AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is a desktop graphics card that launched in Q3 2021 with a MSRP of $379. It is built on the RDNA 2.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Navi 23) and is manufactured on a 7 nm process.

Memory

The RX 6600 XT has 8 GB of GDDR6 memory, with a 2,000 MHz memory clock and a 128 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 256 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The RX 6600 XT includes 2,048 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,968 MHz and can dynamically boost its clock speed up to 2,589 MHz. It usually operates at 2,359 MHz during typical gaming workloads. Complementing the processing units are 128 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 64 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing. Additionally, the GPU features 32 ray accelerators dedicated to real-time ray tracing calculations.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The RX 6600 XT occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4a display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 450 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 160 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The RX 6600 XT has the 41st best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 37.33% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 39,051 score and $379 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 103.04. This is the 14th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.