Introduction
Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G review
Gigabyte's new Eagle is spreading its wings for the first time, meet the young rascal called Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G. This is the non-XT version of NAVI23, still offering quite some performance for mainstream level Full HD gaming, heck it even holds ground at WQHD. Being a 6600 series product it also comes with raytracing and FSR support. Historically, the x600 series was priced between entry-level and mid-range, typically between $150 and $200 USD. You'll now pay 339 USD / 339 EUR for a graphics card aimed at a Full HD resolution. The Navi 23 GPU gets repurposed, its performance in the render engine is somewhat diminished. The cards support up to 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and communicate via a 128-bit wide memory interface that is notably restricted. 8 GB GDDR6 RAM will be used in total, with a 32 MB Infinity Cache acting as a buffer. The series card is projected to perform similarly to the RX 5700 and GTX 2060, making it an attractive option for 1080p gaming or an okay card for 1440p gaming. Whereas the Radeon RX 6600 XT features 2048 stream processors, the RX 6600 features 1792 shader processors. The "Navi 23" chip is not new; it is already in use as the Radeon RX 6600M graphics solution for notebooks, which was introduced with the Radeon RX 6800M and 6700M graphics solutions for laptops a while ago. The majority of cards will use a dual-slot dual-fan cooler; they will include a single 8-pin PCI-Express graphics connection with a rated power consumption of 132 watts. The Radeon RX 6600 has its memory interface decreased to 128 bits. Where the Radeon RX 6600 XT is to cost a rather extravagant 379 USD as a base reference product the 6600 will cost 339 USD. You may expect board partner cards with custom designs and cooling to sit well above the 350 USD marker. We can already share that the pricing is the biggest culprit of this product series. We've laid out the important specifications in the table below to give you a better idea of what to expect.
In this specific review, we'll take a look at the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G model, which comes with a triple-fan cooling solution boasting very cool temperature and out-of-the-box clock frequencies of 2491 MHz on the maximum boost frequency. This is on par with reference clock frequencies. However Gigabyte does offer you to tweak the card with an added 20% power limiter, that's nice. It is 28 centimeters in length, offering a traditional more high-end design. It's quite silent as well. But, let's get into the review proper by starting with some images and a quick summary of the architecture.