AMD has unveiled the new Radeon RX 6600 XT mid-range GPU, aimed at gamers who want to target high performance and high refresh rates at 1080p. The company is touting 15 percent better performance than rival Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 and up to 2.5X better performance for anyone who want to upgrade from a GeForce GTX 1060, which is still the most widely used discrete GPU as per the latest Steam hardware survey. Graphics cards manufactured by Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, Sapphire, XFX, ASRock, Biostar, PowerColor, and others will be available worldwide starting from August 11. Pre-built gaming desktops featuring this GPU will also go on sale in various markets in August.
Details of pricing in India will be announced by individual manufacturers. The new Radeon RX 6600 XT has a suggested MSRP of $379 (approximately Rs. 28,275 in India before taxes). Given the global shortage of GPUs and resulting price spikes, it is uncertain whether cards will actually be available at this price level. AMD has stated that the Radeon RX 6600 XT is not ideally suited to cryptocurrency mining, but no specific hardware tweaks to discourage this have been implemented.
The Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU joins the Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, RX 6800 and RX 6700 XT in AMD’s current-gen lineup, all powered by the same RDNA 2 graphics architecture. According to AMD, two-thirds of gaming displays shipped in 2020 had resolutions of 1920×1080, but there is strong demand for upgrades to high-refresh-rate monitors.
In terms of specifications, this GPU features 2,048 “stream processors” grouped into 32 compute units, with 32 ray accelerators. Stock frequencies range from 2359MHz to 2589MHz (boost). Typical power draw will be 160W, and AMD recommends a 500W minimum power supply. Graphics card manufacturers will be free to customise their cooling solutions and ship overclocked cards. However, all Radeon RX 6600 XT models will feature 8GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus, for up to 256GBps memory bandwidth.
The claim of 15 percent better performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 comes from games such as Battlefield V, Cyberpunk 2077, Death Stranding, Hitman 3, and Resident Evil: Village. AMD says it ran these games at 1080p using the highest possible settings and most favourable API. Resizable BAR (whih AMD has implemented as Smart Access Memory) was enabled on both test systems. Esports gamers should also expect high frame rates – 553fps in Valorant, 441fps in Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Siege, and 425fps in CS:GO. AMD also claims between 1.4X and 1.7X performance increases in games including Doom Eternal, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Borderlands 3 and Forza Horizon 4, compared to the previous-generation Radeon RX 5600 XT.
As with the rest of the Radeon RX 6000 series, the Radeon RX 6600 XT supports ray tracing. Software features include AMD’s Smart Access Memory as well as FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling, Radeon Boost, and Radeon Anti-Lag.