the cheap we reckon if you can get 16GB, then you’ve done a fine job at budgeting. Yeah, this system isn’t going to be a crazy workstation, or a mad 4K gaming rig demanding as much VRAM and RAM as it can get, but 16GB at 1080p should be more than enough for any and all activities you should be tackling on a budget system. 

Ryzen thrives off of higher speed memory thanks to its Infinity Fabric running at the same frequencies as RAM. But the 12nm stuff it tends to trail off in performance gains after the 3200 MHz mark.

If you do need more RAM later on down the line, you’re going to have two options to hand. Either you can invest in a fresh set of 32GB (2x16GB) sticks, or swap out the motherboard for something with four DIMM slots and grab another set of 3200 MHz sticks from Corsair. That decision may come down to convenience of swapping out a couple of sticks, over rebuilding your entire rig (and possibly re-authorizing Windows) for the sake of doubling your memory.

Intel 660p SSD (1TB) $94

It may not be the fastest M.2 drive out there, but when it comes to price to performance the 660p is king. With speeds still almost four times as fast as a traditional SSD in sequential read and write, it’s well worth the cash to invest in. We’ve mentioned earlier just how important it is to have that extra 500GB storage space when it comes to your hard drive solution in a budget build. But this drive also comes with some additional strengths too, namely in overall performance and endurance.

Compared to our Intel build (which uses the same drive at half the capacity), our 1TB variant is rated at 200TBW (terabytes written) as opposed to 100TBW, and also leverages some far bigger figures on the sequential read and write front too (1800 MB/s read versus 1500 MB/s, and 1800 MB/s write versus 1000 MB/s). Yes Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus may run rings around this thing when it comes to real-world and synthetic benchmarks, but it’s also twice the price. 

ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 $60

To meet our budget targets we’ve gone for as low-end as we could on the motherboard front. That said, ASRock’s B450M-HDV R4.0 is a fantastic solution for those trying to keep the price down on their Ryzen rig. This Micro-ATX board, comes with support for 2x DDR4 DIMMs up to 3200 MHz, 1x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot for your add-in, four SATA 6Gbps ports, and a plethora of I/O, including 4x USB 3.1 Gen1, 2x USB 2.0, Gigabit ethernet, HD Audio, a PS/2 combi port, and a whole swath of graphical outs (DVI-D, HDMI and D-Sub). Theoretically, the board supports processors with a max TDP of 105W (or basically anything in the Ryzen lineup currently, including the 3950X). That said, we wouldn’t advise you to drop a $750 CPU into a $60 motherboard.

Phanteks Eclipse 9300 $60

Phanteks’ Eclipse lineup has always been more budget oriented than the Evolv series, yet most of those cases still include a lot of the features that make the more premium solutions an enjoyable experience to build in. 

The Eclipse P300 comes in at an incredibly svelte $60 total, and with that you get a tempered glass panel, clean design, support for up to a 280mm AIO, a full-length PSU cover, a smidge of integrated RGB lighting, dust filters, plenty of cable management support, support for PSUs up to 160mm and plenty of hard drive support too (with 2x front loaded 3.5-inch HDD caddies, and 1x SSD caddies on the rear of the motherboard tray). The case is also available in black, white, and two special edition black variants with white or red accents and interiors respectively.

EVGA 600BR 80+ Bronze 600W $55

Regardless of what your budget is, we recommend you never skimp out on your power supply if you can help it. Always go with a name brand that you trust, and always go with a PSU that has a long warranty. There are a lot of cheap PSUs out there, and we’ve seen some of them in the past burn out and flare up (literally) as soon as you plug them in. A poor or faulty power supply can very easily take out multiple parts of your system with it if it ever decides to pop.

Because of that, we’ve gone with an EVGA BR600. This 80+ Bronze PSU is a non-modular, fairly quiet budget power supply with plenty of headroom for anything we expect to throw at this rig. In fact, from the wall under maximum load you can expect to see power draw at roughly 149W total. So even if you decided to throw in a completely unrealistic graphics card at a later date, let’s say an EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti FTW3 Ultra Hybrid, you’d still come away with 200W to spare.

Benchmark Results

To compare our two budget desktops, we ran a handful of our gaming benchmarks, as well as Geekbench for an overall performance score.

On Geekbench 5.0, the Budget Battle Box went head-to-head with overall test against the Ample APU Invader and both showed strength. The BBB earned a single-core score of 1,146 and a multi-core score of 3,804. The APU invader had a single-core score of 1,004 and a multi-core score of 4,031.

We didn’t play our game benchmarks quite as high as we do in most desktop testing, but the APU tended to stutter along.

