AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT challenges Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 this August for $379

(Epitome credit: AMD)

AMD's new Radeon RX 6600 XT graphics card volition exist released in mid-August with decent performance specs and a $379 price tag, putting information technology in directly competition with Nvidia'due south $329 GeForce RTX 3060.

AMD fabricated the announcement this week at ChinaJoy, confirming long-circulating rumors that the company would launch the Radeon RX 6600 XT in August. The last $379 recommended price for this mid-tier GPU is a bit lower than the rumored $399 cost, but with the ongoing chip shortage and volatile GPU market information technology'south difficult to know how easy it will be to discover an RX 6600 XT at that price.

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The Radeon RX 6600 XT's price tag makes it a direct competitor to Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which Nvidia prices at $329 and $399, respectively — though over again, it can be hard to find them at that price (or at all) correct now. To aid respond the question of whether the newest addition to AMD's Radeon 6000 serial is worth the asking price, let's dig into the numbers.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT toll

AMD has given the Radeon RX 6600 XT a starting toll of $379 US, making it the new low finish of the Radeon 6000 series of GPUs behind the Radeon RX 6700 XT ($479) and Radeon RX 6800 XT ($649).

The $379 toll tag makes the Radeon RX 6600 XT near $50 more than expensive than than Nvidia's mid-tier GeForce RTX 3060, though its hard to know where to buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 without paying ridiculously inflated prices right at present.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT release date

AMD says Radeon RX 6600 XT cards from manufacturers like Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI should brainstorm hit the market on August 11th.

Around then we should as well begin seeing the RX 6600 XT actualization in laptop and desktop PCs from brands like Alienware, HP, MSI and Lenovo.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT specs and performance

The Radeon RX 6600 XT is a (comparatively) affordable menu with reasonable specs, one AMD says is squarely targeted at folks who desire slap-up performance playing games at 1080p. If you intendance almost getting the all-time operation at 1440p or 4K, the remarkably performant (and abominable expensive) Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6900 XT are nevertheless the AMD cards to buy — if you can find them.

AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Specs
	AMD Radeon™ RX 6600 XT	AMD Radeon™ RX 6700 XT	AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT	AMD Radeon™ RX 6900 XT
Starting toll	$379	$479	$649	$999
Compute units	32	twoscore	72	lxxx
GDDR6 RAM	8GB	12GB	16GB	16GB
Game Clock	2,359 MHz	2,424 MHz	2,015 MHz	2,015 MHz
Infinity Cache	32MB	96MB	128MB	128MB

As you tin see from the table to a higher place, the RX 6600 XT has decent specs that yet relegate it to the low end of the Radeon 6000 XT serial. It should still be plenty capable enough to run most games very well at 1080p, of grade, and with GPUs so difficult to come by these days whatsoever new card is a welcome addition to the market.

The 6600 XT supports all central features of the Radeon 6000 serial, including DirectX Raytracing support, which allows for immersive existent-time lighting, shadows and reflection and makes these Radeon GPUs competitive with Nvidia's RTX cards. Developers tin can also tap into AMD FidelityFX for balancing fidelity and framerate, and Variable Rate Shading (VRS), which dynamically adjusts in-game shading to heave performance without sacrificing as well much in terms of visual quality.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT company benchmarks — AMD provided this nautical chart claiming the $379 RX 6600 XT delivered higher FPS than Nvidia's $329 GeForce RTX 3060 in a number of games. (Prototype credit: AMD)

While nosotros can't say for sure how well this new RX 6600 XT card performs compared to the Nvidia GeForce 3060 and 3060 Ti — at to the lowest degree, not until we see some third-party performance benchmarks — the testing information AMD provided to press shows a organization with the 6600 XT outperforming (in terms of raw framerate) the aforementioned system with a GeForce 3060 in a number of games.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT outlook

AMD says the Radeon RX 6600 XT is squarely focused on delivering great operation at 1080p, and that'due south borne out in its small specs and cost.

Given how crazy the GPU market is right now, it's exciting to encounter any new cards inbound the market. But it remains to exist seen whether the RX 6600 XT will offering meaning value to those desperate for a new graphics menu. At this betoken, we expect this to the last big 6000 serial card release from AMD before the company embarks on launching a new family of GPUs in 2022 (likely branded the 700 series) built on its next-gen RDNA 3 compages.

Alex Wawro is a lifelong tech and games enthusiast with more than than a decade of experience covering both for outlets like Game Programmer, Black Hat, and PC World mag. He currently serves as a senior editor at Tom'due south Guide covering all things calculating, from laptops and desktops to keyboards and mice.