AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU ships Aug. 11, starting at $379

I'm starting to think of AMD's Radeon RX 6000 series and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3000 series GPUs as the lost generation: By the time shortages ease and you're actually able to buy any of the cards announced over the past year, chances are both companies will be ready to release their next generational round of cards. But that hasn't stopped either of them from lobbing new models at us. This time it's AMD's Radeon RX 6600 XT, a desktop graphics card intended for high frame rate play in 1080p. It's expected to ship on Aug. 11 from add-in board makers like Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and others with prices starting at $379 and in prebuilt systems soon after.

$379. HAHAHAHA.

The cryptocurrency mining crackdown in China and regulatory smackdown in Europe may lessen the demand for GPUs, but we're still in the middle of a silicon supply crunch that affects many components of graphics cards, and that's expected to last at least until the end of the year. So it's bound to keep availability low, middlebots busy and prices high. Based on current markups for available cards, I suspect the real price over the next months will start closer to $850.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT

Memory	8GB DDR6/32MB Infinity Cache
Memory bandwidth (GB/sec)	256
GPU clock (GHz, typical/boost)	2.359/2.589
Memory interface	128-bit
Compute Units and Ray Accelerators	32
Stream cores	2,048
TGP/min PSU (watts)	160/500
Bus	PCIe 4.0 x 8
Size	2 slots, length varies
Price	Starts at $379
Ship date	Aug. 11

But let's take a break from reality and discuss it as if you will be able to get it and prices will start at $379. Add-in board manufacturers will have dual- and triple-fan models, with dual-fan versions fitting comfortably into entry-level gaming systems: Its 160-watt rated power draw means you can put it into a system with a 500-watt power supply and they should be able to work in 8-bit PCI slots. Both of those sync with AMD's target market of lagging upgraders still poking along on an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060.

Like Nvidia, AMD stresses how well the card performs -- competitively with the RTX 3060 and 3060 Ti its price is sandwiched between -- as long as you turn on all the algorithmic magic available to the GPU. In AMD's case, that means Radeon Boost (which selectively renders scene elements at a lower resolution, based on visibility, for higher frame rates), Radeon Anti-Lag (reduces latency by lightening the load on the CPU), FidelityFX Super Resolution (upscaling from lower-resolution textures to achieve faster frame rates, a la Nvidia DLSS) and Smart Access Memory (AMD's Resizable BAR implementation, in which the CPU can store game-related data in GPU RAM rather than system RAM so the GPU doesn't have to traverse the system bus to retrieve it).

AMD is less reliant on developer support than Nvidia for much of its acceleration, but it's not entirely driver-based. SAM only works on systems equipped with a modern AMD Ryzen CPU, for example. Because I'm a glass-half-empty kinda gal who's seen way too many BSODs in the past week, I tend to approach these claims as "Will games still be playable if I have to disable everything?" rather than "Wow, it gets great frame rates with everything enabled!"

And now back to your regularly scheduled shortage.

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AMD Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards have serious 4K cred

AMD Radeon RX 6800 series graphics cards have serious 4K cred

AMD is finally going after 4K gaming with its impressive top-end PC graphics cards, the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT (and 6900 XT) after spending its time concentrating on value buyers. Its still-current RX 5700 XT was formerly the top of the line and designed for 1440p play, though I expect AMD will bring the rest of the Radeon cards up to date with the latest technologies. All the new cards incorporate the RDNA 2.0 architecture that's in the graphics processing units for the upcoming Xbox Series X and S and PS5 consoles and directly tackle the new Ampere-architecture GeForce RTX 3080 and 3070 recently launched by Nvidia.

The RX 6800 and its higher-end sibling, the RX 6800 XT, fall between the Nvidia cards in performance and price -- at least by manufacturer price. The $579 (directly converted: £435, AU$790) RX 6800 falls between the $499 (£375, AU$680) RTX 3070 and the $699 (£525, AU$960) RTX 3080, while the $649 (£490, AU$890) RX 6800 XT competes almost directly with the RTX 3080. Actual prices can vary a lot, however, depending on stock and the "something extra" that third-party card makers throw into the mix, so they're frequently higher than AMD and Nvidia's explicit target. The new cards are available as of today.

So far I'm impressed with the performance of both of the 6800 cards, but exactly how impressed will depend upon where the prices land when the market has settled. They both hit eminently playable 4K frame rates and that's before you start futzing with driver settings like overclocking and upscaling with FidelityFX, AMD's open-source image quality toolkit. When the cards are maxing out the graphics processing unit, the fans can get loud, but they never get too hot or unstable. (I never pushed them to the point where I'd expect them to, though.)

amd-rx-6800-and-6800-xt-09713 — The Radeon RX 6800 (top) and RX 6800 XT (bottom).
Lori Grunin/CNET

Physically, the 6800 is narrower than the 6800 XT, and both are longer than Nvidia's RTX 3070 (but shorter than the RTX 3080). The three fans suck air in from the side and blow it out through the top and bottom; there's no venting out of the back as there is on the RTX cards. They use standard eight-pin power connectors and provide an HDMI, two DisplayPorts and a USB-C port.

amd-rx-6800-09790 — The Radeon RX 6800 cards are on the long side, and I don't think I'd try to cram one into a small system.
Lori Grunin/CNET

Hardware performance improvements over previous generations stem partly from the higher-density on-die Infinity Cache design (all have 128MB) and enhanced design of the compute units, which includes a new Ray Accelerator core for each compute unit. These combine to improve the memory subsystem by reducing the latency of moving data around, increase bandwidth by up to 2.2x with a narrower path (256 bits) and deliver better energy efficiency. That also allows the processors to hit higher clock frequencies without a substantial increase in power requirements.

