Radeon RX 6600 (Gigabyte Eagle 8G) review - 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.

   

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series
	RX 6900 XT	RX 6800XT	RX 6800	RX 6700 XT	RX 6600 XT	RX 6600
GPU	Navi 21 XT(XH)	Navi 21 XT	Navi 21 XL	Navi 22 XT	Navi 23 XT	Navi 23 XL
Cores	5120	4608	3840	2560	2048	1792
TMUs	320	288	240	160	128	112
ROPs	128	128	96	64	64	64
Infinity Cache	128 MB	128 MB	128 MB	96 MB	32 MB	32 MB
Boost Clock	2250 MHz	2250 MHz	2105 MHz	2581 MHz	2589 MHz	2491 MHz
Memory Clock	16 Gbps	16 Gbps	16 Gbps	16 Gbps	16 Gbps	16 Gbps
Memory	16 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	16 GB GDDR6	12 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6	8 GB GDDR6
Memory Bus	256-bit	256-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Bandwidth	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	512 GB/s	384 GB/s	256 GB/s	256 GB/s
TBP	300W	300W	250W	230W	160W	132W
MSRP	999 USD	649 USD	579 USD	479 USD	379 USD	339 USD
Launch Date	December 2020	November 2020	November 2020	March 2021	August 2021	October 2021