AMD has just released its newest mid-range graphics card, the Radeon RX 6600, taking the fight directly to the RTX 3060. And just like its Nvidia competitor, it's a solid 1080p graphics card, but doesn't do much beyond that resolution.
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AMD claims the RX 6600 offers 23% higher performance than the Nvidia RTX 2060 at 1080p in games like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Battlefield 5. AMD also states that on average it hits 100 FPS, though it falls short of that in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Godfall – but AMD claims it can still hit upwards of 70 fps in those titles.
The AMD Radeon RX 6600 is based on a slightly cut-down version of the same GPU found in the RX 6600 XT, with 28 Compute Units, which means you get 1,792 Streaming Processors and 28 Ray Accelerators. You also get 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, which can reach a peak bandwidth of 244 GB/s thanks to AMD’s Infinity Cache. The GPU will have a Game Clock of 2,044MHz.
The Radeon RX 6600 hits shelves today, October 13, as previously rumored, starting at $329 – though the prices will likely be much higher for most third-party versions of the graphics card. Now we just get to see how well it stays in stock – or rather how fast it completely sells out.
Analysis: Performance is decent but falls short
From our own testing of several titles, it only Final Fantasy XIV was able to climb over the 100 FPS threshold, at 134 FPS on the 1080 setting. It did dip on the 1440 setting to 92 FPS, however. Though it was able to at least stay over 60 fps in all but Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which is an incredibly tough game to run.
The graphics card seems to struggle with DirectX 12 titles. For instance, in 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, the RX 6600 is behind nearly every other GPU on the market, including similarly priced ones. But it pulls ahead in Fire Strike, which measures DirectX 11 performance.
When it comes to choosing this graphics card, it's like any other GPU purchase. You'll have to look at the games you play or want and whether or not it’ll be stronger or weaker there. One graphics card might run better for Far Cry 6 or Assassin’s Creed Valhalla but run much slower for Cyberpunk 2077 or Call of Duty.
Considering how difficult it is these days to net a decent GPU, our advice is just to get the first one you can find at a reasonable price. For a better look at the AMD Radeon RX 6600, you can read our review.
