A reference that is definitely struggling to find a buyer, even in times of crisis…
The graphics card case Radeon RX 6500 XT, launched on January 20, testifies to one thing: despite a GPU market under tension for more than a year, customers were not willing to buy anything. Apart from the very first hours after its launch, this graphics card was one of the few that was regularly available at retailers in February / March. Nevertheless, the prices charged were, and still remain, much higher than that recommended by AMD (210 euros). In France, on Amazon, some models are offered at 245 euros. At a specialist retailer like TopAchat, the prices are more between 250 and 300 euros. On the other hand, in Germany, and more specifically at Mindfactory, some RX 6500 XTs were sold at prices lower than the MSRP. The retailer, for example, listed a PowerColor card at 169 euros including tax. Note that across the Rhine, the VAT is 19%.
At the time of writing, the cheapest Radeon RX 6500 XT on Mindfactory costs 218 euros. On the other hand, NVIDIA’s entry-level GeForce RTX 3050s are more expensive, at least 360 euros. The Radeon RX 6600s are trading from 422 euros.
The temperature of the GDDR6X memory chips of an RTX 3070 Ti lowered by 46°C with copper pads
Prices still high in France
Unfortunately, on the French market, if prices have been falling for several weeks, they remain generally higher than those practiced in Germany. Instead, count at least 440 euros for a GeForce RTX 3050. The Radeon RX 6600s generally trade between 420 and 500 euros. Incidentally, note that TopAchat offers a flash sale at 399 euros on the PowerColor Radeon RX 6600 HellHound + Xbox Game Pass 1 month free for another 66 hours.
To come back to the Radeon RX 6500 XT, even at its recommended retail price, it remains difficult to recommend. In terms of pure performance, it does less well than an RX 5500 XT 8 GB. Its only advantage is slightly lower power consumption.