AMD RX 6600 XT Is 15% Faster Than the RTX 3060, but $50 More

The AMD RX 6600 XT is 15% faster than the RTX 3060, but there’s a catch

By Jacob Roach July 29, 2021

Following months of leaks and rumors, AMD finally pulled back the curtain on the RX 6600 XT. The new graphics card is a 1080p addition to the RDNA 2 range, which should provide high frame rates at 1080p and 1440p with a little help from FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).

The Radeon RX 6600 XT is set to launch on August 11 for $379. In addition to board partner designs, AMD will supply units to desktop makers like Acer, Alienware, and HP. Although AMD showed off a render of a reference design, it won’t be manufacturing a reference model for the 6600 XT.

Benchmarks for the RX 6600 XT. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The card targets 1080p high refresh rate monitors with performance somewhere between an RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti. In Doom Eternal, for example, the RX 6600 XT averaged 155 frames per second (fps) compared to 134 fps with the RTX 3060. Similarly, the card hit 92 fps in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla compared to 69 fps on Nvidia’s card. Overall, AMD claims the card is 15% faster on average.

It’s important to point out that these benchmarks come from AMD, so we’ll need to wait for further testing to draw any firm conclusions. AMD also ran the tests with Smart Access Memory (SAM) enabled, which is a feature that can boost frame rates with Ryzen 5000 and select Ryzen 3000 processors.

Here are the specs we know right now:

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	RX 6600 XT
GPU	Navi 23
Interface	PCIe 4.0
Compute units	32
Stream processors	2,048
Ray accelerators	32
Game clock	2,359MHz
Memory	8GB GDDR6
Memory speed	16Gbps
Bandwidth	Up to 256 GB/s
Memory bus	128-bit
TDP	160W

Although the performance is impressive, the suggested price of $379 is higher than the direct competition. That’s only $20 less than the RTX 3060 Ti and $50 more than the RTX 3060, the latter of which matches the RX 6600 XT in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn.

AMD set the price to be representative of where the market currently is. At launch, select designs from AMD’s partners will be available at $379, though the company pointed out how challenging this price is to meet given the ongoing GPU shortage.

RX 6600 XT models from board partners. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The biggest win for the RX 6600 XT looks like FSR. At 1080p with max settings and ray tracing turned on, the card was able to surpass 100 fps in Godfall and boost frame rates by up to 74% in The Riftbreaker. It also managed to increase the frame rate in Resident Evil Village, though only by a modest 13%.

FSR also allows you to push the resolution above 1080p. With ray tracing off at 1440p, AMD showed the RX 6600 XT jumping from 113 fps to 243 fps in Resident Evil Village. Similarly, Marvel’s Avengers climbed from 57 fps at native 1440p to 96 fps in FSR’s aggressive Performance mode.

RX 6600 XT benchmarks with FSR turned on. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

With FSR available, the RX 6600 XT looks like the 1080p gamer’s dream. However, availability will likely be a problem. “We are doing our best to get supply, but the demand is unprecedented,” an AMD spokesperson said.

AMD isn’t releasing a reference design for the RX 6600 XT, but models from ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, PowerColor, and more will be available on August 11.

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