AMD RADEON RX 6600 XT
Mainstream with a high-end price
AFTER MONTHS OF SPECULATION and waiting, AMD’s not-really-budget Navi 23 GPU has arrived in the form of the RX 6600 XT. It brings all the advantages of AMD’s RDNA2 architecture, such as the Infinity Cache and ray accelerators, but cut down to manageable sizes. But after nearly a year of GPU shortages, the things we’d really like to see fixed remain a real problem: pricing and availability.
The base model RX 6600 XT cards, including the Sapphire Pulse we’re using for this review, supposedly start at $380. There were even cards available at launch for that price, but to the surprise of absolutely no one, those sold out and now we’re seeing the RX 6600 XT listed on places such as eBay for $600 or more. Let’s be clear: This is not a $600 graphics card. Or rather, it’s not a $600 card back in 2019, when the RX 5700 XT came out at $400. In late 2021? Maybe it is a $600 card, at least for those desperately searching for a GPU upgrade.
We mention the 5700 XT because the performance ends up looking similar to that GPU. The 6600 XT comes out ahead at 1080p and 1440p, an impressive feat considering the 8GB of GDDR6 memory is attached via a 128-bit bus—the RX 5700 XT used a 256-bit bus. AMD includes 32MB of
Infinity Cache, and while that might seem inadequate, it’s still sufficient to beat the previous generation architecture. The uber-high clocks of around 2.5GHz in real-world use help as well.
STUMBLING BLOCKS
After the flash and sizzle of the higherspec Navi 21 and Navi 22, though, Navi 23 feels a bit stingy. Even Nvidia opted to include 12GB of GDDR6 memory on its competing RTX 3060—though the RTX 3060 Ti, 3070, and 3070 Ti continue to use just 8GB of VRAM. That’s probably because 6GB wouldn’t have been enough in today’s world of increasingly memoryhungry games. The problem is that AMD’s RDNA 2 GPUs tend to like having more memory, particularly in a few AMDpromoted games ( Borderlands3, Dirt5, and Godfall, specifically). With only 8GB and a 128-bit bus, there are times when the RX 6600 XT stumbles.
A prime example of this is if you want the increased realism of raytraced reflections, global illumination, and shadows. All the grit of ray-traced Night City in Cyberpunk2077 proves far too much for the RX 6600 XT, where it manages just 16 fps at 1080p using the RT-Medium preset with RT reflections enabled. The RTX 3060 in contrast plugs along at 31 fps—not great, but still playable, and that’s without turning on DLSS. Control does better as it doesn’t hit the memory subsystem as hard, but AMD still trails Nvidia in the world of RT gaming. However, there are other games (e.g. Assassin’sCreedValhalla) where AMD turns the tables, and overall, we end up with comparable performance.
Sapphire’s RX 6600 XT Pulse also performs well in terms of cooling and noise levels. It’s not completely silent, but the low 160W TBP means the GPU doesn’t need extravagant cooling. The factory overclock doesn’t do much to improve performance, but it’s guaranteed to work.
The real pain comes when we consider where this card would have launched were it not for the pandemic and cryptocurrency-induced shortages. The previous generation RX 5600 XT launched at $279 in early 2020 and could regularly be found for around $250. Then the world turned upside down and prices skyrocketed. Instead of a $249 launch price with performance matching the previous generation $350 cards, we got a $380 card that sort of delivers new features such as ray tracing support— when it can manage.
Hopefully, things will improve in 2022 and we’ll finally start seeing GPUs readily available online for their recommended prices. In the meantime, the RX 6600 XT exists as another GPU that will be difficult to find in stock.