AMD RX 6600 Review ft. ASUS and Gigabyte

1. Introduction2. ASUS RX 6600 Dual3. Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle4. Testing Methodology5. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy6. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing7. Assassin's Creed Valhalla8. Control9. Cyberpunk 207710. Days Gone11. F1 202112. Gears 513. Hitman 314. Horizon Zero Dawn15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Resident Evil Village17. Total War Saga: Troy18. Watch Dogs: Legion19. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)20. Cost Per Frame Analysis21. Ray Tracing - Cyberpunk 207722. Ray Tracing - Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition23. Ray Tracing - Resident Evil: Village24. ASUS Dual vs Gigabyte Eagle25. Clock Speed26. GPU Temperatures27. Acoustics28. Noise-Normalised Temperatures29. Power Draw: 1080p30. Power Draw: 1440p31. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)32. Performance per Watt: 1080p33. Performance per Watt: 1440p34. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)35. Total System Power Draw36. Overclocking37. Closing Thoughts38. View All Pages

Following on from the launch of the RX 6600 XT back in August, today AMD has announced its newest GPU, the RX 6600 (non-XT). Using a cut-down version of Navi 23 silicon, AMD claims the RX 6600 offers ‘powerhouse performance for 1080p', with the company's first-party data showing this new GPU trading blows with Nvidia's RTX 3060. Today we put this new GPU through its paces, comparing it to a range of both current and previous-generation graphics cards.

As with the RX 6600 XT, there's no AMD reference design for the RX 6600, instead AMD is relying on its board partners to come up with their custom designs. Today's review focuses on two such cards – the ASUS RX 6600 Dual and the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle. Both are clocked at reference specifications – so there's no factory overclocking involved – though the Eagle uses a triple-fan cooler compared to the dual-fan design of the ASUS… Dual.

In terms of pricing, AMD has set a £299.99 MSRP for the UK market, with a $329 MSRP for those in the US. This is a £30/$50 reduction compared to the RX 6600 XT, though we have been hearing real-world cost is looking closer to £400, if not higher.

Still, we have a review to get on with, so today we are testing the RX 6600 over 12 modern games, comparing it to the likes of the RTX 3060, RX 6600 XT, RX 5600 XT and more. We also have extensive power and performance-per-Watt data, alongside the thermal and acoustic performance of these two custom cards.

	RX 6800 XT	RX 6800	RX 6700 XT	RX 6600 XT	RX 6600
Architecture	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2	RDNA 2
Manufacturing Process	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm	7nm
Transistor Count	26.8 billion	26.8 billion	17.2 billion	11.1 billion	11.1 billion
Die Size	519 mm²	519 mm²	336 mm²	237 mm²	237 mm²
Ray Accelerators	72	60	40	32	28
Compute Units	72	60	40	32	28
Stream Processors	4608	3840	2560	2048	1792
Game GPU Clock	Up to 2015MHz	Up to 1815MHz	Up to 2424MHz	Up to 2359MHz	Up to 2044 MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2250MHz	Up to 2105MHz	Up to 2581MHz	Up to 2589MHz	Up to 2491MHz
ROPs	128	96	64	64	64
AMD Infinity Cache	128MB	128MB	96MB	32MB	32MB
Memory	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	12GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Bandwidth	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	384 GB/s	256 GB/s	224 GB/s
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Board Power	300W	250W	230W	160W	132W

Let's first look over the key specifications of the GPU. Using the same 237 mm² Navi 23 silicon as its XT counterpart, the RX 6600 is cut-back in a few key areas. It houses 28 Compute Units (CUs), so that's four fewer than the 6600 XT, for a total of 1792 stream processors, or 256 fewer than the XT model.

RDNA 2 houses one ray accelerator per CU, so there’s a total of 28 with the RX 6600. Four texture units per CU gives a total of 112, while there’s also 64 ROPs. Clock speed has been pared back slightly though, with a rated boost clock of 2491 MHz, down from 2589MHz with the 6600 XT.

As for the memory configuration, this is broadly the same as the RX 6600 XT, meaning there's a narrow 128-bit memory interface paired with 8GB of GDDR6 memory. The memory itself is clocked slower however, at 14Gbps instead of 16Gbps, reducing total memory bandwidth by 12.5%, as it hits 224 GB/s. There is still 32MB of AMD’s Infinity Cache.

Lastly, total board power (TBP) is rated at 132W, a reduction of 28W, or 17.5%, compared to the RX 6600 XT. We are using our new GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

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