Skip to main content

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT vs. Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti vs. RTX 3060

The latest generation of graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia has raised the bar for budget gamers. The RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3060, and RX 6600 XT represent the cream of the crop for 1080p gaming, and the cards are even capable of running some demanding games at 1440p. But which one should you choose?

We tested all three cards to find out which is the best option for your next PC upgrade. They’re all situated between $300 and $400, but there’s a clear winner based on our testing.

Pricing and availability

The RTX 3060 installed in a computer.
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

Nvidia released the RTX 3060 Ti on December 1 for $399. The slightly slower RTX 3060 came later on February 25 for $329. As per usual, the price set by Nvidia is for the Founders Edition models of each card, so options from board partners may be slightly more expensive depending on their cooling ability and features.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

AMD announced the RX 6600 XT on July 29 at ChinaJoy and released it shortly after on August 11. Prices start at $379 for baseboard partner cards and go up from there depending on the cooling configuration, clock speed, and other features. AMD isn’t releasing a reference model, but that shouldn’t make a difference for availability.

The good news for availability is also the bad news. The two Nvidia cards are consistently out of stock at retailers, and we expect the RX 6600 XT to sell out immediately when it launches. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you don’t have to make a choice based on availability.

The ongoing GPU shortage has caused a lot of problems for graphics cards, even though it is possible to buy a graphics card in 2021. You’ll struggle to find most models in stock at all, and if you do, they probably won’t be at list price. Expect to pay a few hundred dollars on top of the list price at retailers like Micro Center and Newegg.

On the secondhand market, the situation is even worse. The RTX 3060 Ti pushes toward $900 in many cases, and the RTX 3060 can cost as much as $750. The RX 6600 XT hasn’t launched yet, but we expect it to fall somewhere around $700 on the secondhand market, at least based on current prices.

Performance

RTX 3060 Ti RTX 3060 RX 6600 XT
GPU GA104 GA106 Navi 23
Interface PCIe 4.0 PCIe 4.0 PCIe 4.0
CUDA cores/stream processors 4,864 3,584 2,048
Tensor cores 152 112 N/A
Ray tracing accelerators 38 RT cores 28 RT cores 32 ray accelerators
Base clock 1,410MHz 1,320MHz N/A
Boost clock 1,665MHz 1,777MHz 2,539MHz
Memory 8GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6
Bandwidth 448GBps 360GBps Up to 256GBps
Memory bus 256-bit 192-bit 128-bit
TDP 200W 170W 160W

A spec comparison of the RTX 3060 Ti, 3060, and RX 6600 XT doesn’t reveal much. The RTX 3060 Ti and 3060 alone don’t really match each other, with the cheaper card featuring more graphics memory but less bandwidth. In addition, AMD and Nvidia use different designs, leading to a much higher clock speed on the AMD card and a bigger memory bus on the Nvidia ones.

Based on our performance testing, the cards stack in the way their prices would suggest. The RTX 3060 is the slowest of the lot, the RTX 3060 Ti is the fastest, and the RX 6600 XT is sandwiched between them. The awkward bit is price. The RX 6600 XT is technically only $20 cheaper than the RTX 3060 Ti, but it often is closer to the RTX 3060 in terms of performance.

Take Red Dead Redemption 2, for example. In our RX 6600 XT review, it only outpaced the RTX 3060 by three frames at 1080p Ultra Quality (68 fps to 65 fps). At the same settings, the RTX 3060 Ti performed much better, delivering a smooth 84 fps average. That was true at 1440p, too, where the RTX 3060 Ti averaged 70 fps while the RX 6600 XT averaged only 55 fps.

We saw similar scaling in Battlefield V, Fortnite, and Civilization VI. 3DMark Time Spy illustrated the performance differences perfectly. The RX 6600 XT scored 9,644, the RTX 3060 scored 8,629, and the RTX 3060 Ti scored 11,706.

The only exception to the performance scaling came in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, where the RX 6600 XT beat the RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p Ultra High settings (83 fps to 78 fps). However, switching over to 1440p showed the RTX 3060 Ti once again coming out on top.

At its asking price, the RX 6600 XT should compete with the RTX 3060 Ti, but it doesn’t. Cost is important to consider, as nearly $100 separates the cheapest and most expensive card in our roundup. Although the RX 6600 XT is faster than the RTX 3060, it’s not fast enough to justify its price tag.

It’s an awkward step out of the three cards. You will get a performance boost stepping up from the RTX 3060 to the RX 6600 XT, but you’ll get a much more significant boost going from the RTX 3060 to the RTX 3060 Ti. In our testing, the RTX 3060 Ti performs closer to the RX 6700 XT, and that card’s nearly $100 more expensive again.

Ray tracing, upscaling, and more

Ray tracing in Control.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

For features, all three of our competitors are much closer than they were a few months ago. The standout features for the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060 are Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) and ray tracing, which are both part of the RTX features package. Ray tracing helps lighting look more accurate in games, and DLSS improves frame rates with artificial intelligence-assisted upscaling. Neither are stellar at ray tracing but are substantially faster than their counterparts from the previous generation, while DLSS can make a huge difference in supporting games’ performance.

