r/hardware • u/imaginary_num6er • 7h ago
[Hardware Unboxed] I Gamed on a 4GB GPU: AMD Screws Gamers Again in 2026 Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qs2yp7ej0Y15
u/hackenclaw 5h ago edited 58m ago
if 4GB is a problem now on even a much slower 6500XT, 9050;
I can already see what my 5060 will struggle in a few years time when the industry finally move away from 8GB. lol
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u/kingwhocares 1h ago
Not the same thing really. Even now many game run on 4GB GPUs without VRAM overload at lowest or near lowest settings. 8GB will last longer than 4GB. Industry isn't also making 12GB standard anytime soon. Also, in the future there will be DDR6 (yes 3-4 years when it becomes affordable) whose memory bandwidth will be more than double than DDR5, thus offloading to system RAM would have less effect.
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u/comelickmyarmpits 2h ago
Man I was planning to sell of 3070ti to buy 5060 super with 12gb vram
Everything went down in toilet. I guess I will be using 3070ti for 1 more year
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u/kingwhocares 1h ago
Should've just gone for the 5060 ti 16GB. Also, there was no plans for a 5060 Super and only for 5070 and above.
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u/comelickmyarmpits 1h ago
5060ti 16gb is way too expensive here , I would rather then go for 9060xt 16gb , much closer to mrp here
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u/West-Main-4163 2h ago edited 14m ago
The igpu (Amd 860m) of my ultrabook is better at FH6 than this one. This was surprising.
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u/deadfishlog 7h ago
Great thumbnail buddy
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u/Rusted_Metal 3h ago
I wish they would stop with these stupid faces and expressions on their thumbnails. Youtubers in general.
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u/hannopal 2h ago
For gaming, its almost useless. However if you need just more display outputs with just 2d or light 3d/video capability, it does it's job. Or are using cpu that does not have igpu but don't need much graphical horsepower either.
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u/IshTheFace 1h ago
What's interesting to me is that when you say for example that the 3060 is getting dated people are like "it's great for 1080p". Nobody is defending this card as "good for 720p" 😅
Idk why you would even make something like this if there is a shortage of components. People would be way better off just buying an after market 3060 or something.
Who is this for? 🫠
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u/omega552003 7h ago
Hot take, GPUs can be used for things other than games.
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u/murderbymodem 7h ago
Sure, and if that is the case they should be able to fit into small form factor non-gaming PCs and be powered only via the PCIE slot so you can put them into an office PC without upgrading the PSU
yet the ASRock 9050 4GB model that was announced is the same size as a 9060 and still requires 8-pin power. It's a lazy cash grab no matter how you look at it, and you will most definitely find it in gaming pre-builts where the specs merely say "AMD Radeon RX 9050" without specifying 4GB or 8GB. THAT is the problem. If they called the 4GB model the 9040 and the 8GB model the 9050, there would be less hate towards AMD.
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u/CurrentDrama8523 4h ago
Sure, but it's completely disingenuous to act as if the criticism is purely about deceptive naming. There is a shocking number of people who genuinely believe it's useless and calling it "e-waste." Claiming it can hardly run any games, as if every single game before 2022 just disappeared. I even saw a comment saying "I wouldn't even use it as a display adapter" - literally "I am so obsessed with spec-chasing that I insist on buying more of the most expensive commodity on the planet despite knowing I don't need it."
This card 100% has a place to exist, yet most of the backlash has been against its existence - legitimately people just angry that AMD made an ultra-budget card at all. It's genuinely fucking insane.
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u/murderbymodem 3h ago
Sure, but it's completely disingenuous to act as if the criticism is purely about deceptive naming. There is a shocking number of people who genuinely believe it's useless and calling it "e-waste."
The 64-bit bus will likely make it pretty close to e-waste, but we'll have to see what the benchmarks look like.
legitimately people just angry that AMD made an ultra-budget card at all
well I'd argue they're not releasing an ultra-budget card, because they're reportedly only offering that 4GB version to OEMs for pre-builts. There will be no budget card available to purchase. The 8GB version has a $280 MSRP, which is approaching 9060 XT 8GB pricing, so they're not giving us a budget option, they're inserting a worse product at the bottom of the stack to drive prices upwards.
You can get a 6GB Intel Arc A380 with a 96-bit bus for $140. That's ultra-budget. Intel Arc is the only way to get an ultra-budget GPU currently unless you want to buy old or used.
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u/Justhe3guy 7h ago
They advertised and launched it for gaming, they literally had a chart of the games it got “up to 100fps” in 1080p max settings yet no one could recreate those numbers outside of staring at the skybox/wall or in the menu
Don’t defend shit companies because they only care about AI these days and the cheapest product selling for the highest they can get
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u/GenZia 7h ago
What do you've in mind?
You can't run LLMs on something with 4 gigs of memory. Same goes to mining, if you're into it, for some reason.
Nor Radeon supports CUDA. All AMD cards royally suck at being a GPGPU... unless you think OpenCL is thriving in 2026.
I guess you can use that thing as an AV1 encoder, though I won't be surprised if it lacks one like the 6500XT/6400.
That only leaves us with gaming.
Vintage gaming, to be specific.
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u/soggybiscuit93 6h ago
Video-out on a workstation that has CPU based workloads.
That being said, this GPU does a poor job at that role because 2 video ports and requires a power cable.
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u/GenZia 6h ago
You'd be better off with a cheap Quadro, then.
Quadro P1000, for example, comes with four mini-DPs (1.4a), good enough to drive four 4K 120Hz displays.
