The Radeon RX 580 remains the most popular graphics card for AMD on the Steam Hardware Survey at the time of this writing. This is expected to start declining fairly rapidly as AMD has officially dropped driver update and optimization support for both for Graphics Core Next (GCN) 4.0 (Polaris) and 5.x (Vega) architectures. Whether users will migrate to Nvidia or Intel GPUs instead of AMD is an unknown. There is the possibility that RX 580 users will just keep using their RX 580s until their next major system upgrade, as the current official drivers seem to perform fairly well and unofficial driver support is available (more on that at the end).
To state the obvious, AMD is under no obligation to support seven year old graphics cards, but I am still disappointed since abandoning the most popular GPU on the Steam hardware Survey for your company is against the “longevity” and “aging like fine wine” reputation AMD has carefully built with it’s graphics cards and CPU support (people are STILL buying AM4 socket motherboards and CPUs). But these three graphics cards represent very similar performance categories.
So lets look at what solid 1080P video cards look like.
RX580 (GCN 4.0), 2304 stream processors, 8 GB 256bit GDDR5 VRAM, PCIE 3.0×16, 185W
RX5500XT (RDNA 1.0), 1408 stream processors, 8 GB 128bit GDDR6 VRAM, PCIE 4.0×8, 130W
RX6500XT, (RDNA 2.0) 1024 stream processors, 8 GB 64bit GDDR6 VRAM, PCIE 3.0×4, 107W
When I say, “very similar” I really mean, “indistinguishable by humans” level of performance. There are 4GB VRAM versions of these cards, but no one should be buying a 4GB video card in 2024 unless they are building a Linux retro-gaming machine and they come across a 4GB version for really cheap, or just need a discreet video card for a media PC or workstation. And by “cheap” I mean cheaper than an Intel Arc A310 or A380 GPU that has built in AV1 coding and decoding (a feature none of the AMD cards listed here happen to have).
RX 580 MSRP at Launch (2017): $219.00: Not bad for a “top tier card”
RX 5500XT MSRP at Launch (2019): $169.00: Not bad for the entry level card.
RX 6500XT MSRP at Launch (2022): $199.00: There is no justification for this price point.
Every generation AMD has managed to decrease the stream processor count and halve the memory bandwidth, and still make a fairly decent 1080P gaming GPU. However putting out a “fairly decent gaming GPU” in 2022 which is price point on par with the bigger RX6600XT doesn’t make sense, at least for the 8GB VRAM versions which are the only viable gaming option for 1080P performance. Currently on Amazon a 6500XT and 6600XT are priced very competitively against each other, and they are vastly different levels of performance as the 6600XT has twice the stream processors, and twice the memory bandwidth.
Now the RX 580 is only available on the used market, I picked one up yesterday off of Facebook marketplace for 60 US dollars (your mileage may vary). But prices on 580s are essentially dirt cheap due to the crypto crunch as Etherium mining finished, and because AMD abandoned driver update support. However, if you are running Linux, an RX 580 will serve you well for years and years to come. Unfortunately for the Windows crowd, the RX 580 is really on its last legs, with limited use as something like a media server GPU compared to the alternatives. However if you have one laying around, might as well use it.
The RX5500XT is starting to come up on the used market, but performance wise there is no advantage over the RX 580, except for Windows users who will still get driver updates and optimizations from AMD. I do not recommend buying a new RX5500XT, as it is 75% of the cost of an RX6600XT and less than half the value. I do not recommend the RX6500XT at all, even the 8GB version, as it is 80-90% the cost of a 6600XT, and is literally “half the performance potential” from a GPU core and VRAM bandwidth perspective.
Final thoughts, if you can get a 5500XT 8GB for under 100 dollars, it’s a solid option for a “sidegrade” from the RX 580. If you can save a little bit more the RX6600XT is really the best value option for Windows gamers, at least from AMD’s currently supported lineup. If you are ok with using third party drivers, NimeZ drivers will continue to be updated until whenever they aren’t: https://www.amernimezone.com/#home
Wandering Through The Night 