ASUS Radeon RX 6600 XT STRIX OC

[W1zzard]

The ASUS Radeon RX 6600 XT STRIX OC is a custom design variant with a triple-slot, dual-fan cooler. The card achieves excellent performance in Full HD, giving you 60 FPS or higher in every single game we tested. Temperatures are very low, and overclocking potential is good, too.

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[Chaitanya]

Why is power consumption so high with V-Sync on? Also chart is missing 3060(non-Ti) in power consumption comparison.

 

[newtekie1]

Ouch, worse than a 3060Ti for the same money. No wonder AMD is trying to keep the reviews from coming out. Man, can you just image the backlash if nVidia was telling reviewers they can only release nVidia sanctioned reviews? The torches and pitchforks would be sold out just like graphics cards.

 

[W1zzard]

Why is power consumption so high with V-Sync on?

Nice find, looks like V-Sync didn't engage and it ran at max FPS.. retesting

Also chart is missing 3060(non-Ti) in power consumption comparison.

There is no 3060 non-Ti reference design, so I didn't include it.

 

[lightning70]

3060 Ti better than Price/Performance.
6600XT Expensive.

 

[Chomiq]

$550? Are they for real?

 

[W1zzard]

$550? Are they for real?

ASUS DUAL: $499.99 btw

Source for both: talked to ASUS USA directly

 

[london]

if this was a 100W i would consider. but this? trash. also i want to see pcie 3.0 motherboards numbers. even bigger trash i guess.

 

[Chomiq]

ASUS DUAL: $499.99 btw

Source for both: talked to ASUS USA directly

This will probably end up being €650/600 in EU which is nuts.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I had been looking forward to buying this specific card for some time as I've been without access to an AMD graphics card for the past few months, but... what is this pricing? They can't be serious, at that rate, there's absolutely no reason anyone should even remotely consider this. $550-700 for this is unacceptable, I was prepared to drop $449 on this one considering it's a ROG Strix and AMD's MSRP is $379.

 

[HTC]

This will probably end up being €650/600 in EU which is nuts.

I was looking forward to upgrade my RX480 4GB with the non-XT version of RX6600 but it looks like i'll be skipping yet another generation of cards ...

 

[Richards]

The infinity cache helps this card at 1080 & 1440 p but at 4k the 3060 pulls level

 

[Valantar]

There is no 3060 non-Ti reference design, so I didn't include it.

Were there 5500 XT reference designs, or 1660 series ones? Those are in the list, after all. Seems like a strange omission - isn't your standard procedure to also run tests at stock settings? Sure, there'll always be some variance between models depending on various design elements, but having some indication is much more useful to us as readers than none at all.

Beyond that though, thanks once again for a great review.

Overall, I like where the 6600 XT sits in terms of performance and power consumption, though those prices ... sheesh. No thanks. Still, this makes me very hopeful for what a non-XT and future 6500 series might bring to the table. A base 6500 non-XT might bring some really excellent performance at 75W, allowing for HHHL cards.

 

[W1zzard]

Were there 5500 XT reference designs, or 1660 series ones? Those are in the list, after all. Seems like a strange omission - isn't your standard procedure to also run tests at stock settings? Sure, there'll always be some variance between models depending on various design elements, but having some indication is much more useful to us as readers than none at all.

Indeed, I picked models that I felt most closely represent the reference card. Will update the review accordingly. Thanks!

future 6500 series

I keep hearing about higher ASP (average selling price) in AMD earnings calls, and this is what drives their stock price. So I doubt they'll release a 6500 if they can make a more profitable card with the same TSMC allocation

 

[bug]

That MSRP for a 128bit memory bus and "great 1080p performance" in 2021... The world has gone insane.

 

[Chrispy_]

As expected this card is incredibly underwhelming, unattractively priced at MSRP and scalper-prices alike, and of no interest compared to the previous generation.

In this messed up GPU market, a phoned-in effort is all it takes to sell GPUs. The 3060 12GB isn't exactly an appealing card either, but I'd definitely pick it over a 6600XT because the 6600XT isn't 15% faster as promised (I am shocked that AMD would cherry-pick titles for its marketing slides). If there was price parity between the 3060 and 6600XT I'd maybe have to reconsider based on which titles I was intending to focus on, but NVENC, DLSS, and RTX-exclusives are enough to be swayed towards Nvidia even then...

 

[Zubasa]

The infinity cache helps this card at 1080 & 1440 p but at 4k the 3060 pulls level

That MSRP for a 128bit memory bus and "great 1080p performance" in 2021... The world has gone insane.

I feel that AMD went for 32MB cache was a huge mistake. It went from 96MB on the 6800 and 6700XT all the way down to 1/3.