AMD cards used to lack these features, but not any longer. The RX 6600 XT supports ray tracing like the rest of the RX 6000 range, and AMD now offers its FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling tech. FSR accomplishes the same goal as DLSS, and although it’s not quite as impressive, it gets very close.

Still, Nvidia takes the cake when it comes to ray-tracing performance. In Cyberpunk 2077, the RTX 3060 Ti’s frame rate decreased by 49% and the RTX 3060’s frame rate decreased by 53% when moving from the Ultra preset to the Ultra RT preset at 1080p. Meanwhile, the RX 6600 XT’s frame rate decreased by a massive 79%.

AMD uses “ray accelerators” in each compute unit, while Nvidia uses dedicated cores for the complex ray-tracing calculations. That leads to much better ray-tracing performance on Nvidia’s cards, so if you want to play the latest games with the latest features, Nvidia is the best option.

Building on that, Nvidia usually bundles ray tracing with DLSS. Cyberpunk 2077, for example, supports both features, and DLSS is essential to running the game with ray tracing turned on. AMD’s competing FSR is only supported in a small list of titles, many of which don’t support ray tracing.

One clear winner

Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti graphics card on a black background.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Out of the three cards, there’s one standout performer: The RTX 3060 Ti. It has massively impressive performance considering the price, and it comes with the latest features from Nvidia. The RTX 3060 isn’t a bad option, but the extra price of the RTX 3060 Ti will pay off further down the line with increased upfront performance and better long-term longevity.

It’s a highly capable 1080p card, but it can even push impressive frame rates at 1440p. The RX 6600 XT is the odd man out, performing closer to the RTX 3060 while costing nearly as much as the RTX 3060 Ti. Although it supports ray tracing, it’s not as refined as Nvidia’s implementation.

Editors' Recommendations

Jacob Roach
Senior Staff Writer, Computing
Jacob Roach is a writer covering computing and gaming at Digital Trends. After realizing Crysis wouldn't run on a laptop, he…
AMD has another new GPU that it says can beat the RTX 4060 Ti
The Gigabyte RX 6750 GRE graphics card over a dark background.

A new RDNA 2 GPU in 2023? While it sounds unlikely, it's true. MSI has just introduced a few prebuilt gaming desktops equipped with various AMD processors and graphics cards, and one of them is the previously unreleased Radeon RX 6750 GRE, which stands for "Golden Rabbit Edition." While it may not rival some of the best GPUs, rumor has it that it'll at least beat Nvidia's RTX 4060 Ti while being just a little pricier than the RTX 4060.

Gigabyte has actually beaten MSI to the punch with the announcement, having revealed its own RX 6750 GRE graphics card first. However, while the Gigabyte GPU is set to be released on October 18, MSI already has a bunch of desktops up for grabs, although we're not seeing a DIY card that you could put into your own system. It just comes as part of MSI's prebuilts, which were first spotted by ITHome and later shared by VideoCardz.

Read more
All ray tracing games on PC: AMD Radeon and Nvidia RTX ray tracing
Motorcycles chasing in Watch Dogs Legion.

The best graphics cards all support ray tracing now, whether you use an Nvidia RTX card or an AMD Radeon one (assuming it's from the RX 6000 range or perhaps one of the latest RX 7000-series cards). We rounded up every game that supports ray tracing on PC now, as well as several titles that will support the sophisticated lighting tech in the future.

Ray tracing is demanding on your graphics card, but the list of ray tracing PC games continues to grow. If you don't want to sort through the mess, make sure to read our roundup on the best ray-tracing PC games to know which ones to download first. And if you're a beginner, jump to the bottom section to find out what you need for ray tracing on PC.
Ray-tracing PC games available now

Read more
There’s only one use for an RTX 4080 Ti, and it’s not what you think
Three RTX 4080 cards sitting on a pink background.

According to the latest round of leaks, Nvidia may be readying an RTX 4080 Ti, set to come out in the first few months of 2024. While such a GPU would definitely rank high among the best graphics cards, it's not exactly necessary right now -- there are plenty of high-end GPUs floating around. There is one reason I would like to see an RTX 4080 Ti, though; to push down the price of the RTX 4080.

MEGAsizeGPU, who is a frequent speculator in the graphics card space, shared over the weekend that an RTX 4080 Super, or maybe Ti, will come out in just a few months. Given Nvidia's current naming convention in this generation, a Ti card seems more likely. As per MEGAsizeGPU, the card will be based on Nvidia's flagship AD102 chip and will have a power consumption below 450 watts. The other specs are a mystery, but I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia added some more VRAM to the card -- 20GB seems likely. The bump from AD103 to AD102 should also deliver a decent upgrade in CUDA core counts -- dare I say in the 12,000 to 13,000 range?

Read more