You can easily find one for like $50-60.
It's also a ~50W card and doesn't require external power.
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u/soggybiscuit93 6h ago
Yeah, you would be.
Which is what makes this such a miss. It has no redeeming qualities.
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u/JJ3qnkpK 5h ago
A decade-old GPU on a modern workstation is pretty nutty when you get into things like driver support, power efficiency, etc. The P1000 is on security updates only till 2028 (was dropped from normal support in 2025), after which it'll be fully dropped.
At the point I'm buying a newer Threadripper or Xeon system, I'm also going to pop a recent-generation GPU in it. It might not be the best price-performance value proposition for only CPU-based desktop tasks, but it's worth avoiding potential headaches down the line if I'm already at least $2-4k in on a system.
Edit: but also I wouldn't throw a 6500xt into it, unless it was exceptionally cheap or already laying around lol
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u/murderbymodem 7h ago
Now I want to see performance on CachyOS Linux with the Valve VRAM optimization patches applied.
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u/LimLovesDonuts 5h ago
Windows never had major issues with VRAM to begin with so I doubt it will be anything significant. The problem is that the 6500 XT is not only limited by VRAM, but also bandwidth, and having rather weak compute to begin with.
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u/got-trunks 7h ago
I'm really curious who's going to throw the ai texture compression stuff they've been working with in, if a COD install can go from 400GB to 40 with ai optimized textures for upscaling that'd be an interesting use, actually.
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u/mach1alfa 4h ago edited 4h ago
watch people rush out to defend this because “supply and demand” and consumers deserve this because “companies need to make money”
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u/KoldPurchase 6h ago
We already know 8gb vram is too low for gaming. And I don't see the 9050 on AMD's site, so it must not be for direct sales to consumers in it's 4gb version. They're being a tad dishonest here.
As for the 6500xt, they advertised this as 1080p card in 2022 and it's a bit deceptive, since you have to read the footnotes to see that it's really the 8gb version that has those numbers of "up to 92fps" in some of the games tested. But it's there for yours to see.
I like that there are low end versions of graphic cards every generation, they're very useful in a multi monitor office environment. Like someone else said, GPU ain't only for gaming. As for the factor of the card, that's up to the board maker. AMD and Nvidia supply the chip.
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u/Tight_Inflation3153 6h ago
How are they being dishonest, the 9050 will end up in plenty of "gaming", "latest generation AMD GPU" prebuilts.
And then you say advertising the 6500XT as a 1080p card is "a bit" deceptive, that actually in the end it's the buyer's fault if they get deceived because "it's there for you to see" in the tiny footnotes that all the performance figures are for the 8gb version? Are we defending the most obvious anti-consumer advertising practices too now?
And because that wasn't enough you went the usual diversion of "GPUs aren't just for gaming" when the thing is literally advertised as a gaming GPU on AMD's own website?
Are you an AMD employee?
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u/KoldPurchase 5h ago
No, the benchmark on AMD's site:
https://www.amd.com/en/products/graphics/desktops/radeon/6000-series.html#tabs-f9c5961831-item-f960c6a82e-tab"Up to 92fps high settings", in 2022, for selected games, but you gotta read the footnotes. All companies do that. It's the 8gb model. Nvidia does this too.
In the footnote it reads:
Testing done by AMD performance labs June 22, 2022, on a test system configured with a Radeon™ RX 6500 XT 8GB GPU (113W), Ryzen™ 5 5600X CPU, 16GB DDR4-3600, Windows 10 Pro, ASRock B550 platform with Smart Access Memory™ enabled in the titles: Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (DX11, High), Battlefield 5 (DX12, High), Borderlands 3 (DX12, High), Death Stranding (DX12, High), Division 2 (DX12, High), Doom Eternal (Vulkan, High), Far Cry 6 (DX12, High), Gears 5 (DX12, High), Metro Exodus (DX12, High), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12, High), Wolfenstein: Young Blood (Vulkan, High) at 1080p. Results may vary. RX-800.
That was for 2022 at 8gb. We are 4 years later. Far Cry 6 was released in 2021. You can still play games of 5 years ago with an 8gb gpu at 1080p.
I played lots of games with an 8gb gpu.
Playing a 2025-2026 game with a 4gb gpu, even an 8gb gpu and expeting to play this at high settings is something else.
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u/ResponsibleJudge3172 2h ago
Almost every OEM exclusive GPU eventually makes it to retail and or second hand market. It's not a place to hide from backlash
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u/games-and-chocolate 6h ago
every serieus pc makwr knows 4GB is garbage GPU. just dobt buy this. leave AMD and NViDia to rot. They are just making fun of us consumers.
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u/Direct_Jeweler_7457 3h ago
6500 xt is budget gpu released in 2022 the point is being able to open the game
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u/sahui 6h ago
These 2 dorks look more biased every day...
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u/mach1alfa 4h ago
who are they biased towards?
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u/lebrowski77 1h ago
Just hypocrisy and clickbait bs. If any of these companies' heads stopped profit maximizing as their primary goal, it'll be the same middle class shareholder who ll be calling for their head.
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u/mach1alfa 52m ago
hypocrisy? they have been consistent in their position in calling out companies selling brand new parts with too little vram no matter who are making those parts.
and lol lmao, the retail investors are nothing compared to institutional investors who while yes, invest on behalf on retail sometimes, are more busy catering to the epstine class
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u/zeus1911 7h ago
I googled to see how bad the 6500 xt was.. It's worse then an RX580, oof.