On Rise of the Tomb Raider (medium, FHD) the Battle Box came out way ahead at 91.4 frames per seconds compared to the APU’s 27 fps. On the newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the desktop with the discrete GPU hit 57 fps compared to the APU build’s 18 fps. 

We ran Hitman 2’s Miami benchmark on high at 1080p. The Battlebox ran it at 56.2 fps while the APU Invader ran it at 24 fps. 

And on Far Cry: New Dawn (normal, FHD), the Budget Battle Box played the benchmark at 73 fps. The APU build ran it at 24 fps. 

Conclusion

Both the Budget Battle Box and the Ample APU Invader have some obvious strengths and glaring weaknesses. If you’re using the $500 build purely for gaming, something like the Budget Battle Box, with its discrete graphics, is the obvious way to go. You’ll only be able to install a few games at a time with a 512GB SSD, but you’ll be able to play games at 1080p at decent settings. Should you want to upgrade to more storage and 16GB of RAM later, you’ll need at least an additional SATA SSD and to buy a new set of RAM, as our motherboard only had two slots.

The Ample APU Invader, however, has twice as much storage (1TB) and RAM (16GB) as the Battle Box. If you’re using this more as a productivity machine, the extra storage and RAM will help you out here. Additionally, if you plan on spending more money down the line, this will be easier to upgrade with afure GPU for better gaming performance. And as we said up top, the RX 570 will give you much better performance in gaming today, but it’s also pushing three years old, and there are likely much better options in the $130-$150 price range arriving soon. So you may regret opting for an old card today.

Realistically, our best suggestion is to try to stretch your budget just a bit further. For less than $600, you can have a version of the Budget Battle Box with 16GB of RAM, more storage and a newer GPU. But we constricted our budget for a reason, and either of these systems could serve you well, provided you keep your expectations in check.

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Are you ready to join the Red Team? The Radeon RX 5700, which normally starts at around $330 for basic versions of the card, can be found for just $289.99 on Newegg. Specifically, an XFX model that we've seen for sale previously at Best Buy for a similar price, is now on sale over at Newegg. The RX 5700 is currently our favorite GPU for 1440p gaming, although it would also make an excellent card for high-refresh 1080p displays. If that sounds like the kind of gaming performance you're after, this is a sweet deal on a card that performs very well for the price.

• Get the XFX Radeon RX 5700 for $289.99.

The Radeon RX 5700 is a high-performance AMD graphics card that rocks the chipmaker's modern RDNA (Radeon DNA) architecture. The Navi-powered graphics card comes equipped with 2,304 Stream Processors (SPs) and 8GB of high-speed GDDR6 memory clocked at 14 Gbps. The Radeon RX 5700 has a 1,465 MHz base clock, 1,625 MHz game clock and a decent 1,725 MHz boost clock.

The Radeon RX 5700 draws external power from one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The graphics card is rated with a 180W TBP (typical board power), meaning you can probably get by with a reputable 600W power supply. Display outputs include three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and one HDMI 2.0b port.

When you buy the Radeon RX 5700 from Newegg, you also get three free months of Microsoft Xbox Game Pass for PC, where you can get access to Gears 5 and over 100 PC games. The Radeon RX 5700 is also eligible for AMD's revamped "Raise the Game" bundle, which gives you a free PC copy of Borderlands 3 or Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint. When you factor in the free game and game pass, plus a $50 discount (which is actually $60 off the card's MSRP), this XFX Radeon RX 5700 is an excellent value.

Should You Buy This Graphics Card?

To see if this graphics card will fit your needs, we recommend checking out our review of the AMD Radeon RX 5700. You may also want to see our face-off between reference cards and third-party graphics cards for an in-depth look at the differences between the two. 

For more help picking the best graphics card for you, there's our graphics card buying guide, the AMD and Nvidia GPU hierarchy and our breakdown of the best graphics cards we've tested.

Graphics card news site VideoCardz.com was given some pictures of what they presume is the upcoming XFX RX 5500 THICC II.

The source that gave VideoCardz.com the images did not specify exactly which Radeon SKU the images belong to, but the editor assumes that based on the card’s size, single 8-pin PCI-Express power connector, and the timing of the leak that this is the RX 5500. Based on this information, we will have to agree – the only alternative we can come up with is that it will be the RX 5500 XT.

Based on the renderings, the card will have a dual-fan cooler (hence the II in the THICC II product name), and come with an all-black design and exposed copper heatpipes. The inclusion of the fancy rear shroud is also appreciated.

Sadly, that’s also all the information we have about the card.

