ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC review

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Final words and conclusion

Final words

ASRock produced an excellent performing product, I do mean that in-game performance, cooling, and acoustic performance. But let's start with the generic conclusion for the 6600 XT product line as a starting point. It is clear that AMD has done an excellent job with NAVI23; the GPU performs as promised and perhaps a bit better; it is a legitimate gaming card in the Full HD and even WQHD domains. However, 379 USD for a graphics card that ranges from entry-level to mainstream level, oh bejeezus, how things have changed. Is it prohibitively expensive? Yes, we believe that is the case. The cards' performance is comparable or above that of the RTX 3060 and 5700 XT, but solely in terms of shading performance. When it comes to raw Raytracing performance, it is a notch slower than what the competition provides. Albeit FSR is now available to help a little bit, we can also not apprehend that AMD still has not implemented any form of machine learning super-sampling dedicated in hardware, much like NVIDIA offers Tensor cores. For reasons like RT perf and lacking MLAA, we cast doubt on how AMD is justifying that starting price of 379 USD. You can also argue that while the Infinity cache works most of the time, it's designed to be a workaround to fill an imperfection (128-bit memory bus) and the choice of a more affordable memory type (GDDR6 opposed to GDDR6X), the current AMD GPUs are very memory bandwidth deprived, even with GDDR6 at 16 Gbps, but more so due to the 128 -bit wide memory bus. And that's going to bite this product in the ass every time you get GPU limited, or the32MB  L3 cache runs out and gets fewer hits.

FidelityFX Super Resolution

AMD has been implementing its own (in their belief) DLSS counterpart called FidelityFX Super-Resolution for a while. The supersampling and sharpening technology from AMD is available however the number of games that support is incredibly poor. As you have been able to see, we tested this at the latest iteration of Resident Evil as it's really the only AAA title that has support, and the increase in perf was okay at best combined with Raytracing. 

Performance spread reference

For this week we have three 6600 XT products lined up. Unfortunately, AMD does not supply a reference card, ergo we downclocked the 6600 XT entry towards reference levels and limited power usage a notch. While these are not delivering precise values we estimate that the difference between reference and the factory tweaked models tested is roughly 3%. In between the three cards tested the performance differential is 1% or less. 


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Product Cores Rops Boost Max Memory Memory Clock GPU Power range
Radeon RX 6600 XT 2048 64 2589 MHz DDR6 16 Gbps Navi 23 0%
MSI RX 6600 XT Gaming X 2048 64 2607 MHz DDR6 16 Gbps Navi 23 4%
ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D OC 2048 64 2607 MHz DDR6 16 Gbps Navi 23 20%
XFX 6600 XT MERC 308 2048 64 2607 MHz DDR6 16 Gbps Navi 23 20%
PowerColor RX 6600 XT Red Devil 2048 64 2607 MHz DDR6 16 Gbps Navi 23 20%

If we look at the data in further detail, we can see something interesting. Specifically, AMD is aiming the 6600 XT against the GeForce RTX 3060, which has an MSRP of 329 USD and a similar feature set. AMD, on the other hand, has set an MSRP of 379 USD. The 3060 Ti, on the other hand, costs 399 USD. As a result, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is, in our perspective, competitively priced with the 3060 Ti and not 3060, despite being substantially less powerful.



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 Cooling & acoustic

The Phantom gaming D offers really good results, even in stressed conditions, all thanks to the triple-fan cooler. You'll be hard-pressed to hear the card as it is astonishingly silent. The GPU under the hood is producing 130W TGP and 160W TBP of heat in a default configuration, so likely the cooler has a 250W thermal power design. We're looking at ~32 DBa values under load and temps closer to the 55~60 Degrees C range, all fine. Board analysis also shows all critical components are tied to some form of cooling. FLIR imaging shows the card is hardly bleeding heat. Overall, we're very comfortable with what we observe.

Energy

Heat output and energy consumption are closely related to each other, as (graphics) processors and heat can be perceived as a 1:1 state; 250 Watts in energy consumption approaches close to 250 Watts in heat as output. This is the basis of TDP. AMD is listing the card at 160W, which is okay at best for a graphics card in the year 2021. We measure numbers slightly under the XT's advertised values; we measure the entire power consumption of the card to close in at 170 Watt, for the total card.

Coil whine

The 6600 XT, much like any other card these days, does exhibit coil squeal, more so than normal. Is it annoying? Well, it's certainly at a level you can hardly hear it. In a closed chassis, that noise would fade away in the background. However, with an open chassis, you can hear coil whine/squeal. Graphics cards all make this in some form, especially at higher framerates; this can be perceived. 

Pricing

We feel we have been discussing this enough already, of course, and think the 6600 XT is priced way out of the comfort zone it needs to be. AIB products will undoubtedly pass the 400 even 450 USD marker, which hardly makes any sense for a product aimed at a Full HD monitor range competing with a 399 USD GeForce RTX 3060 Ti.

Tweaking

The RX 6600 XT likes more memory bandwidth. You can add it with a manual tweak, up to 18 maybe even 19.2 Gbps; Results will vary per board, brand, and even card due to cooling (GDDR6/GPU/VRM). GPU tweaking wise we'd reach a ~2700 MHz on this AMD Navi GPU. We had hoped for a little more, especially considering the large 20% power that can be enabled as extra. As always, all that tweaking and extra energy consumption will bring you maybe 5% extra performance at best (depending on your results and model graphics card). For our overclock to be successfully listed here, it needs to pass 4 game runs (different games) in 2560x1440 to be deemed stable.

Conclusion

The ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC edition is a gem, a beauty in Full HD performance cooling and acoustic performance ... now if it was priced in the sub 300 SUD, it would already have been on the expensive side. However, AMD completely overpriced this product series making the conclusion overall negative, and ASRock has nothing to do with that as they offer a truly lovely product. The base design of the RX 6600 XT is sound; AMD has made decisions in the memory subsystem that have limited memory bandwidth; by including 32MB of L3 cache, they have bypassed the majority of that challenge, and the card performs flawlessly up to 1920x1080; however, L3 cache will always be a bypass, a shortcut solution to a problem that may recur in the future. Because of the extremely limited memory bus, performance will suffer as soon as the cache fails to respond. The performance of AMD's raytracing technology is not on par with its competitor, but it is still usable for "fooling around." We don't believe FSR will be sufficient for most AAA games to make a significant enough difference in this area, but it is a fun option to have and experiment with. If the price weren't so exorbitant, it would still be an enticing and beautiful product in the 1920x1080 resolution; nevertheless, the price is rather excessive. At the absolute least, the product would have had to be priced below the $300 USD level to qualify for consideration. I understand that you can disagree and debate with me. Occasionally, the card is as fast as or slightly faster than an RTX 3060 or Ti; as a result, this product will frequently compete with the $399 3060 Ti. For games that support DLSS, however, Geforce is the clear winner in every situation. To summarize, the Radeon RX 6600 XT series continues to be a fantastic gaming card series that is entirely focused on rasterized shading; at Full HD and even WQHD resolutions, the 32MB L3 cache works its magic. You may experiment a little bit with raytracing to see what happens. The asking price, though, continues to be a major concern. ASRock has such a nice offering with the Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC, you'll get a device that is incredibly silent, very cool, and performing well. 

- Hilbert, LOAD"*",8,1.

 

Oh yeah ... 

B20210514_3


... Happy new year :)

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