Finding a graphics card that’s actually in stock is already a challenge, but get ready for the latest hard-to-find GPU: AMD’s new Radeon RX 6600 is here, and it’s tailor-made for 1080p gaming.
Available starting today from AMD board partners like Asus, MSI, ASRock, Gigabyte, XFX, Sapphire, and others for around $330 (depending on the exact config), the RX 6600 is AMD’s entry-level follow up to the RX 6600 XT from earlier this summer. And just like the RX 6600 XT, there won’t be a first-party reference card from AMD, though depending on the vendor, the RX 6600 will be available in one, two, or three fan configs.
Featuring 28 compute units, 1792 stream processors, 32MB of AMD’s Infinity Cache, and up to 8GB of GDDR6 vRAM, the RX 6600's specs also fall right in line for something meant to slot in under the $380 660XT. However, one of the upsides of having less aggressive performance targets is that with a total board power of just 132 watts, AMD says the RX 6600 should play nicely in less power-hungry systems with power supplies as small as 450 watts. In fact, AMD claims the RX 6600 is around 1.3 times more power efficient than an RTX 3060 when gaming at 1080p and max settings.
AMD’s goal with the RX 6600 is to deliver strong 1080p gaming at max settings. The company claims the the 6600 is on average 23% faster than an Nvidia RTX 2060, and in some titles like Battlefield 5, Cyberpunk 2077, and Hitman 3, when combined with Smart Access Memory, the RX 6600 is even competitive with Nvidia’s RTX 3060 while also being able to deliver over 100 fps on average.
As with its previous RX GPUs, the RX 6600 also supports AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution upsampling tech, which now works across 50 different games. If you have a higher-res monitor, AMD says FSR helps unlock improved image quality without taking a big performance hit, allowing you to hit 60 fps in games such as Far Cry 6 at 1440p with ray tracing turned on using the FSR Ultra Quality setting.
As a bonus for anyone who’s already upgraded to Windows 11, AMD says it will have Day 0 driver updates for a range of titles to help ensure smooth performance out of the gate.
The unfortunate thing about this launch is that with GPUs already in such short supply, it’s going to be hard to find a new RX 6600 in stock. If prices at online retailers lately have been any indication, it’s unlikely you’ll find one at its suggested retail price of around $330, especially when significantly less powerful cards like a GTX 1650 are going for almost $400.