Back in April 2022, rumors of a 2GB AMD RX 6300 began surfacing on the interwebs. We said at the time that this could be one of the worst GPUs of all time ever. This was followed by more leaks online and now the card seems finally ready for prime time as it has been spotted in China.
While a graphics card with less VRAM isn't inherently bad, what makes the RX 6300 and the other Navi 24-based RDNA 2 GPUs like the RX 6500 XT and the RX 6400 so unappealing is the extremely limited PCIe bus bandwidth as the Navi 24 only has four PCIe (or x4) lanes. This means whenever the available memory buffer is saturated, the card loses performance on any system which is PCIe Gen3 or older.
Fortunately for the 6500 XT and the 6400, the SKUs packed 4GB of VRAM which is mostly enough for 720p or 900p gaming these days. However, the new RX 6300 comes with just half of that which means the GPU will almost always be limited by its VRAM as most AAA titles these days gobble up the available memory buffer. This means users will only be able to play older titles.
The leaked specs of the card show 2GB of VRAM across a 32-bit wide bus though at least the power consumption of the card is a major redeeming factor. The price of the card appears to be around ~$60, at least when converting Chinese prices.
Another big problem for the RX 6300 is the lack of encoding and AV1 decoding support on Navi 24, which means it won't be a good card for HTPCs either. However, if someone didn't have a ton of AV1 content to play back or no transcoding work, then the RX 6300 could certainly be a decent option as it will be the fastest GPU available at this price in a long time. Perhaps the terrible Nvidia GT 710 can finally die.
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