AMD is poised to launch a new graphics card, the vanilla version of the RX 6600 which (if it appears) will follow on from the recently-released RX 6600 XT as a cheaper option.
This comes from VideoCardz which spotted that PC Diga, a Portuguese retailer, briefly listed a Sapphire Radeon RX 6600 Pulse graphics card for pre-order (with a model number of 11310-01-20G). No specs were mentioned save for the card having 8GB of GDDR6 memory on board.
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The product listing has now been yanked down, but not before VideoCardz managed to grab screenshots showing the Sapphire RX 6600 in question being priced at €590 (about $690, £430, AU$950). But as ever in these cases, take that with a huge amount of skepticism, as it could easily be a placeholder price (and further remember that currency conversions are pretty meaningless in these cases).
The GPU appears to have a ship date of today, which must be wrong, and VideoCardz cites its own sources who believe that the release date for the RX 6600 will be October 13. Again, that’s a nugget of info to be cautious around, but if it’s on the money, we only have just over a couple of weeks to wait for the non-XT version of the 6600 (a September or October launch has been mentioned via the rumor mill before, by the way).
Sapphire’s Pulse version of the Radeon RX 6600 is also shown in a couple of pics: it’s a compact board – a fair bit smaller than the 6600 XT model of the Pulse – with twin fans.
Analysis: Pricing is key (as ever)
Going by the rumor mill, the vanilla RX 6600 is expected to offer 1,792 stream processors, with the 6600 XT having 2,048 stream processors, and this seems to be the primary difference between these two offerings. The 6600 will still boast 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM as mentioned (with the same memory bandwidth as the XT, as per previous speculation).
Really, though, pricing is key for the RX 6600, and exactly where AMD will pitch that, who knows, as the Portuguese retailer’s price tag seems off the mark: €590 sounds pretty rich given that the 6600 XT sells for less than that with some models in Europe. And further remember that the Pulse isn’t a high-end flavor of graphics card from Sapphire, either.
You might recall that the 6600 XT has a recommended retail price of $379 (around £280, AU$520), so given that, we’d expect the 6600 to be priced a decent chunk lower – less than $350, surely? However, what third-party card manufacturers decide to charge for the privilege of owning the GPU will be up to them, and not AMD’s suggested pricing (remember that there’s no reference board from Team Red with the 6600).
Let’s hope the indication of pricing given here is as off the mark as it looks, then, and not a worrying hint of things to come – because there has already been some consternation at the asking price for the 6600 XT, and its lack of relative bang-for-buck compared to Nvidia’s RTX 3060.
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Via Tom’s Hardware
