Review RX 6600XT Reviews Thread

[Stuka87]

Rather than burry these in some 1000 page thread, may as well make them easy to find.

The performance is better than I expected. Fair bit faster than a 5700XT, but at a lot lower power consumption. Ray Tracing is poor, but that should not be a surprise. I do find it sad that TPU had to change their `Performance per Dollar` chart to include the obscene street prices

ASUS Radeon RX 6600 XT STRIX OC Review

The ASUS Radeon RX 6600 XT STRIX OC is a custom design variant with a triple-slot, dual-fan cooler. The card achieves excellent performance in Full HD, giving you 60 FPS or higher in every single game we tested. Temperatures are very low, and overclocking potential is good, too.

www.techpowerup.com

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Review: The Memory Compromise

Navi 23 only has 8GB GDDR6 on a 128-bit interface

www.tomshardware.com

 

[blckgrffn]

Yeah, I posted a pic of my local MC had several models in stock and 25+ (so lots) of the $440 model on launch day and they were in stock all day until close. They’ll keep dropping. At anywhere near MSRP? We will see. There’s one regret purchase on my local CL for $500 right now.

It being such a “garbage” card otherwise it’ll be interesting to see.

I know it’s a dope mining card at efficiency but some people want pure hash rate too, what with only having so much space and rigs and rack space and stuff. I guess we will see how it goes.

 

[Ranulf]

I wouldn't consider this just a 1080p card because it actually does quite well in 1440p as well. Across the 20+ games that TPU used for their benchmark, the 6600XT that I looked at (Sapphire Pulse OC) had an average FPS just shy of 100 and it only drops below 60 in 5 of the titles tested. It's got 1080p (and 1440p) performance between a 2070 SUPER and a 2080, neither or which are going to be called 1080p cards.

Put another way, the 6600XT has roughly twice the performance of the 5500XT in TPU's benchmarks. If this is a 1080p card and it has twice as much performance as one of AMD's last generation cards, then what does that make the 5500XT because calling this a 1080p card doesn't leave much room for actual 1080p cards that can't offer playable experiences above that without turning down settings.

The better comparison is the 5600XT it replaces. Which AMD called the ultimate 1080p card for $279. It too could do 1440p decently given the review numbers. How well that will be in 1-2 years on the 6600XT, who knows. At least it has 8GB ram for it.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Btw to add to the discussion. I think the performance penalty in Doom Eternal is just with Ultra Nightmare textures because of texture streaming. I can't test it as I don't have PCIe 4.

What resolution are you playing? Is 8 gigs of buffer not enough for 1080p/2k not to have any kind of streaming, though? Yeah, sadly you can’t test that. 8gb should be enough for Ultra, imo. Doom Eternal is definitely an outlier here, it’s coded very, very differently.

 

[Timorous]

What resolution are you playing? Is 8 gigs of buffer not enough for 1080p/2k not to have any kind of streaming, though? Yeah, sadly you can’t test that. Doom Eternal is definitely an outlier, it’s coded very very differently.

If it is PCIe bandwidth I would be curious if there was a difference between PCIe 4 x4 and PCIe 3 x 8 since they should be the same bandwidth. I asked Steve (HUB) about it in the comments of their 6600XT availability / price video and he is sure it is PCIe bandwidth.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Yeah, it appears the game relies on pci-e b/w more than any other game in recent memory. What other games are planned to use doom tech, I wonder? A new wolf game, perhaps 🤔

 

[Insert_Nickname]

That's great to read. Despite all the hate, two actual owners that had to pay for the cards, instead of getting free review samples, are happy with it. How strange is that?

Add one here. Admittedly didn't have time for any extended testing before I went on holiday, but it did manage 55FPS @ 1440p highest in SOTTR with RT on. Disable RT, and FPS is above 60 at all times. Good enough for me.

I don't get why people are complaining. Anything over 60FPS is very much playable. Yes, yes, there is high refresh gaming, but then you're not looking at this card in the first place.

Price? Everything is wacky at the moment, and not just in computing.

I always was always told not to mix both on a single system.

Unless you're specifically running Vista, that shouldn't be any trouble. Vista's WDDM 1.0 can't handle multiple video drivers.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Looks like everyone and their dog has weighed in on this now.

More interesting is the discrepancy between titles. TPU's DOOM Eternal test holds up really well dropping to PCI-E 3.0, but other titles like Hitman really see a crunch.

