AMD engineers immediately honestly admitted that they designed the Radeon RX 6400, as well as one step older RX 6500 XT, primarily as a graphics card for laptops. For this reason, she lost the AMD RME media encoder, that is, she is not able to speed up video editing and stream on Twitch or YouTube. More precisely, all this can be done, but by the forces of the central processor, which is slower. From the point of view of a video editor, a more reasonable purchase would be the similarly priced GeForce GTX 1630, the youngest NVIDIA video card with an NVENC encoder. But in games, the RX 6400 is much faster than the GTX 1630.

Fortunately, at least the Radeon RX 6400 can play high-resolution video in hardware. But even here there were some simplifications: the classic H264, H265 and VP9 codecs are supported, but the progressive AV1 is not. Moreover, it is implemented not only in the discrete Radeon RX 6600 and higher, but even in the integrated video cards of Ryzen 6000 laptop processors and Ryzen 7000 desktop processors. 12100F. Index F means just the lack of graphics in the latter.

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Biostar Radeon RX 6400 VA6406RA46 
Sufficient performance for any modern game, power consumption of only 53 W, very low price.
Only two HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs.

Biostar Radeon RX 6400 is the youngest discrete graphics card based on the modern RDNA 2 architecture. The Navi 24 graphics chip is made using a progressive 6-nanometer process technology and contains 768 microcores. Their frequency is the reference 2300 MHz, because the factory overclocking of the RX 6400 is usually not resorted to in order to minimize power consumption.

GDDR6 memory runs at a very high frequency of 16 GHz, which few graphics cards can boast even among the flagship ones. That's just the memory interacts with the GPU via a narrow 64-bit bus. Therefore, the total memory bandwidth is relatively small, as well as its volume - only 4 GB. Overflow will use a portion of the system-wide RAM that is significantly slower: 3-5 GHz, but 128-bit.

But all this had a positive effect on the energy appetite of the RX 6400: it consumes a ridiculous 53 watts. An additional 6-pin connector is not required, the video card receives all the necessary power through the PCIe slot. The Biostar modification is made in the classic wide-profile format. One large fan does not rotate at all most of the time to minimize noise, dust and bearing wear.

Packing and cooling system.

Proc i3-12100 is the optimal partner for the RX 6400 also because of its support for the fourth generation PCIe graphics card bus. The comparable-priced Core i5-10400F and Ryzen 5 5500 cannot boast of this. The fact is that the Radeon RX 6400 has a narrow PCIe x4 bus. When connected to a PCIe 3.0 slot, it loses 10 to 25 percent FPS in different games. For this reason, the RX 6400 is a good option for building a new PC from scratch, but dubious for upgrading an old one. Owners of legacy PCIe 2.0 processors like the Core i7-2600 or Xeon E3-1240 should not even consider the RX 6400.

Printed circuit board and video interfaces.

This is where the controversial moments of the Radeon RX 6400 end and undeniable advantages begin. This is a very affordable graphics card based on the latest RDNA 2 architecture that supports all of AMD's signature software features. The already mentioned smart upscaling of FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0, which allows you to significantly increase the frame rate with only minimal loss in image clarity. If the game is old and its developer did not bother to add FSR support to it, you can use the alternative Radeon Image Sharpening (RIS) upscaling, which works at the driver level on top of any game.

Specifications for RX 6400.

The RX 6400 even has support for ray tracing, that is, realistic reflections. But firstly, this is the open technology DirectX Raytracing, which draws a picture simpler than the proprietary NVIDIA RTX. And secondly, it is rather doubtful to lose a significant percentage of FPS on the RX 6400, which does not give out very many FPS even without Raytracing. For the sake of visual charms that you have to look out for with a magnifying glass. However, there are games with very moderate use of Raytracing, for example, DIRT 5 rally racing. In it, you can see the treasured rays of light even with the RX 6400.

Average frame rate in games.

conclusions

The main target audience of the Radeon RX 6400 is, perhaps, fans of eSports games. If in Counter-Strike Global Offensive and Dota 2 you can somehow run even on the integrated Vega graphics, then the more graphonic FIFA 23 and Call of Duty Warzone 2.0 still require at least an inexpensive discrete. And give a gaming monitor with a high hertz a correspondingly high frame rate - 144-165 FPS or more. A nice bonus is Radeon Anti-Lag technology, which reduces control lag in games.

At the same time, the RX 6400 is not limited to e-sports alone: it can handle any modern game at 1080p resolution and a frame rate of 45-60 FPS. Moreover, in many projects, you can even choose not a low, but an average profile of graphics settings. And all this for a moderate $ 150, with moderate power consumption and heat dissipation of 53 W, that is, any power supply and any computer case will do. The low-profile modifications of the RX 6400, which are suitable for assembling thin nettops, will surely find their buyer.

Biostar Video Cards