The RX 5500 graphics card from AMD is a mid-tier card and comes with 1408 RDNA cores and runs at up to 1845 MHz. Due to the bigger cooler, the chances are that this unit will run a little faster. The standard RX 5500 also comes with 4GB of GDDR6 memory that runs at an effective speed of 14 Gb/s over a 128-bit memory bus. We don’t have definitive information about the RX 5500 XT yet.

XFX has an upcoming graphics card that's not ashamed of its size, according to a VideoCardz report today. A revamp of the Thicc II, the XFX RX 5700 XT Thicc III Ultra reportedly uses an extra thick 2.7 slot cooler to tame the Navi 10 XT die underneath. The big difference between the two models is the new card's cooling solution uses three fans instead of two, theoretically improving cooling capabilities.

XFX's Thicc line of graphics cards are known for how thick the card/cooling solution is. Most graphics card coolers try to fit within a two-slot width for compatibility reasons. But this XFX monster seemingly throws that idea out the window. Based on the pictures VideoCardz shared, one side of the Thicc III Ultra has a large exhaust vent, which reminds us of a 1955 Cadillac Fleetwood grill, and the display outputs on the other. The cooler retains its premium, mostly black aesthetic outside and also holds on to the functional and stylish backplate seen in its predecessor.

The Thicc III Ultra will reportedly sport a 1,820 MHz base clock, a 1,925 MHz boost clock and 2,025 MHz peak clock, which would make it one of the fastest third-party AMD RX 5700 XT graphics cards on the market.

Few details were shared, but we know it'll share the same basic underpinnings as all other RX 5700 XT graphics cards, including 2560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs and 8GB of GDDR6 memory running on a 256-bit wide memory bus. Outputs are said to include three DisplayPort 1.4 and one HDMI 2.0b, with power fed to the 225W card through two 8-pin PCIe connectors

Pricing was not revealed, but we expect to see these available for sale soon. 

Photo Credits: VideoCardz.com

Major Chinese retailer JD (Jingdong) has revealed the specifications for a custom XFX RX 5700 XT graphics card, along with a 3,299 yuan (~$475.50) price tag.

The XFX RX 5700 XT Black Wolf boasts an all-black exterior. The graphics card measures 290 x 150 x 58mm and employs a very bulky dual-slot cooler. The cooling system consists of a huge interior heatsink with aluminum fins and dual cooling fans. The graphics card is also complemented by a black metal backplate with the XFX branding.

Specs

The graphics card has a 1,905 MHz boost clock, which coincides with AMD's reference specifications. The base or game clocks are unknown. Taking into consideration the graphics card's beefy cooler, we expect it to come with a decent factory overclock in comparison to the vanilla AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT. The 8GB of GDDR6 memory remains untouched, meaning it will continue to run at 1,750 MHz (14,000 MHz effective).

The XFX RX 5700 XT Black Wolf draws external power from one 8-pin and one 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The reference Radeon RX 5700 XT is rated with a TBP (total board power) of 225W. It's unclear whether XFX's iteration will match that. As for display outputs, the graphics card has three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors and one HDMI 2.0b port.

JD will start shipping the graphics card on August 9.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are still a way off, but interestingly, AMD's 50th anniversary brought along some amazing deals of its own. For instance, the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ graphics card, which normally retails for $230, is selling for $199.99 on Amazon for a limited time.

• Get the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ for $199.99.

The XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ is a highly-overclocked variant of AMD's Radeon RX 590 12nm gaming graphics card. XFX's custom model incorporates 2,304 shaders with a 1,580MHz boost clock and 8GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 2,000MHz (8,000MHz effective). If you're looking for a graphics card that has stellar 1080p performance and can hold its own at 1440p, the XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ certainly fits that description.

XFX has equipped the Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ with the brand's latest Fatboy unibody VRM heatsink, which has 50 percent more surface area, and two huge fans to improve cooling. The only caveat with this design is that the graphics card eats up three PCI slots from your case. The cooling fans are equipped with XFX's Zero dB feature allowing to stay off until when needed. Additionally, the graphics card comes with dual BIOS, so it lets you choose between the Performance mode and Silent mode.

The XFX Radeon RX 590 Fatboy 8GB OC+ qualifies for the limited AMD50 game bundle that includes digital codes for Tom Clancy's The Division 2 Gold Edition and World War Z. The bundle alone is worth $139, which essentially means you're paying half price for the graphics card.

Should You Buy This Graphics Card?

As always, we recommend you read our review before investing in hardware. Here's our review of the AMD Radeon RX 590. You may also want to see our face-off between reference cards and third-party graphics cards.

For help picking the best graphics card for you, there's our graphics card buying guide, the AMD and Nvidia GPU hierarchy and our breakdown of the best graphics cards we've tested.