On average, looking at a 1-2% difference, sort of reinforcing the narrative from most sites.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT PCI-Express Scaling

When the Radeon RX 6600 XT launched with an interface limited to PCI-Express 4.0 x8, lots of discussion emerged about how AMD crippled the bandwidth, and how much it affects the gaming experience. In this article, we're taking a close look at exactly that, comparing 22 titles running at PCIe...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Mopetar]

I think that largely shows that the people who thought it needed or would benefit from 16 lanes were dead wrong.

If the average performance loss from cutting the bandwidth in half is 2% at 1080p (and only 7% if you halve the bandwidth again) then it's pretty obvious that doubling it would have diminished returns to the point that it's within the margin of error for testing.

 

[blckgrffn]

I think that largely shows that the people who thought it needed or would benefit from 16 lanes were dead wrong.

If the average performance loss from cutting the bandwidth in half is 2% at 1080p (and only 7% if you halve the bandwidth again) then it's pretty obvious that doubling it would have diminished returns to the point that it's within the margin of error for testing.

Yeah, it's sorta news because we need something hash over type news. Not really all that interesting alone.

Oh well, I missed my time to go get a 6600XT for ~MSRP+$50 so it's basically gone now until something else changes.

 

[Stuka87]

Yeah, this all came around when the 5600XT came out also, which also had 8 lanes. And it was the same 1-2% difference back then as I recall. Actually, I think even lower end polaris parts were 8 lanes only, and it didnt matter then either.

EDIT: I forgot the XT was Navi 10

 

[aigomorla]

I think that largely shows that the people who thought it needed or would benefit from 16 lanes were dead wrong.

no your not getting the point...
the fact they can charge so much and not give us that extra 2% is what peeves us.
If your going to charge as much as what a 6700XT should normally of costed, then at least give us those 2%.
But instead they aren't and charging us for it anyhow.

This is why we are ranting.

Personally this card isn't even in my catigory when i look at gpu's so it doesn't apply to me, but if i was going to pay the 500 dollar+ on a card which should cost 250 dollars, then by heavens give us that tiny 2%.

Yeah, this all came around when the 5600XT came out also, which also had 8 lanes. And it was the same 1-2% difference back then as I recall. Actually, I think even lower end polaris parts were 8 lanes only, and it didnt matter then either.

Yea but that was the price on that 5600XT?

MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT is Just $239 on Newegg

This deal is only for the next few days.

www.tomshardware.com

.

It was 239.... at 239 i wont complain about that 2%... why? because im pretty sure if your budget is limited to you getting that 5600XT, that 2% probably won't matter much.

But no.. your paying original msrp of a 3070 RTX... imagine how you'd feel about that and not getting the 16 lanes you could be getting if the 3070 RTX was available.

At least on the 3060 RTX they still also give you that 2%, although i bet most of them are miner cards, and will probably never run the gpu faster then 8x, as you need 8x to even boot with the card, from what i hear.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Yeah, this all came around when the 5600XT came out also, which also had 8 lanes. And it was the same 1-2% difference back then as I recall. Actually, I think even lower end polaris parts were 8 lanes only, and it didnt matter then either.

5600XT is full fat Navi 10 with 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes. The previous 8 lane card was Navi 14 (5300/5500-series). I don't think it mattered given it's performance level either. Polaris 12 also only had 8 lanes PCIe 3.0, but there it certainly didn't matter.

 

[Stuka87]

5600XT is full fat Navi 10 with 16 PCIe 4.0 lanes. The previous 8 lane card was Navi 14 (5300/5500-series). I don't think it mattered given it's performance level either. Polaris 12 also only had 8 lanes PCIe 3.0, but there it certainly didn't matter.

You are correct, I forgot the XT was a partial Navi 10 die.

 

[blckgrffn]

no your not getting the point...
the fact they can charge so much and not give us that extra 2% is what peeves us.
If your going to charge as much as what a 6700XT should normally of costed, then at least give us those 2%.
But instead they aren't and charging us for it anyhow.

This is why we are ranting.

Personally this card isn't even in my catigory when i look at gpu's so it doesn't apply to me, but if i was going to pay the 500 dollar+ on a card which should cost 250 dollars, then by heavens give us that tiny 2%.



Yea but that was the price on that 5600XT?

MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT is Just $239 on Newegg

This deal is only for the next few days.

www.tomshardware.com

.

It was 239.... at 239 i wont complain about that 2%... why? because im pretty sure if your budget is limited to you getting that 5600XT, that 2% probably won't matter much.

But no.. your paying original msrp of a 3070 RTX... imagine how you'd feel about that and not getting the 16 lanes you could be getting if the 3070 RTX was available.

