It's easy to fall prey to the latest and greatest graphics cards: while products like the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and Radeon RX 6950 XT are getting a lot of attention, cards in the price range like the RX 6650 XT are selling far more. In the midst of the global economic downturn, mid-range cards can seem like a luxury item to many gamers.

The RX 6600 XT was released at the end of July 2021, and while the RX 6650 XT can be considered a relatively simple refresh, AMD says the card includes several firmware and driver-level tweaks. Its specifications are very similar to its predecessor, the RX 6600 XT. Both share the Navi 23 GPU, which is a 237mm² die with 11.1 billion transistors and 2048 stream processors.

The RX 6650 XT does not improve on the RX 6600 XT's weak 128-bit memory bus, but it does offer improved memory bandwidth with 8GB of faster 17.5Gbps GDDR6 memory, which provides up to 280GB/s of bandwidth. It also features a 32MB Infinity Cache to partially offset bandwidth limitations. The RX 6650 XT also has the same PCIe 8x limitation as the RX 6600 XT. This is not as big a concern as the RX 6500 XT's 4x connectivity, but I feel that by 2022, all but the bare entry-level cards should be running on the x16 interface.

At $449 (£449, A$719), the MSI RX 6650 XT Gaming X is still not a cheap graphics card, especially when compared to gaming machines as a whole. While graphics card prices have dropped dramatically in recent weeks and months, building a high-performance gaming PC is still expensive.

MSI sent us the RX 6650 XT Gaming X for review. This product comes with a dual-fan cooler, which makes sense for a 175W TDP product. [The Gaming X has a boost clock of 2,694 MHz and 17.5 Gbps memory. The reference RX 6600 XT has a boost clock of 2,589 MHz and 16 Gbps memory.

The card is not compact, but at 28 cm in length, it is a bit friendly to small form factor cases. The card comes with a long backplate and includes a thermal pad to cool the memory and VRM locations on the back of the PCB a bit.

Overall, the card feels very well made, as one would generally expect from MSI's gaming series. The MSI logo on the side is lit up in RGB for a bit of flair.

Display connectivity is fairly standard with a single HDMI 2.1 and triple DP 1.4a ports; a single 8-pin power connector can supply 150W, which when combined with the 75W in the PCIe slot, means the card can supply up to 225W of power.

The PCB has 8 phases of VRMs, with 2 more phases for Samsung's 18Gbps memory, more than enough for a 175W card. GPU manufacturers have experience cooling GPUs at twice the TDP, so MSI should have learned some lessons by now about VRM cooling. MSI should have learned some lessons by now about VRM cooling, as GPU manufacturers have experience cooling GPUs at twice the TDP.

MSI's high-efficiency Twin Frozr 8 dual-fan cooler is well suited for the card's 175W TDP. It is barely audible at full load, and while it can be heard at higher loads, it is perfectly acceptable and never obtrusive.

In fact, MSI could have adjusted the fan to run a bit slower. In my tests, the card's peak temperature was only 61°C. This is one of the lowest results I have seen for a GPU other than an entry-level card with a very low TDP.

MSI's rated boost clock is 2,694 MHz. Typically, AMD cards (and even Nvidia cards) can be run at higher than their rated clocks, given sufficient cooling capacity. the MSI RX 6650 XT maintained a long running clock of 2,628 MHz. given the very low load temperature of the GPU, I I might have expected a slightly higher boost clock. In the grand scheme of things, however, it would not matter at all in the grand scheme of things, visually speaking.

As for power consumption, MSI produced strong results. With energy prices soaring, it's past time to focus on energy efficiency (sorry, next-gen GPU shudder) MSI's total system load at full load was 305W. This is only a few watts higher than the RTX 3060, which is overall faster.

Compared to the RX 6600XT, the RX 6650XT consumes about 15-20W more power Compared to the RX 6600XT, the RX 6650XT consumes about 15-20W more power. This is not a great result given the relatively small performance gains offered by the RX 6650XT, and we came to a similar conclusion in our review of the MSI Radeon RX 6750 XT Gaming X Trio (opens in new tab). Performance has certainly improved, but at the cost of lower power efficiency, and AMD's RX 6x50 card seems to be at the limit of runaway power consumption levels. Higher clocks will not be possible without a steep increase in power.

Synthetic Gaming Performance

1080p Gaming Performance

1440p Gaming Performance

4K Gaming Performance

As you can see by flipping through the chart above, the RX 6650 XT does not offer market It outperforms the RTX 3060, but trails the RTX 3060 Ti, and the gap widens in ray-tracing-enabled games.

The card is best suited for 1080p games. It also managed close to 60 fps in Metro Exodus with ray tracing enabled, which is good for a mid-tier RDNA 2 card, as ray tracing is not its strong suit. At 4K, it will struggle to achieve a smooth frame rate.

The MSI Gaming X is a really quiet card, with a temperature under load of 61°C, proving the quality of MSI's cooler design. It is good to see this level of performance from a dual-fan design. The huge triple slot cooler is probably overkill.

The RX 6650 XT feels more like an evolution of the 6600 XT.

When it was released a few weeks ago, the RX 6650 XT was terribly overpriced. In the weeks since, however, we have seen a crypto crash and a steady price drop, and the card now costs about the same as the RX 6600 XT. However, it must be said that the price of the RX 6600 XT does not seem to have dropped that much, which perhaps indicates that once sold, it will not be restocked.

The same general conclusions that we reached when evaluating the stock RX 6600 XT apply here: it is hard to get used to looking at anything but entry-level cards with 128-bit buses and PCIe x8 limitations. Of course, as memory gets faster, the need for a wide bus becomes less necessary, but since ATI's HD 2900 XT in 2007 had a 512-bit bus, implementing a wide bus is not that difficult.

However, while the RX 6650 XT still performs well at 1080p, its limitations become increasingly exposed as you move to higher resolutions at higher settings. the release of FSR 2.0 adds value, but the ever more affordable RTX 3060 or RTX Ti, the RX 6650 XT is unlikely to sway your opinion.