Review: This ASUS RX 6600 runs ice cold in the latest games at Full HD
AMD has been scoring considerable wins with its Ryzen range of desktop processors, but its Radeon GPU business has been advancing to keep up with NVIDIA’s GeForce powerhouse cards. Today, we’re looking at the ASUS Dual RX 6600, an entry-level GPU that’s best suited for Full HD (1080p) gaming.
The AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series includes numerous options for gaming PCs, including the RX 6800 XT, RX 6700 XT, and RX 6600 XT. the RX 6600 could be viewed as a slightly less capable (but more affordable) RX 6600 XT. Think of a non-Ti NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU. The Radeon RX 6600 is the AMD counterpart to NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3060.
This graphics card, much like the rest of the RX 6000 Series, makes use of AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture, an evolution of the RDNA we saw with RX 5000 GPUs. It’s the same technology being used in Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5 consoles, but the RX 6600 is aimed at budget-conscious PC gamers with Full HD displays.
ASUS Dual RX 6600
The Good
- Quiet even when loaded
- Great 1080p performance
- Good value at MSRP
- Beefy cooler and metal backplate
- Great efficiency
The Bad
- Availability
- Weak ray-tracing performance
- Large GPU
ASUS Dual RX 6600: Price and availability
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
Unfortunately, it remains almost impossible to locate even the best graphics card at a reasonable price due to supply issues, increased demand, and those looking to make a quick buck. Remain diligent and you should be able to buy one … eventually.
ASUS Dual RX 6600: What’s good
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
Compared to the RX 6600 XT, the RX 6600 has four fewer ray tracing accelerators, 256 fewer cores, a slightly slower clock speed, and 32GB/s lower memory bandwidth. That doesn’t sound much, and truthfully it isn’t in the grand scheme of things, but it does result in approximately 10-15% performance downgrade compared to the RX 6600 XT.
Category | Spec |
---|---|
Architecture | RDNA 2 |
Process | 7nm |
Steam processors | 1,792 |
RT cores | 28 |
TMUs | 112 |
Core clock | 2,044MHz |
Boost clock | 2,491MHz |
Memory | 8GB GDDR6 |
Memory speed | 224GB/s |
Memory interface | 128-bit |
Bus standard | PCIe 4.0 |
TDP | 132W |
Recommended PSU | 500W |
Power connectors | 1x 8-pin |
Ports | 1x HDMI 2.1 3x DP 1.4a HDCP 2.3 support |
Dimensions | 9.6 x 5.3 x 1.9 inches (243mm x 134mm x 49mm) |
Where RDNA 2 and the RX 6600 can keep up and even surpass NVIDIA’s offerings is with Infinity Cache and other helpful technologies. There’s 32MB of this special cache on the RX 6600, which helps provide a little boost to the memory bandwidth, though it still falls short of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060.
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
The ASUS Dual RX 6600 is packed full of tech for excellent 1080p gaming.
How these technologies work is by adjusting the resolution displayed on-screen, upscaling on the fly to boost performance without sacrificing image quality. It’s almost like magic and has allowed ray tracing to be enabled on more advanced cards. Both the RTX 3060 and RX 6600 support ray tracing, but you’ll still experience a performance hit at this level.
Then there’s Smart Access Memory, which is resizable Base Address Register (BAR) support with a fancy name. With this feature enabled, it allows the CPU and GPU to transfer data more efficiently (in this case, game assets). The CPU can take advantage of the GPU VRAM in its entirety rather than a restricted amount, which can (but not always) increase performance.
There’s a single 8-pin PCIe connection that powers everything, which makes this GPU ideal for more compact system builds. There are no RGB lights or aggressive styling on the shroud. It’s a stealthy graphics card that will look good in most themed PCs. On the rear are the usual three DisplayPort and single HDMI ports.
To put the RX 6600 to the test, we installed it onto a testbench system that was used for other GPUs and rocks the latest components. We used an Intel Core i5-12600K CPU, MSI MPG Z690 Carbon WiFi motherboard, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM, with the system running Windows 11. Temperatures didn’t hit 70C under heavy load and clock speeds settled at about 2,490MHz.
ASUS Dual RX 6600: What’s not good
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
Then there’s the weak ray-tracing performance, which isn’t limited to just AMD cards at this price point. If you’re serious about flashy lighting effects, you’re going to need to pick up a GPU with far more dedicated processor cores among other specifications. Finally, the availability of GPUs remains terrible.
ASUS Dual RX 6600: Competition
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
Category | RX 6600 | RTX 3060 | RX 6600 XT |
---|---|---|---|
Architecture | RDNA 2 | Ampere | RDNA 2 |
Process | 7nm | 8nm | 7nm |
CUDA cores Steam processors |
1,792 | 3,584 | 2,048 |
RT cores | 28 | 28 | 32 |
Tensor cores TMUs |
112 | 112 | 128 |
Core clock | 1,626MHz | 1,320MHz | 1,968MHz |
Boost clock | 2,491MHz | 1,780MHz | 2,589MHz |
Memory | 8GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 | 8GB GDDR6 |
Memory speed | 224GB/s | 360GB/s | 256GB/s |
Memory interface | 128-bit | 192bit | 128-bit |
Bus standard | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 4.0 | PCIe 4.0 |
TDP | 132W | 170W | 160W |
Recommended PSU | 500W | 550W | 500W |
Power connectors | 1x 8-pin | 1x 8-pin | 1x 8-pin |
Ports | 1x HDMI 2.1 3x DP 1.4a HDCP 2.3 support |
2x HDMI 2.1 3x DP 1.4a HDCP 2.3 support |
1x HDMI 2.1 3x DP 1.4a HDCP 2.3 support |
Price | $329 | $329 | $399 |
ASUS Dual RX 6600: Should you buy it?
Source: Rich Edmonds / Windows Central
You should buy this if …
- You want to play all games at 1080p and high settings
- You want a recent GPU on a tight budget
- You want a very capable GPU for a small PC build
- You want to enjoy the latest features of AMD RDNA 2 GPUs
You shouldn’t buy this if …
- You want to play all games at 1440p
- You can afford the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT
- You want to play games at 4K
- You want the best GPU for crypto mining
AMD’s RDNA 2 improved upon its 5000 Series of GPUs with numerous new features. Card against card, you may not have as much performance as NVIDIA counterparts, but there’s really not much to separate them in battle. If you can’t quite afford the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT, the RX 6600 is a solid backup option.
The ASUS Dual RX 6600 is an understated GPU that looks a little more powerful (and expensive) than it actually is. This is a great move if you want to pick up a card without spending an awful lot of cash. For 1080p gaming, the RX 6600 holds out seriously well, and ASUS did a solid job with the overall design and build.
Even firing up some heavy games, you won’t encounter any issues so long as you don’t max everything out in the settings. If you can spend a little more, I would go with the RX 6600 XT, which offers better performance, but overall this is a great budget graphics card. RDNA 2 offers a fantastic gaming experience.
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