GIGABYTE Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G, 8GB GDDR6, 2x HDMI, 2x DP

AMD's Radeon RX 6600 (non-XT) is the smaller brother to the RX 6600 XT launched in August. These cards are targeted at the plethora of 1080p Full HD gamers out there—the "RX 580 and RX 570" equivalent of 2021. Under the hood, the Radeon RX 6600 is powered by the same Navi 23 silicon as the RX 6600 XT. For the non-XT, AMD reduced the core count from 2048 cores to 1792. VRAM remains at 8 GB GDDR6 128-bit; the only surprise here is that memory chips from Hynix are used—this the first time we're seeing GDDR6 from Hynix. AMD also hasn't made any changes to the L3 cache on the GPU, which helps achieve the performance target. On Navi 23, this cache is relatively small with just 32 MB (Navi 22: 96 MB, Navi 21: 128 MB). This is certainly a compromise to reduce the chip's die size and manufacturing cost.

AMD's entry-level to mainstream product is excellent. The pricing, on the other hand, is disturbing. And that has nothing to do with this product from Gigabyte, as they do not dictate the pricing. MSRP's are sky-high, and the difficult market still doubles that amount of money at the client etailer side. It all is dim and frustrating. AMD made memory subsystem design decisions that limited memory bandwidth; by including 32MB of L3 cache, AMD has circumvented the majority of this limitation, as such these cards perform flawlessly up to 1920x1080; however, L3 cache will always be a bypass, a short-cut to a problem that may recur in the future. Due to the severely constrained memory bus, performance will degrade immediately upon the cache running dry. While AMD's raytracing technology may not perform as well as its competitors, it is still useful for "fooling around a little." We feel that FSR will be insufficient for the majority of AAA titles to make a noticeable difference in this area, given 1080P is the card's gaming domain, and FSR performs better at higher resolutions. It must be said, though, that this is a fun choice to have and explore with. Performance-wise at Full HD, the card delivers without a doubt, making this a great gaming card series focused mostly on rasterized Full HD rendering; at and even beyond Full HD up to WQHD, the 32MB L3 cache works its enchantment. You can play about with raytracing a little bit to see what occurs, but the render engine will quickly run out of stamina. None of that is even slightly important as the main factor remains pricing. The high asking price remains a significant problem, especially when product positioning and relative performance are considered. We did hope that the 6600 product series would have been closer to the performance that the GeForce RTX 3060 offers, that's a complaint that would be fair to state. Other than that we'd like to add that Gigabyte did a really proper job with the design of the Eagle and with a graphics card that is relatively silent, fashionable, and hip-looking. Fun fact, it doesn't come with RGB, yet is still looks great. Most majestic are the sub-60 Degrees C temperatures. The card was a notch slower than the Sapphire one we tested, but just increase that power limiter and you'll easily gain back the differential. As a product from Gigabyte, we can't complain and certainly approve of the product from a production point of view. The pricing, however, is a big conundrum.

...anything above MSRP would be asking a lot for a card geared solely for 1080p. AMD is adding to its Radeon RX 6000 Series portfolio with the launch of the entry-level RX 6600. Intended to land at £300, this second interpretation of the Navi 23 die is designed specifically for 1080p gaming on a modern architecture. Shaving away four CUs and some top-line memory speed has allowed AMD to achieve those targets, but such reductions do tip the scales in favour of Nvidia's rival RTX 3060. With more memory, second-generation raytracing and mature DLSS, the GeForce is ultimately better equipped at the same MSRP, but we've gotten to the stage where availability trumps performance. In these odd times, RX 6600's success may rest solely on AMD's ability to produce enough GPUs.