AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT
As cost-effective as an RTX 4080 Super
THIS IS NOT a great card to be writing about, unfortunately. AMD’s low-end budget model is something of an oddity. It comes with a rather lackluster launch all things considered—on its own, solo, in Q1. Where Nvidia is launching multiple Supers, and redefining its entire GPU range, AMD has launched this. Admittedly, Team Red did provide us with the more impressive 7800 XT and 7700 XT late last year, but those had a bit more gumption than this thing does.
Let’s take top-line stats first. The RX 7600 XT is based off of the RDNA 3 architecture, manufactured by TSMC on its slightly older N6 manufacturing process, and features a 7nm transistor size. By default, it clocks in with 2,048 stream processors and touts a maximum clock speed on paper of 2,755 MHz. On top of that, you get 16GB of GDDR6 VRAM on a 128-bit bus, and it’s rated at 190W of power. It’s also on a PCIe 4.0 x8 bus, (although we suspect this is more to do with marketing, as that’s effectively the same as a PCIe 3.0 x16, but allows you to label it up as a PCIe 4.0 card).
The big difference with the RX 7600 that launched back in May 2023? Aside from software-level changes we’ve seen across the board with the XT hardware, VRAM, clock speed, power draw, and a price bump? That’s it, really. Clock speeds have increased by 100 MHz, you get 16GB of VRAM instead of 8GB, an extra 25W of TBP, and the RRP is up by $60.
It’s a challenging sell, and that’s before we get to the performance figures. They don’t make for good reading. At 4K, average frame rates sit at 29. Most titles float around the 30 fps mark, but anything with ray tracing enabled hammers it into the ground, even with AMD’s upscaling enabled. It’s better suited to 1080p, with average frames sitting comfortably at 76.4 fps in our testing.
Here’s the thing. Yes, games have come a long way in the last eight years or so, but you could have easily spent $330 back then and still got a card that performs similarly to this thing at 1080p. Okay, inflation has hit us hard over the years, but you’ve got to question the logic. Average FPS per $ spent at 4K sits at just 0.09. Yes, this isn’t really suited for that (despite having the same VRAM as some of its larger competition), but it provides us with an insight into its value. When it’s less cost-effective than an RTX 4080 Super, we’ve got to start questioning the logic, particularly when the only thing that’s changed is that VRAM, and no other internal hardware.
As for temperatures and power draw, it performs similarly poorly. Maximum power draw under load was 491.5 W, and temp sat at 81.2 C, putting it in line with an RTX 4070 Super—except again, that’s a card that produces more than twice as many frames as this does.
It’s a shame, because AMD’s dominance in the CPU market, particularly around efficiency, cost, and performance, is starting to shine. By comparison, its GPU side of the business is still some years behind. Is the 7600 XT a good card, compared to other offerings at this price? Not really. It pains us to say it, as we need competition in the GPU market and choice for the consumer, but right now, you’d be much better off with an RTX 4060 Ti. It’s $30 cheaper, and performs 35 percent faster. That’s the reality.