No talk on the 6500XT?
13 Feb 2022 4:02:25 UTC
Topic 226955
(moderation:
I don't browse the boards like I used to, but it doesn't look like there is any talk of the 6500XT. Does anyone have one? I know the card got poor reviews, but I'm wondering if it could be a decent bang for the buck cruncher when GPU prices eventually goes down. Yes, the PCIe bandwidth is poor, but I'm guessing that isn't too important for crunching. Any thoughts? I'm sure it isn't as good at my 1660Ti, but if I can get it a 6500XT for half the price at almost the same performance, seems like it could be worth the tradeoff.
Four key questions: 1.
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Four key questions:
1. availability
2. price
3. performance on Einstein
4. power consumption
For a long time now, the price and availability question for capable modern cards has been spotty and hideous, which has made it hard to be very rational about choices here.
I see from NowinStock that the AMD Radeon 6500 XT is actually in stock at NewEgg and Amazon for versions selling for $269. While this may be above an MSRP some claim to be $199, it is not high by the insame amount we have seen so much of.
In my personal estimation, the evidence for several generations has been that for the Gamma-Ray Pulsar search here at Einstein, PCIe performance is not very important. However the structure numbers for the 6500 show it is not just a disabled-cores cheaper version of earlier Navi 2 cards, but a new design fabricated on a newer process with considerably lower internal memory size and bus width and core count than the bigger Navis. The listed TDP is nice and low, which makes sense given the newer process and low resource count numbers.
So of my four items, three seem rather favorable. It would be wonderful if someone would buy and operate one, and give us some real world answers to the crucial "performance on Einstein" one.
You should be aware that the many months over which AMD cards enjoyed an "unfair advantage" here at Einstein over Nvidia seem to be over, and that the evolving picture has recently been very much to the relative advantage of Nvidia cards. I say this as a person who happily converted from Nvidia to AMD and enjoyed better price-performance and power efficiency for more than one generation.
Many of the reviews claimed
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Many of the reviews claimed that the previous gen card (5500XT) is the better card, so might as well just use that if you want a low end card. The reviews did show that it was pretty power efficient, but the difference of a few watts is unlikely to be noticeable when only running one of them.
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When I checked last month,
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When I checked last month, the 6500XT and 6700 series GPUs were not compatible with MacOS, whereas the 6600 series, 6800 series, and 6900 series GPUs are compatible with MacOS Monterey. I am crunching E@H tasks using a 6600 and 6600 XT in TB3 eGPU enclosures connected to a MacMini 8,1 (6-core i5). I have been benchmarking these eGPUs against RX 580, RX 5700 XT, and VEGA 56 eGPUs and hope to post the results this weekend. Macs with eGPUs are VERY inefficient E@H crunchers, so the value of my comparisons may be minimal.
My preliminary analyses suggest that the 6600/6600 XT are slower than the RX 5700 XT and the VEGA 56, and only modestly faster than the RX 580. On the other hand, power consumption/heat generation by the 6600/6600XT is much less than the power consumption and heat generation by the RX 5700 XT or the VEGA 56. So, as my RX 5700 XT and VEGA 56 GPUs croak, I may decide to replace them with the 6600 XTs, which appear to be a better price/performance compromise than the 6600s.
"I was born in a small town, and I live in a small town." - John Mellencamp
Used Rx 5700's are beginning
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Used Rx 5700's are beginning to look like they sell in the ~$500 range on eBay. They can approach (or exceed) 1Million RAC per card even under Windows 10.
Tom M
A Proud member of the O.F.A. (Old Farts Association). Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® (Garrison Keillor) I want some more patience. RIGHT NOW!