At least on the 3060 RTX they still also give you that 2%, although i bet most of them are miner cards, and will probably never run the gpu faster then 8x, as you need 8x to even boot with the card, from what i hear.

I don’t think any of that changes the fact this was likely supposed to be a much closer to $200 card in mid/early 2020 market conditions at launch and was laid out accordingly.

2-7% slower and it’s still faster than the 3060. 🤷‍♂️ In the real world they are priced the same.

$400 is the new $200 GPU price point.

$300 gets you a new GTX 1050ti.

MSRP pricing announced in late 2020 are joke numbers that no longer have a bearing on reality.

 

[Mopetar]

Yeah any discussion of price/value right now is essentially pointless. If you could snag one of the few cards that originally went for the $380 MSRP you got one hell of a deal.

Even if you didn't want the card for yourself or were having buyer's remorse it wouldn't be hard to resist the card on eBay for an extra $100, and judging from current prices probably even more.

Even if there weren't a mining boom driving up prices to ridiculous heights I still think that pandemic-related shortages and issues would result in sold out stores and some price gouging. The new consoles are still selling as fast as they can hit shelves and getting marked up like crazy by scalpers and those can't be used for mining.

So it really doesn't matter if anyone thinks the 6600XT is a $380 card or upset that you aren't getting better performance per dollar than the 5700XT because there are a lot of people who think it's a $600 card.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Even if there weren't a mining boom driving up prices to ridiculous heights I still think that pandemic-related shortages and issues would result in sold out stores and some price gouging. The new consoles are still selling as fast as they can hit shelves and getting marked up like crazy by scalpers and those can't be used for mining.

This is true.

Everybody "blames the miners" for shortages, scalping, and higher prices. But look at the PS5. Same things are happening to it as are GPUs, and yet, it can't be used to mine on. So, perhaps, miners are NOT the central problem here, and are getting unfairly scapegoated, when they're just trying to put a roof over their heads, like anybody else. Most gamers don't have to worry about that, as the vast majority are having someone else put a roof over their heads.

Edit: Maybe "gamers" have been unfairly subsidized, all these years? And now the true market prices are coming out? After all, if no-one was willing to pay "scalper markup", it wouldn't be there.

 

[aigomorla]

So it really doesn't matter if anyone thinks the 6600XT is a $380 card or upset that you aren't getting better performance per dollar than the 5700XT because there are a lot of people who think it's a $600 card.

(insert fat kid ranting while smashing his keyboard and cursing his head off in german meme here?)
oh i found it..

This is the state of PC gaming... when the mid level videocard alone now costs more then a complete console.
I sort of feel like that kid too, only if i did that.... i would not want to see how much money i lost at the end of it.

 

[blckgrffn]

This is true.

Everybody "blames the miners" for shortages, scalping, and higher prices. But look at the PS5. Same things are happening to it as are GPUs, and yet, it can't be used to mine on. So, perhaps, miners are NOT the central problem here, and are getting unfairly scapegoated, when they're just trying to put a roof over their heads, like anybody else. Most gamers don't have to worry about that, as the vast majority are having someone else put a roof over their heads.

Edit: Maybe "gamers" have been unfairly subsidized, all these years? And now the true market prices are coming out? After all, if no-one was willing to pay "scalper markup", it wouldn't be there.

I think it's a complicated situation that is unlikely to get succinctly stated in a GPU review thread.

All uses of a resource contribute to it's scarcity. Scarcity is a driving factor in price.

It's not really a matter of blame IMO. Can't we just all agree it sucks? Blaming and feeling anger is cathartic but ultimately not very helpful.

@aigomorla - on point. I get it!

Serenity now

 

[GodisanAtheist]

This is true.

Everybody "blames the miners" for shortages, scalping, and higher prices. But look at the PS5. Same things are happening to it as are GPUs, and yet, it can't be used to mine on. So, perhaps, miners are NOT the central problem here, and are getting unfairly scapegoated, when they're just trying to put a roof over their heads, like anybody else. Most gamers don't have to worry about that, as the vast majority are having someone else put a roof over their heads.

Edit: Maybe "gamers" have been unfairly subsidized, all these years? And now the true market prices are coming out? After all, if no-one was willing to pay "scalper markup", it wouldn't be there.

- Gonna channel my inner @moonbogg here and just go on an unhinged rant that will leave you wondering if I'm serious:

Miners should all be thrown in the Gulag as they provide the perfect scapegoat for all of our purchasing problems. Obviously there is a console shortage, given many PC gamers have been driven to sully themselves with the peasant console class due to the extreme cost of PC GPUs. You like mining so much! Here is a pick-axe, have fun in the coal mines, avoid the black lung thank you very much!

if it wasn't obvious.

