[SOLVED] Upgrading from a RX 580 to a RX 6600 worth it?

[franches]

Hello y'all,

long story short, my last build was in early - mid 2017 consisting of:

i7 - 7700 (non k)
2x8 GB Corsair LP4 DDR4 2400mhz
H270 Pro4 (Had to replace my original board since one of the ram slots died)
CX 550M PSU

Now I've been rock solid with this for nearly 6 years now. However, the RX 6600 goes for a nice price of 280 - 300 around where I live and I don't believe in upgrading my complete rig - so just replacing my card would be a good option. Question is, is it even worth going from the 580, which is still a solid card for 1080p, to a 6600?

Several problems I've noticed:

550W should be fine for the 6600, it has a lower TDP than a 580.
i7 - 7700 might bottleneck the GPU?
And perhaps the biggest one: Motherboard only has PCIE 3.0, now from what I've seen the performance gain is marginal for such a card, but what do you guys think? I need some advice on this

Many thanks

 

[boju]

Not really worth it vs 580 on pcie 3 system because 6600 runs at x8. Different story if system supported pcie 4. But, as the card itself, running pcie 4, is 15 to 30fps odd faster than Vega 56, depending on game.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 Review

How good or bad the RX 6600 will be can only be determined over the coming weeks, based on street pricing and availability. But for now, the...

www.techspot.com

^scroll down a little regarding pcie 3 8x.

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-6600.c3696

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I wouldn’t say not worth it. Have a look.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT PCI-Express Scaling

When the Radeon RX 6600 XT launched with an interface limited to PCI-Express 4.0 x8, lots of discussion emerged about how AMD crippled the bandwidth, and how much it affects the gaming experience. In this article, we're taking a close look at exactly that, comparing 22 titles running at PCIe...

www.techpowerup.com

I’m actually running an rtx 3080 in an older b350 board and it’s fine, but I’ve used a 6600xt and it was fine. From things I read and from that article a few games you’ll lose more, but mostly you are just talking a couple of percentage points. Get the 6600 and be happy until you rebuild later imo.

 

[boju]

Oh ok wish i saw that first. Was only going by what Techspot said.

Not an issue at all then.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I can’t find what they said but it seems like there was stuff on YouTube also. In essence there is a bit of a hit, on some games I think it can be up to 20% but I think on average it was like 2%. Which if you were playing one of the affected titles, I think doom eternal was mentioned, you could probably dial the textures back or something a hair.

 

[boju]

Thankfully, AMD hasn't downgraded the memory capacity, leaving the RX 6600 with 8GB. However, the decrease in core and memory frequency has reduced the board power rating from 160 watts down to 132 watts. Finally, like the 6600 XT, the non-XT version is limited to PCIe 4.0 x8 bandwidth. So when installed in a PCIe 4.0 system this is a non-issue, but performance related problems could arise when installed in a system that only supports PCIe 3.0, which currently is most systems.


This is because when using PCIe 4.0, the RX 6600 series connects to the CPU using a 16GB/s link which is sufficient for modern graphics cards as that's what you get with PCIe 3.0 x16. However, when limited to an x8 interface, the bandwidth for a PCIe 3.0 system is reduced to just 8 GB/s, and we found in the past this can heavily limit performance, especially when fetching data from system memory.

from main page, bit further down. They probably over dramatising it. Looks like from your link it isn't much of an issue seeing not much change in fps.

 

[franches]

from main page, bit further down. They probably over dramatising it. Looks like from your link it isn't much of an issue seeing not much change in fps.

I can’t find what they said but it seems like there was stuff on YouTube also. In essence there is a bit of a hit, on some games I think it can be up to 20% but I think on average it was like 2%. Which if you were playing one of the affected titles, I think doom eternal was mentioned, you could probably dial the textures back or something a hair.

Right, that is what I saw a 1 - 2% performance decrease using 3.0 instead of 4.0. Regarding the bottleneck, I've seen that the i7 - 7700 is about as slow as the current i3s now, still would it bottleneck the 6600 or not? What do you guys think

 

[boju]

7700 is still decent and will handle 6600. Lack of threads can hurt in some titles but that's not really anything to do with the graphics card for the most part. Fps can elevate cpu usage if game is already cpu intensive but you can remedy that simply by curbing fps output by capping or increase details. But 7700 should be more than capable for the most part.

View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qo3EJzHuXok&feature=shares

 

[ohio_buckeye]

In other words, don't worry too much about it, just update as you are able

 

[franches]

In other words, don't worry too much about it, just update as you are able

7700 is still decent and will handle 6600. Lack of threads can hurt in some titles but that's not really anything to do with the graphics card for the most part. Fps can elevate cpu usage if game is already cpu intensive but you can remedy that simply by curbing fps output by capping or increase details. But 7700 should be more than capable for the most part.

View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qo3EJzHuXok&feature=shares

Right, thank you guys so much, I think as a mid term solution, the 6600 should do until I upgrade the entire rig.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Yeah the 6600 may not be amazing by today’s standards but value for money it should be a solid 1080p card. I’d save for a platform upgrade then in a year or so especially if you want to go to 1440p you’ll be ready for another gpu upgrade by then.

 

[rcald2000]

Hello franches. Is your RX 580 the 4GB or 8GB variant? The answer to that question definitely would affect my answer? If you own the 4GB variant, then I definitely would upgrade to an 8GB VRAM card, such as the RX 6600. If your RX 580 is 8GB, then my answer would be "maybe". And then I'd have other questions to ask: Which game titles do you currently play, or with to play in the very near future? What refresh rate is your display, or are you trying to achieve and at a what settings (e.g. competitive, high, ultra)? Also, why are you considering upgrading in the first place? You wish to turn up detail settings, or you're seeking higher FPS?

You mentioned a price range of 280 - 300. Would you say that's your maximum upgrade budget range?

 

[ohio_buckeye]

One thing to keep in mind, the rx 580 competed with the gtx 1060. The rx 6600 is close it seems to a gtx 1080. So that should give a rough idea on performance vs what is there now I think.