The recently introduced Radeon RX 6500 XT graphics card based on the Navi 24 graphics processor only supports four PCI Express 4.0 interface lanes. This fact was confirmed by ASRock, which published the properties of its non-reference version of this accelerator. Strangely enough, its predecessor, the Radeon RX 5500 (XT), supported eight PCIe 4.0 lanes.
Image source: AMD
portal VideoCardz posted a comparison picture of the PCIe slots of Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards on Navi 22, Navi 23 and Navi 24 graphics chips, which confirms that the Radeon RX 6500 XT has fewer PCIe 4.0 lanes than the rest of the cards. Pay attention to the traces that lead from the connector pins.
With only four available PCIe 4.0 lanes, the Radeon RX 6500 XT has the same bandwidth of 8GB / s as the PCIe 3.0 x8 or PCIe 2.0 x16 models.
Image source: VideoCardz
It is also strange that neither the AMD website nor the websites of its partners, such as Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI, which will also publish their versions, provide information on the number of PCIe lanes supported for the Radeon RX 6500 XT.
Image source: AMD
Image source: Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI
It should also be noted that, unlike the rest of the Radeon RX 6000 series cards, the Radeon RX 6500 XT lacks some key features. For example, it has no built-in H264 / HEVC encoders or an AV1 decoder. The remaining differences in feature availability of the Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards are shown in the figure below.
Image source: 3DCenter
Is it important that the Radeon RX 6500 XT has a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface? In most cases no, as the card is not designed for games with resolutions higher than 1080p and high bandwidth is not critical here.
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