AMD is expected to take on Nvidia’s new entry-level GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti with new graphics cards for the desktop from the Radeon RX 6000 series. AMD’s RDNA 2-powered cards will be called the Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon 6600, and newly leaked information suggests that the entry-level 6000-series GPUs will be priced lower than the 5000-series models that they replace. This will be good news for gamers who have thus far been unable to upgrade to a more modern GPU due to the ongoing global semiconductor shortage. The GPUs are designed for high-end 1080p gaming.
Both GPU models will be powered by the AMD Navi 23 chipset, according to a report on Chiphell. The more premium XT model will be powered by the Navi 23 XT, while the non-XT configuration will be powered by the Navi 23 XL. The Radeon RX 600 XT is believed to come with 32 compute units and 2,048 stream processors with 64 MB of Infinity Cache. Sadly, this GPU will feature 8GB GDDR6 memory across a 128-bit bus — and not the 12GB of VRAM that AMD had recently been promoting as essential to AAA gaming — according to Wccftech. This gives the graphics card a total bandwidth of 256GB/s.
The non-XT card is expected to come with 28 compute units and 1,792 stream processors and features the same GDDR6 memory and Infinity Cache configurations. The higher-end XT variant scored just under 9,500 points on the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark, while the non-XT variant scored 7,805 points. Both the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 6600 are faster than their predecessors, the Radeon RX 5700 XT and 5700, on the same benchmark. The 6600 XT, for example, scored about 400 points more than the Radeon RX 5700 XT.
At this point, pricing for AMD’s unannounced Radeon RX 6600 cards is unknown, but if they are designed to take on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 on the desktop, they’ll likely be priced around $329 or less. It’s speculated that AMD’s cards could be priced at $299 at launch, making them competitive against the GeForce rival. The Radeon RX 5700 was priced at $349, while the XT model was set at $449.
The low price of both GPUs and their abilities to perform at Ethereum mining could make the upcoming graphics cards subject to higher than expected demand. Cryptocurrency miners are a big factor in the current GPU shortage worldwide, and both cards are expected to feature 27 MH/s while mining for Ethereum. Rival Nvidia is rumored to be working on new software safeguards to limit the appeal of its graphics cards to cryptocurrency miners as part of a broader effort to make the limited supplies of its GPUs available to gamers.
AMD is also believed to be working on the successor to the Radeon RX 6000 series. The much-anticipated Radeon RX 7000 series is expected to be based on AMD’s next-generation RDNA 3 microarchitecture featuring a smaller 5nm process, compared to the current 7nm. It will use a new multichip module design that could potentially double the number of compute units and stream processors.
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