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The Radeon RX 6600 is AMD's budget 1080p gaming card. It competes directly against the RTX 3060 12 GB from Nvidia. At a cheaper price point, this card brings solid performance to the table. Thus, it is no surprise that it is one of the best-selling Radeon RX 6000 series cards.
When it launched in October 2021, the RX 6600 represented bad value at its $329 MSRP. A similarly priced RTX 3060 could outperform it. However, none of these video cards were sold at MSRP back in the day. Thus, the value proposition was chopped off until earlier this year when prices dropped.
AMD has since revised the pricing of their RX 6000 series cards. In this Holiday Sale, the video card can be bought for as low as $216 on Newegg. The competition, in contrast, is much costlier. Thus, many budget gamers are leaning towards the RX 6600.
However, users should consider a few more points before finalizing the video card. Jumping to conclusions solely based on pricing can prove fatal for many, as AMD cards lag behind Nvidia's offerings in a few aspects. These points may not be applicable to all gamers, so making an informed decision is crucial.
Note: This article is subjective and reflects the opinions of the writer
The AMD RX 6600 represents solid value with recent pricing trends
The Radeon RX 6600 is not impressive on paper, to say the least. The card is based on a tuned down 237 mm² Navi 23 GPU. It packs 1,792 shading units, 112 Texture Mapping Units (TMUs), 64 Render Output Units (ROPs), 28 Compute Units (CUs), 28 RT cores, and a combined 34 MB (L2+L3) cache.
The GPU packs a total of 8 GB of GDDR6 video memory that is based on a 128-bit memory bus. It has a base clock of 1,626 MHz and a boost clock of 2,491 MHz. The card continues the trend of relying on clock speeds to deliver performance.
Thus, the RX 6600 is not the best card one can pick up. However, in the current market, what matters more is relative performance.
In video games, the card performs quite well. Even in video games with heavy ray tracing implementations like Cyberpunk 2077 and Far Cry 6, the card performs quite well. Anyone can expect quite a playable framerate at 1080p resolution. However, some games like Cyberpunk and Fortnite might not be playable without temporal upscaling.
The card can also play some video games at 1440p with some compromises in visual fidelity. However, users should stick with 1080p while gaming with an RX 6600.
The average of the three cheapest listings in Newegg for the RX 6600 is $228.66. At this price point, Nvidia has no competitors.
The direct competitor to the video card, the RTX 3060, is about five to seven percent faster than the AMD equivalent. However, it is almost over $100 costlier. The average of the three cheapest 3060 listings on the website is $346.66.
Thus, the 6600 is a much better option relatively. This makes it a great budget option to opt for. However, AMD cards have some disadvantages.
Ray tracing performance on RX 6000 series cards suffers as they are a first-generation product. AMD cards are also a terrible option for productivity performance. OpenCL is not as high-performing as CUDA. Thus, professionals should get a Nvidia card over the AMD option any day.
AMD's temporal upscaling technology, FSR, is not as polished as Nvidia's DLSS. Although FSR can provide a higher framerate gain in some cases, DLSS consistently provides a better output image.
Having said that, for gamers, the RX 6600 is a solid budget option.
