XFX Speedster MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black Gaming, 8GB GDDR6, HDMI, 3x DP

Die perfekte 1080p GPU? Nachdem AMD mit der neuen RDNA2-Architektur bereits im High-End-Bereich überzeugen konnte, kommt die aktuelle Architektur nun auch in der Mittelklasse zum Einsatz. Ob die AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT dasZeug zur perfekten 1080p-Gaming-Grafikkarte hat, erfahren Sie in diesem Review.

XFX’s MERC308 BLACK RX 6600 XT takes AMD’s reference design and improves it in every way. The MERC308 version comes equipped with a 6+1+1-phase power delivery system and 225 W of available power from the one 8-PCIe connectors. The heatsink is effective and quiet with an appealing appearance overall. The XFX MERC308 BLACK RX 6600 XT is only 274 mm (10.7″) long, making it suitable for small form factor builds. Always check your dimensions before purchasing. The drawback to having these features is a meager price increase. The reference model AMD RX 6600 XT’s MSRP is $379, XFX’s MERC308 BLACK will run you $420 at Newegg, a modest increase of $40 over the reference MSRP.

In the overall scheme of things, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is a worthwhile offering for mainstream 1080p gaming and the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 is a solid example of the GPU. If you find one in-stock somewhere and its fits your budget, the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 is a cool running, quiet, overclockable, power efficient mainstream GPU.

Alright, we have reached the end of another review and it is that time again to consolidate everything for easy digestion. Normally I would like to unravel the marketing and get to the core of what each video card's intended audience may be. However, this is a fairly tricky product launch, not to mention that no matter the outcome, XFX has been kind enough to send this particular sample to review. Therefore I should not forget to make it a point and talk more about the MERC 308, as this should be the core of the review. I tend to get caught up in nuances that play a factor in the overall decision to buy any graphics card bearing that particular GPU. I hesitate to switch it up for such an important launch. We will see if I can change my ways.

In this review we tested the XFX RX 6600 XT Merc 308, which is the company's flagship RX 6600 XT design variant. It comes overclocked out of the box, to a rated boost of 2607 MHz, which is only a small increase over the AMD reference boost of 2589 MHz (+0.6%). In real-life this turns into a 1% performance improvement at 1080p, 2% at 1440p and 4K. Other RX 6600 XT cards we tested don't do much better here. GPU Manufacturers have gotten better and better at eking out the last bits of performance, for the stock card, so additional factory OC potential is rather slim these days.

The XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 is quite a bit larger than the other 6600 XT’s we’ve tested. However, it broadly seems to perform about the same as its more compact rivals, and I would honestly have a hard time telling you which was which based on their real-world performance. That being said, it was a little bit faster in most games, but we’re talking 102 FPS vs 104 FPS here. It’s quicker than the RTX 3060 in some games, but the two are fairly well matched. The RTX 3060 Ti is obviously faster, but Nvidia cards are significantly above MSRP or out of stock right now, making a real comparison virtually impossible for most consumers.

AMD clearly targeted the Radeon RX 6600 XT at the 1080 gamers of the world and they've been hugely successful in that aim. As you can see we test a broad range of titles from console conversions to PC specific titles, slightly older ones to the very latest, harshest tests and in all of them the XFX MERC 308 came out shining. It's nice to know that your money brings you the ability to not have to pick and choose which title you want to play, or check out the performance tweaks. Heck if you can run Cyberpunk 2077 you can pretty much run anything that's currently available or is likely to be so for the next couple of years.

At the end of the day, the XFX MERC 308 RX 6600 XT Black Gaming is an excellent card. It features a triple-fan design but the card itself is quite compact and not bulky. The design is sleek-looking and not too aggressive. And the lighting on the front-side portion is a nice touch as well. If you like how the graphics card looks and if you can spot this card for a reasonable price, then I have no problem recommending this graphics card at all.

AMD has announced its NAVI23 based graphics cards, announced not launched are the Radeon RX 6600 and 6600 XT. In this review, we'll look at the XFX Speedster MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT BLACK edition.

As for performance, the overclocked card did well in our testing. This was especially true in the noise testing where it was very quiet when under load. The card is capable of being noisy if you crank the fans up, but the current stock fan profile will keep things quiet. Of course, they do trade off on the cooling for that as it does run warmer with the stock fan profile. But there is a lot of headroom left in the cooler if you would prefer to make your own fan profile.