 

[Valantar]

Indeed, I picked models that I felt most closely represent the reference card. Will update the review accordingly. Thanks!

Great, thanks

I keep hearing about higher ASP (average selling price) in AMD earnings calls, and this is what drives their stock price. So I doubt they'll release a 6500 if they can make a more profitable card with the same TSMC allocation

Yeah, that seems to be a huge thing for them lately - the same reasoning is likely behind not launching lower end CPUs or APUs at retail. If you're limited by component supply in how much you sell, making and selling more expensive parts is likely what will keep shareholders the happiest. It's a damn shame for customers though. If anything, it's a good lesson on where corporate allegiances lie. Still, something like a 20-24CU die with the same cache and memory interface as this would be a killer budget card, and likely small enough to be mass produced very cheaply even with limited wafer supplies. Though with the chip shortage I'm guessing that we'll be seeing the previous ~1 year product family launch cycle stretch more towards two years, if not more. They might even hold off on budget RDNA2 7nm GPUs until they move on to 6/5nm for their higher end models - at that point TSMC 7nm should be plentiful, at least.

Still, it seems the RX 570 in my travel PC will live on for quite a while still. At least until we see GPUs like this back at the ~$200-250 level where they belong.

 

[ppn]

if this was a 100W i would consider. but this? trash. also i want to see pcie 3.0 motherboards numbers. even bigger trash i guess.

No problem just donwvolt it to its Furmakr clocks 2233 @0.966V and that results sub 100Watt for games at 7% performance loss, almost nonexistent, much like the card because of miners.
RTX 2080 at 1080p, 2070 super at 1440p, and better not think of 4K. RTX 2070 wow the peformance hit is very sour.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I feel that AMD went for 32MB cache was a huge mistake. It went from 96MB on the 6800 and 6700XT all the way down to 1/3.

It was intended to keep costs low, yields high, and power consumption down. Dimgrey Cavefish (this GPU's codename) is literally a GPU at the same tier as the GTX 1050 Ti or perhaps a little more accurately, the RX 5500 XT used to be. It's quite technologically advanced in comparison, of course, but it's simply inheriting their respective generations' flagship improvements as this segment always does.

The performance is fine IMHO, even if the MSRP is already high, but at $700 tier, it's literally at what the RTX 3080 launched at about a year ago. It's pathetic, and at this point it's just abusive - nobody's buying a 6600 XT for cryptocurrency mining, buyers of this card are gamers that don't have deep pockets to build flagship systems or guys like me who buy one to keep up with the technology on the other side. I'll more than live with my RTX 3090, but I have quite a few reasons to want access to a current generation AMD GPU, especially since i'm amongst the lucky few with access to AMD's closed beta testing program.

 

[HD64G]

I feel that AMD went for 32MB cache was a huge mistake. It went from 96MB on the 6800 and 6700XT all the way down to 1/3.

But it didn't lose the performance increase over the 5700XT that didn't have IC. So...

@W1zzard : I can see many comments on pricing and MSRP comparisons. MSRPs don't exist and thus, it is stupid to compare them. And the street prices are crazy for all modern GPUs. So, what is the point of price discussion at all? I propose that the best thing the reviewers can do in this period is to compare performance to last gen of GPUs get the perf/$ of the same performance class, add 10% more and suggest us the highest price we should pay for this GPU at most. maybe that way many people buying those GPUs overpriced stop doing so and the street prices come back down to normal in a few months. Otherwise no point in discussing about GPUs at all.

 

[IceShroom]

All the meltdown of Nvidia fans.
PCI-e 4.0 is with us from 2019 and according to this review there is only 4% difference between PCI-e 2x16 and PCI-e 4x16 using RTX 3080[as could not found PCI-e test for high end AMD card] https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-pci-express-scaling/26.html

 

[W1zzard]

@Valantar: the review has been updated with correct numbers for RX 6600 XT V-Sync, I also added RTX 3060 non-Ti power numbers, using the original reference BIOS from NVIDIA (which I also used for the RTX 3060 performance numbers)

I can see many comments on pricing and MSRP comparisons. MSRPs don't exist and thus, it is stupid to compare them

and that's why I'm listing MSRP but also street price and talk about both in conclusion.

 

[TomTomTom]

I think the F1 2020 game should be removed or replaced in the testing suite. 110FPS at 4K with a midrange card, that doesn't contribute anything and just skews the averages at the end or the review, giving the appearance that this card is more capable at 4K than it really is.

 

[W1zzard]

F1 2020

It'll be replaced by F1 2021 when I do my next full rebench, in a couple of weeks