Maximum PC - USA (2021-Holiday)

AMD’SRX 6600 GPU may be the end of the

line for desktop RDNA2 graphics cards.

AMD also has APUs with RDNA2 graphics

in the works, and Samsung’s upcoming

Exynos smartphone chip will put RDNA2

into mobile devices. We’d be hard-

pressed to name one good reason why a

smartphone needs ray tracing hardware,

but that’s a topic for another day.

Building off the same Navi 23 GPU

that powers the RX 6600 XT, the vanilla

6600 comes with 28 of the potential 32

CUs enabled. That’s a relatively small

reduction in the number of functional

units, but AMD also trims clocks by

anywhere from 100 –300 MHz, depending

on GPU temperatures, power use, and

other factors. The GDDR6 memory also

gets a speed reduction from 1 6Gbps

down to 14Gbps.

Taken as a whole, the RX 6600 should in

theory be anywhere from 10 to 25 percent

slower than the RX 6600 XT. In practice,

our testing shows an average drop in

performance of 13 percent at 108 0p and

15 percent at 144 0p. The official launch

price is also about 14 percent lower,

which would be great if you could find the

cards in stock for anything close to the

official MSRP. You can’t, and in fact, the

cards are already selling for an average

price of $560 on eBay. Feel free to insert

your own swear words here.

Not the fastest card on the block

XFX Radeon RX 6600

Speedster SWFT 2 10

7

VERDICT XFX Radeon RX 6600

Speedster SWFT 210

SPEED DEMON Efficient

architecture; compact design;

single 8-pin power.

SLOW SNAIL Deep cuts; weak RT;

high street prices.

$330, http://www.xfxforce.com

SPECIFICATIONS

Architecture Navi 23

Lithography TSMC N7

Boost Clock 2,491MHz

GPU Cores 1,792

Memory 8GB GDDR6 14Gbps

TFLOPS FP3 2 8.9

Bandwidth 224GBps

TDP 132W

Connectors 1x HDMI 2.1,3x DisplayPort 1.4

Ignoring street prices, which are

messed up across the entire graphics

cards spectrum right now, the RX 6600

delivers mixed results. Some games

such as Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and

Borderlands 3 perform quite well. Games

with more complex ray-tracing engines

such as Control and Cyberpunk 2077

fall flat. We’re not particularly surprised

by the results in DXR games, but it does

feel more like a feature checkbox rather

than something people will be able to use,

especially with games that will only get

more complex rendering engines.

The primary competition for the RX

6600 comes from Nvidia’s RTX 3 060,

and despite XFX calling this card the

Speedster SWFT, it’s neither of those

things. It beats Nvidia in the AMD

promoted games by about 10 to 15

percent, but overall ended up being about

10 percent slower. Nvidia also gives you

12GB of GDDR6 memory, a rare case for

this generation of cards as elsewhere

AMD usually provides more VRAM. When

we factor in DLSS and Nvidia Broadcast,

the RTX 3060 ends up the superior card.

AMD’s newcomer does have some

other selling points, though. Its official

TDP is only 1 32W, which means it could

have theoretically worked with a single

6-pin power connector, but XFX went with

an 8 -pin adapter. It didn’t prove much

in the way of overclocking headroom,

but 8 -pin connectors are becoming

ubiquitous these days. Our power testing

confirmed that the card mostly adheres

to that power limit. We measured 140 W in

FurMark and 13 7W while gaming, but we

won’t lose sleep over an 8W difference.

If you’re after a compact card that

can work in a mini-ITX case or a home

theater PC, the RX 6600 is worthy of

consideration. It’s interesting that overall

performance at 1080 p and 144 0p was

about five percent faster than AMD’s old

RX Vega 64 while using less than half the

power. Still, it’s difficult to get excited

about a card that delivers a performance

that has been available for five years—

the GTX 1080 also comes pretty close to

the RX 6600 in performance, as does the

previous generation RX 5600 XT.

Sadly, this isn’t the classic story of the

tortoise and the hare. The RX 6600 starts

off sluggish and never really closes the

gap to the more desirable cards. If you

can find one for close to the $ 330 price, it’s

worth getting, but be prepared to keep to

the right lanes while the real speedsters

zip past in the fast lane. – JARRED WALTON

BENCHMARKS

XFX Radeon

RX 6600 SWFT 210

AMD Radeon

RX 6600 XT

Nvidia GeForce

RTX 3060

8 Game Average (afps) 55 / 35 63 / 41 63 / 47

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (afps) 72 / 52 87 / 63 65 / 50

Borderlands 3 (afps) 88 / 58 107 / 70 77 / 55

Control (DXR) 30 / 17 34 / 19 47 / 29

Cyberpunk 2077 (DXR) 16 / 5 16 / 6 31 / 19

Dirt 5 (afps) 82 / 66 94 / 72 80 / 63

Horizon Zero Dawn (afps) 83 / 62 98 / 72 96 / 76

Metro Exodus (afps) 63 / 47 74 / 57 65 / 52

Red Dead Redemption 2 (afps) 62 / 48 70 / 57 70 / 57

Benchmarks at 1080p / 14 40p Ultra, best scores are in bold. All testing conducted with a Core i9-9900K, MSI MEG

Z390 ACE, 2x16GB DDR4-3600 CL16, 2TB XPG 8200 Pro M.2 SSD, Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 1000W. Scores

are average framerates at the indicated resolutions.

in the lab

78 MAXIMUMPC HOL 2021