Question RX 6600 XT dynamically (and annoyingly) power limits itself in certain games. CPU bottlenecking? Faulty GPU?

Oct 19, 2022
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Hi all,

I'm currently facing an issue with my new MSI RX 6600 XT Mech 2X OC, as said in the title, the card seems to be dynamically power limits itself in certain games, whereby it will run without power limit at certain scenario, while limiting itself in other to around 30w power and severely impacting gaming performance, to the point where in some game it is performing worse than my old GTX 1060 3GB.

Just to illustrate the issue, so far here are a few games that have this issue (note: powerlimit on overworld but not in subworld in Genshin Impact, and powerlimit in game and not in the main menu for Project Wingman), while some games are much better, or at least not effect to the same extent, here are a few games for example (running with higher power limit and high FPS on DCS world and Ace Combat 7). Also FWIW, I've also stress tested the GPU with Furmark for around 40mins at full power (140w IIRC) and the card ran stable at around double the performance of my old GTX 1060, which should be right on par with the performance of RX 6600 XT I think.

What is the reason for RX6600 XT being so inconsistent in power draw? Is GPU dynamically limiting itself? Or is it a graphic card or driver issue? Or is my CPU really bottlenecking the GPU THAT much? I'm really contemplating on returning the card now but I really hoped to be able to fix this myself as the card doesn't really seems faulty in general aside from this one annoying problem, so any suggestion for a possible fix would be much appreciated.

So far here's the troubleshooting I've done but to no avail:
  1. Uninstall and Reinstalling (using DDU) as well as downgrading GPU driver (tried both AMD Adrenaline 22.5.1 & 22.3.1)
  2. Tweaking settings on Radeon Adrenaline (forced 160 FPS min on Radeon Chill, switch off Freesync, etc)
  3. Reinstalling motherboard BIOS
  4. Reinstalling Ryzen chipset driver
Specs:
GPU: MSI RX 6600 XT Mech 2X OC
CPU: RYZEN 5 1600 6 CORE 12 THREADS @ stock
Motherboard: Asus Prime B350 Plus
BIOS Version: PRIME B350-PLUS BIOS 6042
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666 mhz *2 (slot A1 & A2) + Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 mhz *2 (slot B1 & B2)
PSU: ANTEC HCP-750
Case: Corsair Carbide Series SPEC-01
Operating System & Version: WINDOWS 10 PRO 21H2
GPU Drivers: AMD software: Adrenalin Edition version 22.5.1
Chipset Drivers: AMD Chipset driver 3.10.22.706

Thx in advanced :)
 
Oct 19, 2022
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Reinstall the drivers by manually downloading the drivers directly from the applicable manufacturer's website.

Then reinstall and reconfigure. No third party tools or apps.
Well, I got my driver from AMD directly and I did install them without using any tools (I only use DDU after reinstalling the driver the second time)

I will try giving another go when I got the chance to, though I'm sceptical that driver reinstall could fix the issue at this point.

But still, thx for the reply:)
 
Oct 19, 2022
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So I've tried reinstalling the driver (Radeon Adrenalin 22. 10.2) and sadly it doesn't really fixed the issue. But I do have some new observations:

- In intensive scene in game, the card seems to limit its power and downclock its frequency than compare to less intensive scene/idling. Shouldn't this be the other way around.?

- In the Adrenaline software, the slider for power limit under power tuning ends at '0', instead of having '0' in the middle of the slider and allowing to slide past 0 for higher power limit, is this software bug or my hardware limitations?
 
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