Hot on the heels of reports around a purported Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti looking to fill the affordable laptop gaming void, a fresh round of leaks have brought to us word about the AMD Radeon RX 6500 – a new generation GPU that may also be aimed at offering 1080p gaming. The information comes courtesy super reliable tipster Yuko Yoshida on Twitter, the new generation AMD GPU is codenamed Dimgray Cavefish, which is apparently the internal working name of the Navi 23 core architecture – expected to bring in the next generation of affordable gaming for AMD. Even amid the ongoing severe chip crisis limiting the ability for users to buy GPUs, the AMD Radeon RX 6500 is now tipped to launch as early as next month itself, in April 2021.
According to the information posted online, the AMD Radeon RX 6500 does not appear to be a direct rival of the upcoming Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti that is also expected to launch soon. Instead, it may actually rival the already launched RTX 3060, which falls in the mid-range of the GPU hierarchy. The tip about the upcoming AMD GPU specifically points at this being a card for “premium 1080p gaming”, which suggests that it may be a shade too expensive for the absolute budget segment of PC gaming. The suggested pricing of the AMD Radeon RX 6500 is also tipped to be CNY 2,499, which is about Rs 28,000 – further suggesting that the card in question will cater to affordable, but not budget gaming PCs.
The sub-flagship AMD Radeon RX 6500 also appears to match more specifications of the RTX 3060, and less of the upcoming Nvidia RTX 3050 lineup. What AMD might actually be aiming for is a sliver of a gap that lies between the market that the RTX 3060 addresses, and the budget GPU segment that still features older chips without support for new generation features such as ray tracing. Tips about the specifications about the AMD Radeon RX 6500 GPU include 32 compute units (against the rumoured 20 CUs in the rivalling Nvidia RTX 3050 series), 236mm2 die size of the new Navi 23 core architecture, and support for 128-bit memory with 8GB GDDR6 VRAM and 16Gbps data throughput.
Even with these specifications at hand, the AMD Radeon RX 6500 does appear to be a touch too expensive for the segment that it wants to target. Given that the source of information likely comes some time ahead of the commercial launch of the GPU, there is still room for pricing details to be tweaked. If AMD wants to do to Nvidia what it has recently succeeded in doing to long-time chip market leader Intel, pricing is a key area that it will have to get right. With 1080p gaming on the literal card here for AMD, here’s hoping that we get more information coming in about this GPU, before it launches in the expected launch timeline of April this year.