Specifications

	AMD Radeon RX 6800	AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT
Memory	16GB DDR6	16GB DDR6
Memory bandwidth (GB/sec)	512	512
Memory clock (GHz)	2.0	2.0
GPU clock (GHz, base/boost)	1.815/2.105	2.015/2.250
Memory data rate/Interface	16Gbps/256 bit	16Gbps/256 bit
Texture fill rate (gigatexels per second)	505.2	648
Ray Accelerators	60	72
Stream cores	3,840	4,608
Texture mapping units	240	288
Compute Units	60	72
TGP/min PSU (watts)	250/650	300/750
Bus	PCIe 4.0 x 16	PCIe 4.0 x 16
Size	2 slots; 10.5 in/267mm long	2.5 slots; 10.5 in/267mm long
Price	$579	$649

Relative performance between the AMD and Nvidia cards seems to be mixed across the board as well. (It'll require a lot more testing to confirm the patterns I'm seeing.) There's a significantly smaller gap between the 6800 XT and 6800 and Nvidia's cards at 4K than at 1080p, for example, which is more than likely due to their 16GB of memory (the 3080 has 10GB) and the Infinity Cache.

You generally don't take much of a hit going from 1080p to 1440p with AMD's cards. For instance, on Shadow of the Tomb Raider the 6800 XT dropped from 140fps to 132fps on average. The details look different, though. I noticed more reliance on the central processing unit and less consistency in the amount of time it takes to render a frame in 1440p. On the Deus Ex: Mankind Divided benchmark, the AMD cards dropped less than 3% from 1080p to 1440p. The RTX 3070 and 3080 lost about 20%.

amd-rx-6800-09664 — The Radeon RX 6800.
Lori Grunin/CNET

The AMD cards also hit higher graphic processing unit clock rates for DirectX 12 calls than for DirectX 11. The GPU clock frequencies -- memory and instruction -- also vary a lot more relative to each other. By comparison, the 3070's frequencies are in lockstep. Much of this may be driver-related since AMD's driver makes more automatic on-the-fly adjustments. The behavior isn't necessarily a bad thing, just different.

There's an optimized all-AMD configuration, which takes advantage of the cards' new Smart Access Memory. SAM basically gives the card direct access to the main system memory across the system bus, rather than having to use the central processing unit as a middle man. But that's only in systems using one of the company's new Ryzen 5000 series of desktop CPUs, and AMD says it only boosts frame rates by up to 13%. I haven't had a chance to try it for want of a motherboard and CPU, though.

Between the new consoles and the barrage of graphics cards, this is an exhausting -- or exhilarating, take your pick -- time to shop for new gaming gear, especially gear that likely won't see a Black Friday discount this holiday shopping season. Toss in the supply problems we've been seeing for consoles and graphics cards, and you've got plenty of time to make a decision. As long as the prices don't get too high, or Nvidia's don't get too low, AMD's enthusiast gaming GPUs are more competitive than they've ever been.

Far Cry 5 (1080p)

MSI Aegis RS (6800 XT)

Note:

NOTE: Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

Far Cry 5 (4K)

Note:

NOTE: Longer bars indicate better performance (fps)

Shadow of the Tomb Raider gaming test (4K)

MSI Aegis RS (RTX 3070)

Origin PC Chronos (RTX 3080)

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

3DMark Time Spy

MSI Aegis RS (RTX 3070)

MSI Aegis RS (6800 XT)

Origin PC Chronos (RTX 3080)

Note:

NOTE: Longer bars indicate better performance

3DMark Fire Strike Ultra

MSI Aegis RS (RTX 3070)

Origin PC Chronos (RTX 3080)

MSI Aegis RS (6800 XT)

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance

SpecViewPerf 13 3DS Max (1080p)

MSI Aegis RS (RTX 3070)

MSI Aegis RS (6800)

Origin PC Chronos (RTX 3080)

MSI Aegis RS (6800 XT)

Note:

Longer bars indicate better performance (FPS)

Configurations

MSI Aegis RS (RTX 3070 FE)	Microsoft Windows 10 Home (1909); 3.8GHz Intel Core i7-10700K; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 3,000; 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition; 1TB SSD
Origin PC Chronos (RTX 3080)	Microsoft Windows 10 Home (2004); Intel Core i9-10900K; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 3,200; 10GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 (EVGA); 1TB SSD + 500GB SSD
MSI Aegis RS (RX 6800 XT)	Microsoft Windows 10 Home (1909); 3.8GHz Intel Core i7-10700K; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 3,000; 16GB AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT; 1TB SSD
MSI Aegis RS (RX 6800)	Microsoft Windows 10 Home (1909); 3.8GHz Intel Core i7-10700K; 16GB DDR4 SDRAM 3,000; 16GB AMD Radeon RX 6800; 1TB SSD

Source

Amd Radeon Rx 6600

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU Ships Aug. 11, Starting At $379

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU ships Aug. 11, starting at $379

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT