AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT review: 1080p gaming, with a catch

The AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT is in many respects exactly what we’d been waiting for: a budget GPU at just $200, intended to offer solid gaming performance at 1080p. Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is a little different – the card hasn’t been widely available at that alluring price point and early reports point to performance that isn’t as solid as it ought to be, even for this class of card.

One potential reason for this shaky performance is that AMD has opted to include just four PCIe lanes with the RX 6500 XT, compared to the more usual eight or 16. That makes sense with modern PCIe 4.0, where each lane can deliver an impressive amount of bandwidth, but what happens when you use the 6500 XT on a PCIe 3.0 system where bandwidth per lane is halved?

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