Review AMD Radeon RX 6600 Review: RDNA2 Goes Mainstream at $329

[zodiacfml]

restricting comparison to MSRP, this is like buying the RX 5700 now at the same performance and price. they also restricted memory overclock to max 1900 which is baffling, probably to lessen its mining performance vs the 6600 xt. I hope Intel can bring some improvement to the GPU industry

 

[prtskg]

restricting comparison to MSRP, this is like buying the RX 5700 now at the same performance and price. they also restricted memory overclock to max 1900 which is baffling, probably to lessen its mining performance vs the 6600 xt. I hope Intel can bring some improvement to the GPU industry

Since Intel is using TSMC for GPU, I don't think any relief is going to come in coming quarters as far as stock and price of GPUs are concerned.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Z77 with a 3770k should be able do pcie 3.0

 

[King_V]

I can't entirely say that I blame AMD for the pricing, given the current market.

If they're going to get sold out, with the overwhelming majority picked up by bots for scalpers and miners, etc., then, honestly, I'm perfectly fine with AMD's profits being a little higher and cutting into the profit margins of scalpers and miners.

Does it suck for the small number of actual gamers who manage to pick one up at MSRP? Yes, absolutely. But net, overall, a little more money for AMD and a little less for the people who have created this insane market is something I don't object to.

 

[BAWrites]

The RX 6600 brings AMD's RDNA2 architecture to a broader mainstream audience. The paper specs and pricing look good. Hopefully retail pricing doesn't change too much.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 Review: RDNA2 Goes Mainstream at $329 : Read more

Nice review!

It may have been put out as a $329 card, but finding at that price will be nearly impossible.

 

[ddcservices]

You know I would would be a lot more likely to believe AMDs complaints about rising costs, if not for the fact they are enjoying record breaking profit... both in absolute dollars and as a percentage of revenue.

Their price hikes are far exceeding their increased costs.

You may have missed that AMD doesn't sell video cards, they make CPUs and GPUs. The GPUs then have to be mounted on the PCB, VRAM on the PCB, connectors for power and output, plus of course, the cooler. AMD could sell the GPUs for exactly the same price and the price of video cards would still be 3 times the MSRP due to the video card makers, distributors, and things like the cost of shipping.

Don't believe the anti-hype about AMD and NVIDIA making more money when the video cards are priced far above MSRP, because that is NOT true.

To try this another way, if you were to go out and build a computer for someone else, you buy the components, put them together, mark up the price of the components as well as a charge for the actual system assembly. Even if you got each individual component cheap, your time in putting the computer together, installing the OS, and all of that is worth SOMETHING, right? Well, that is what the video card makers are doing, they get the components to make the video card, put it together, then test it, put their own special cooling on the card, and then sell it. Now, how expensive is it to ship the product from China in a big shipping container? I had read a week or two ago that it used to cost $1000-$3000 to move one shipping container from China to the USA, but that cost is now up around $30,000. If that is true, then the actual distribution costs are where much of the increases have come from, and that isn't the fault of AMD or NVIDIA.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Lower the resolution and quality all the way and see what performance you get. This is the maximum performance you can attain. If this is better than what you're currently getting, then you can still upgrade and you'll get those numbers on maximum quality, but keep in mind you're still limited to just that performance. If you want more performance, you need to upgrade to a better CPU.

This is only partially true. Running at minimum detail vs. maximum detail has different GPU, CPU, and memory loads. So if you have a CPU that maxes out at 150 fps in a game at 720p min, that doesn't always mean it can do 150 fps at ultra quality. In fact, I've seen plenty of games where the maximum at 1080p medium is 145 fps or so, but at 1080p ultra it's 120 fps, and at 1080p ultra with DXR it drops all the way to 95 fps. Those are basically the numbers from my Far Cry 6 testing on the i9-9900K: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/far-cry-6-benchmarks

You can see there's a cap on 1080p medium, 1080p ultra, and 1080p ultra DXR -- meaning, several GPUs of different performance levels all max out at roughly the same framerate. But the maximum isn't the same at different settings, because the CPU has to do different work on each.

 

[PiranhaTech]

Yeah . . I think even on PCIe 3.0, you'd still be okay. PCIe 2.0, on the other hand, is kind of an unknown in terms of how much of a choke-point that will be.

In this GPU climate, if you can get the card for $329, I would say lean towards getting it, even if it's a PCIe 2.0 system. The GTX 1650 is being sold for more than that at the moment. You can upgrade the mobo, CPU, and RAM later. The card itself seems GTX 1070-GTX 1080ish, though the PCI Express x8 interface of the 6600 might be more of a bottleneck, emphasis on the might

At a more-expensive price, maybe not

 

[pepar0]

What we need is for Intel to flood the market with GPUs.

 

[InvalidError]

What we need is for Intel to flood the market with GPUs.

ARC will be manufactured in the same TSMC fabs that are heavily backlogged and ship in the same shipping containers that get stuck at sea for months at a time due to overcrowded ports. If Intel is going to flood the market, it isn't going to happen any time soon. My own prediction is that retail ARC will be about as difficult to get in the DIY space as desktop Broadwell was: practically vaporware beyond chosen OEMs' pre-built.