 

[moonbogg]

^ That was a nice effort. Next time lose the disclaimer and just let it flow, man. Let it flow. We are emotional creatures with emotional, instinctual responses. Our evolved, wrinkly brain steps in to filter the raw emotion into a form that is rational and coherent. The art is to find the boundary created by this process and just stay there. It's like stopping a washing machine half way through the wash cycle; are the clothes clean or dirty? Well, which is it?

 

[GodisanAtheist]

^ That was a nice effort. Next time lose the disclaimer and just let it flow, man. Let it flow. We are emotional creatures with emotional, instinctual responses. Our evolved, wrinkly brain steps in to filter the raw emotion into a form that is rational and coherent. The art is to find the boundary created by this process and just stay there. It's like stopping a washing machine half way through the wash cycle; are the clothes clean or dirty? Well, which is it?

- I am humbled by the master. We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

 

[Timorous]

Edit: Maybe "gamers" have been unfairly subsidized, all these years? And now the true market prices are coming out? After all, if no-one was willing to pay "scalper markup", it wouldn't be there.

Seems obviously the case to be honest.

A Zen 3 die is 81mm^2. A Navi 23 die is 237mm^2. For 1 Navi 23 GPU die you can make 3 Zen 3 cores. When the 5800X has a $449 MSRP vs the $379 MSRP for the 6600XT you can see the huge difference in margin between the CPU and the GPU and that is without factoring in the GPU board costs that are going to be higher than the IO die and packaging costs for a 5800X.

With those die sizes you could make 2 5800X 3d parts for the die area of a single N23 part and even if they sold them at the same price as the current 5800X that is $900 of revenue vs $379 of revenue for what is bound to be a lower cost of goods sold. (yes I am ignoring that AMD will sell N23 dies to board partners and they can deal with the cost of goods sold their end. AMD have to factor that into the MSRP to ensure it is profitable all around so it works for comparison sake).

The only reason for AMD to make GPUs is to keep mind share in that market and if they have more than enough wafers to saturate the CPU market using the excess for GPUs provides additional gains.

 

[Abwx]

More interesting is the discrepancy between titles. TPU's DOOM Eternal test holds up really well dropping to PCI-E 3.0, but other titles like Hitman really see a crunch.

On average, looking at a 1-2% difference, sort of reinforcing the narrative from most sites.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT PCI-Express Scaling

When the Radeon RX 6600 XT launched with an interface limited to PCI-Express 4.0 x8, lots of discussion emerged about how AMD crippled the bandwidth, and how much it affects the gaming experience. In this article, we're taking a close look at exactly that, comparing 22 titles running at PCIe...

www.techpowerup.com

Hitman with PCI3 vs PCI4

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT im Test: PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0, Preis und Fazit

Radeon RX 6600 XT im Test: PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0, Preis und Fazit / PCIe 4.0 oder 3.0 macht bei x8 einen Unterschied

www.computerbase.de

1% difference for average and 0.2% mini FPS, wich makes me wonder about a lot of sites actual competences, or rather lack of...

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Hitman with PCI3 vs PCI4

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT im Test: PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0, Preis und Fazit

Radeon RX 6600 XT im Test: PCIe 3.0 vs. PCIe 4.0, Preis und Fazit / PCIe 4.0 oder 3.0 macht bei x8 einen Unterschied

www.computerbase.de

1% difference for average and 0.2% mini FPS, wich makes me wonder about a lot of sites actual competences, or rather lack of...

-I wonder if the games showing a large range in performance hits have a canned benchmark or if sites are using different saved game states to do the testing.

Depending on where they are in the game and what is happening on screen, I can see some large fluctuations in performance depending on what the game might need at the moment.

Also wonder if some sites throw out the first couple seconds of data as the game moves assets from system ram to gpu ram and others don't (basically including the data where the PCI-E bus really gets hammered although it doesn't really affect overall gameplay).

 

[Abwx]

-I wonder if the games showing a large range in performance hits have a canned benchmark or if sites are using different saved game states to do the testing.

Depending on where they are in the game and what is happening on screen, I can see some large fluctuations in performance depending on what the game might need at the moment.

Also wonder if some sites throw out the first couple seconds of data as the game moves assets from system ram to gpu ram and others don't (basically including the data where the PCI-E bus really gets hammered although it doesn't really affect overall gameplay).

Dunno what s going on since they have about the same average at 1080p with PCIe 4.
What i can tell is that Computerbase GPUs reviewer is quite knowledgeable, so i would have more confidence in his results.