You’d be forgiven for getting excited about the AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT. A brand new RDNA 2 graphics card, with ray tracing support, that’s both easy to find in stock and available at a comparatively approachable £200 / $230? In the midst of a years-long components shortage, exacerbated by all manner of price-gouging bollocks, it’d be entirely understandable if upgrade-starved PC owners went for this like my cat goes for unattended crisp packets. Especially if they’re happy to stick to playing at 1080p.
Alas, the RX 6500 XT isn’t just an inferior low-end option to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 (one of the best graphics cards, and perhaps the outright best for budget builds right now). It’s an offputtingly slow, sometimes bizarrely-designed GPU in general; instead of providing long-overdue relief to a truly fudged hardware market, it ends up feeling like more an attempt to just sell any old second-rate kit to an audience that’s been left desperate for something, anything that’s new and somewhat affordable.