Final words and conclusion
Final words
We think AMD could have had a convincing value proposition on its hands if graphic cards weren't so ridiculously costly these days. With performance on par with Radeon RX Vega 64 / 5700 GPUs, and at RTX 2060 levels. The 6600 is an interesting challenger, especially since it supports Raytracing. Despite the naming though, it's not close enough to the RTX 3060 from NVIDIA. Regardlessly, this card brings satisfactory performance for 1920x1080 and even 2560x1440 gameplay across a wide selection of titles that have been tested. Naturally, when Raytracing is enabled, the dynamic changes quickly because to the limited GPU and memory bus resources, which effectively create a bottleneck. AMD ought to be commended for remaining committed to 8 GB for this product series. Raw Raytracing performance is a notch slower than the competition offers and at times a little frustrating. 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 339 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 14 Gbps, but more so due to the 128-bit wide memory bus. And that's going to come back to bite this product every time the GPU is overloaded or the 32MB L3 cache runs out of cache hits ability.
FidelityFX Super Resolution
DLSS is not a stranger to AMD they just have not been able to react to it adequately, as such they have been working on its a technology known as FidelityFX Super-Resolution for some time. Despite the fact that AMD's supersampling and sharpening technology is currently available, the number of games that support it is extremely limited. As you can see, we tested this with Resident Evil, and the performance improvement was only marginally better than expected when combined with Raytracing. With far Cry 6 and FSR, it really helps out though has the best effect in higher resolutions, which this card was not designed for.
Reference card competitive performance spread
Consider the following comparison of various graphics cards in a particular price-performance range: Consider the table below to observe how the changes between the top and bottom are imperceptible.
If we look at the data in further detail, we can see something interesting. Specifically, AMD is aiming the 6600 against the GeForce RTX 2060 with a somewhat similar feature set (no DLSS though). As a result, the Radeon RX 6600 is, in our perspective, competitively priced with 2060.
Cooling & acoustic
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT Eagle, like its larger brothers, delivers excellent performance even under demanding situations, thanks to the three-fan cooling. You can only slightly hear the card. According to its default configuration, the GPU beneath the hood generates 120~130W of heat, suggesting that the cooler has a thermal power design of 200W. We're looking at 36~37 DBa values under load and temperatures at a phenomenal 57 degree Celsius range.
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 132W, which is okay in the year 2021. We measure numbers slightly under the advertised values; we measure the entire power consumption of the card to close in at 125~130 Watt.
Coil whine
Coil squeal is hardly present on the 6600, just as it is on any other card these days. Is it a bothersome annoyance? This type of noise would be muffled in a closed chassis and fade into the background. With an open chassis, on the other hand, you may hear coil whine/squeal. In some way or another, all graphics cards do this, especially when running at higher frame rates; this can be perceived.
Pricing
The 6600 is priced significantly higher than it should be, in our opinion, and we have already discussed this extensively. AIB devices will almost certainly exceed the 350 USD level, which makes little sense for a product geared at the Full HD monitor market. We truly believe that this 339 USD device should cost no more than 229 USD at the most.
Tweaking
The RX 6600 enjoys having more memory bandwidth available to it. You can add it manually and get up to its maximum configurable 15.2 Gbps; however, results will vary depending on the board, brand, and even card due to cooling (GDDR6/GPU/VRM) and other factors. With a little GPU tweaking, we could get this AMD Navi GPU to run at a very respectable 2750 MHz. And that's without any anomalies or crashes of any kind. The dynamic clock frequency is now hovering in the ~2700 MHz range, depending on the load, game/app, and board assigned power. Even so, that's quite a feat. As is always the case, all of your tweaking and increased energy consumption will only provide you with a maximum of 5~7% improvement in performance (depending on your results and model graphics card). It must successfully complete four-game runs (in four different games) in 2560x1440 resolution in order to be considered stable enough to be listed here.
Conclusion
AMD's entry-level to mainstream product is excellent. The pricing, on the other hand, is disturbing. And that has nothing to do with this product from Gigabyte, as they do not dictate the pricing. MSRP's are sky-high, and the difficult market still doubles that amount of money at the client etailer side. It all is dim and frustrating. AMD made memory subsystem design decisions that limited memory bandwidth; by including 32MB of L3 cache, AMD has circumvented the majority of this limitation, as such these cards perform flawlessly up to 1920x1080; however, L3 cache will always be a bypass, a short-cut to a problem that may recur in the future. Due to the severely constrained memory bus, performance will degrade immediately upon the cache running dry. While AMD's raytracing technology may not perform as well as its competitors, it is still useful for "fooling around a little." We feel that FSR will be insufficient for the majority of AAA titles to make a noticeable difference in this area, given 1080P is the card's gaming domain, and FSR performs better at higher resolutions. It must be said, though, that this is a fun choice to have and explore with. Performance-wise at Full HD, the card delivers without a doubt, making this a great gaming card series focused mostly on rasterized Full HD rendering; at and even beyond Full HD up to WQHD, the 32MB L3 cache works its enchantment. You can play about with raytracing a little bit to see what occurs, but the render engine will quickly run out of stamina. None of that is even slightly important as the main factor remains pricing. The high asking price remains a significant problem, especially when product positioning and relative performance are considered. We did hope that the 6600 product series would have been closer to the performance that the GeForce RTX 3060 offers, that's a complaint that would be fair to state. Other than that we'd like to add that Gigabyte did a really proper job with the design of the Eagle and with a graphics card that is relatively silent, fashionable, and hip-looking. Fun fact, it doesn't come with RGB, yet is still looks great. Most majestic are the sub-60 Degrees C temperatures. The card was a notch slower than the Sapphire one we tested, but just increase that power limiter and you'll easily gain back the differential. As a product from Gigabyte, we can't complain and certainly approve of the product from a production point of view. The pricing, however, is a big conundrum.
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