MSI Gaming AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT 128-bit 8GB GDDR6 DP/HDMI Dual Torx Fans FreeSync DirectX 12 VR Ready OC Graphics Card (RX 6600 XT MECH 2X 8G OC)

Product Information

Something worth noting is that the 6600 XT is just 5% slower than the 5700 XT. That's disappointing given it's just 5% cheaper than the 2-year-old Radeon GPU (at MSRP, not the inflated price). So while impressive when compared to GeForce offerings in this AMD-sponsored title, the results are less impressive than they seem. The 5700 XT also enjoys 75% more memory bandwidth though it was only 19% faster, which is still a massive margin and the only reason it's not larger is because shader performance is limited. This is an interesting look at how poorly the 6600 XT performs relative to competing parts in memory-intensive games. The Nvidia encoder, often referred to as Nvenc, is also commonly pushed as a big plus for GeForce graphics cards, but we've found little difference between ShadowPlay and ReLive for capturing gameplay lately. AMD's solution appears to work very well now, so perhaps Nvenc is no longer a differentiating advantage anymore. Assuming you don't run into CPU bound conditions, Radeon and GeForce GPUs scale very similarly with the quality presets, so using competitive settings both the 6600 XT and RTX 3060 will deliver a similar level of performance.

For most of this GPU generation, and for a significant part of the last, the regular refrain has been that raw performance numbers are one thing, but Nvidia has a serious edge in terms of the extra features. While real-time ray tracing has been touted as the biggest, realistically it's the almost-indistinguishable-from-magic Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) tech that has garnered more industry plaudits. Introducing the AMD Radeon™ RX 6600 XT graphics card, featuring the breakthrough AMD RDNA™ 2 architecture, engineered to deliver the ultimate 1080p gaming experience.

We'll have our own independent testing and analysis of the RX 6600 XT later, but the card looks promising. Again, we can't stress enough the importance of getting enough cards to market—something neither AMD nor Nvidia have been able to do since last summer. We don't expect that to change, but AMD does seem to have more RX 6700 XT cards for sale than it has RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT combined. Hopefully, that means it will have even more RX 6600 XT cards—it should, since Navi 23 should be a smaller chip that costs less to produce. This means that these AMD graphics cards can have more memory for less cash, even though with the RX 6600 XT, at least, AMD opted for 8GB of GDDR6 memory, rather than the 12GB of GDDR6 that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 brings to the table. For all this testing we used our Ryzen 9 5950X test system with 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL14 dual-rank, dual-channel memory. Both GPUs were tested at 1080p, 1440p and 4K. Of the 30 games tested, we're going to discuss a few of the most relevant results and then we'll take a look at how these two GPUs compare head-to-head across all games in a single graph towards the conclusion. Benchmarks

Today we'll be taking real-world pricing data and comparing it across a much larger 30 game sample to see which GPU offers gamers the most value. We'll also take a look at ray tracing performance in the new F1 2021, along with Metro Exodus Enhanced which is a follow-on from the Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Resident Evil Village, and Watch Dogs Legion results which were featured in the original review. The Rainbow Six Extraction performance was comparable with both GPUs delivering over 130 fps at 1080p. The RTX 3060 did edge ahead by a 7% margin at 1440p, but overall performance was very similar. Warhammer III is another new game and this one uses the Warscape Engine 3 which is used exclusively by the Total War series. Here the GeForce GPUs currently enjoy a small performance advantage.In Dirt 5, the RX 6600 XT is 16% faster than the RTX 3060, and in the original Metro Exodus, it has a 15% lead at 1080p. However, the AMD graphics card is basically tied with the RTX 3060 in Final Fantasy XIV and Horizon Zero Dawn – which isn't a good look with its price difference. Not expecting much out of this one.Given no graphics cards are restricted by the PCI-E 3 x16 bandwidth, PCI-E 4 support offers no advantage. Forza Horizon 5 is a well optimized title that plays well on both hardware platforms. We are using the extreme preset, so this is as demanding as the game gets, yet we're still looking at 61 fps on average from both GPUs at 1440p. Performance was very similar with no clear winner.

We also found a 5% reduction in performance when testing with Death Stranding and this saw the 6600 XT go from slightly leading the 3060 Ti to trailing it by a small margin. Using our updated Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark pass we find close results in this highly demanding title. Please note ray tracing has not been enabled and we're also not using the highest quality preset, instead, settling for the second-highest option. Performance Summary We won't go over the data for all 50 games individually as that would take all day, instead we're going to take a close look at the results for about a dozen of them and then we'll take a look at how these two GPUs compare head-to-head across all games tested in a single graph. Benchmarks Where the Radeon 6600 XT does shine is when looking at power consumption. In our test with Doom at 1440p, it used no more power than the older 5600 XT and yet it managed to deliver 23% more performance.Starting with Dying Light 2, this recently released game uses a proprietary 3D game engine developed by Techland known as Chrome Engine 6, and it's the only game in our test suite to use it. However, I do feel AMD managed to make the 6600 XT even worse than anticipated by gimping the PCI Express interface and heavily reducing the Infinity Cache capacity, making this GPU weaker than expected, particularly for 1440p gaming.

Starting with the 1080p data, we see that the 6600 XT was 3% faster on average, meaning they're basically identical overall across a wide range of games as we deem anything within 5% a draw. That means for 20 of the 50 games tested performance was near enough to "identical" with margins 4% or less. Like most Radeon GPUs, the 6600 XT performs well in Death Stranding, delivering 158 fps on average at 1080p, allowing it to match the 3060 Ti which frankly should be the minimum level of performance offered by this product. Whether or not AMD can tempt us with the Radeon RX 6650 XT has yet to be seen, but we're keen to look into that very soon. Shopping Shortcuts: As expected the margins continue to head in the wrong direction for the 6600 XT when increasing the resolution. At 1440p it's now 18% slower than the 3060 Ti and 24% slower than the 6700 XT.For the most part the MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X has virtually the same aesthetic as the MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming X, though it's just a bit smaller. Unlike the 6700 XT, the Radeon RX 6700 XT Gaming X is just a dual-slot card, rather than a 2.5 slot design. This should make it fit better in smaller cases, and allow for easier installation of other expansion cards – like a capture card or a sound card (yes, those do still exist). At any other time there would be some last-gen cards still floating around in retail, and if there were any RX 5700 XTs still out there priced normally the RX 6600 XT would have a very different launch price. But, in this darkest timeline, there aren't. Then we have the Nvidia sponsored Watch Dogs Legion and no surprises, the 6600 XT gets dominated and is unable to deliver playable performance, dropping from an impressive 118 fps without ray tracing to just 36 fps using the medium quality settings. PCI Express Testing