Conclusion
AMD has now launched its Radeon RX 6600 XT, with an MSRP of $379 positioned as a 1080p gaming experience video card. The Radeon RX 6600 XT will be available in partner video cards only, from add-in-board manufacturers. There won’t be a reference made by AMD video card sold on AMD’s website this time. Today we have reviewed an XFX SPEEDSTER MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black Edition video card. XFX tells us the MSRP for this particular video card will be around the $409-$419 mark for the US market.
There will be three distinct models of the Radeon RX 6600 XT made by XFX. The model we reviewed today is the MERC 308 model, and it has the highest factory overclock, triple-fan cooling design, silver trim shroud, and LED XFX and Radeon logos atop the video card. The next model down from this one is the QICK 308 model. It should be found for a little bit less on price, $399. It lacks the LED XFX and Radeon logos, and also the silver trim on the shroud. However, it has everything else the MERC 308 model has, it has the same factory overclock and the same triple-fan design. At the base, you will find the SWFT 210 model. This one will sell for AMD MSRP and is a dual-fan design, but still custom from XFX.
Performance
There are many comparisons to make when looking at the performance of the XFX MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black video card. One of the primary comparisons is how it compares to the competition, specifically the GeForce RTX 3060, and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. The GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is relevant because by MSRP it is only $20 more expensive, and if you compare it to factory overclocked card prices, it could actually end up being slightly cheaper.
Compared to RTX 3060
When we look at performance compared to the GeForce RTX 3060, we find that the new XFX MEC 308 RX 6600 XT is faster in almost every scenario. When it comes to rasterized performance, sans Ray Tracing, the RX 6600 XT comes out on top. It can be anywhere between 6-20% faster depending on the game and settings. There are some games that are actually very close, but others are not. It varies a lot.
Compared to RTX 3060 Ti
When we look at performance compared to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti it’s a clear advantage with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. It is faster in every game, and every resolution and every setting compared to the RX 6600 XT. There really isn’t any competition there, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti is sometimes in the range of 30%+ faster.
Compared to RX 5600 XT
Another important comparison is how the XFX MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black compares to the previous XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT video card it is upgrading. How much of an uplift did AMD achieve from the 5600 XT to the 6600 XT? Well, quite a bit actually. It’s very impressive. We saw uplifts between 20-50%, and a lot of 30% range, with the new XFX MERC 308 RX 6600 XT video card versus the XFX RX 5600 XT video card. This is a nice upgrade lift for sure, from generation to generation.
Compared to RX 5700 XT
Finally, we needed to see how the new XFX MERC 308 RX 6600 XT video card compared to the Radeon RX 5700 XT. The big question coming into this review was how would it match the Radeon RX 5700 XT, would it be slower or the same, or faster? Well, we can conclude that it is actually slightly faster than the Radeon RX 5700 XT, even at 1440p. There was never a point in our review where the Radeon RX 5700 XT was faster. The XFX MERC 308 RX 6600 XT Black was either very close, or the same as the Radeon RX 5700 XT, or faster. It depends on the game.
Do keep this in mind though, the XFX MERC 308 does have a factory overclock, so a reference clocked RX 6600 XT may perform just under a Radeon RX 5700 XT in the games where it was at the same performance in our review. At the very least, it’s not a large difference, it should keep up with the Radeon RX 5700 XT at 1080p, and only at 1440p in very specific circumstances would the Radeon RX 5700 XT outperform it slightly.
Ray Tracing Performance
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs maintain a performance advantage in Ray Tracing performance for most games. Ray Tracing performance in many games is an Achilles heel of the Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs. However, not all games have horrible Ray Tracing performance. Godfall, for example, was very playable at 1080p and 1440p with Ray Tracing turned on with the XFX MERC 308 RX 6600 XT video card. Dirt 5 was also very playable at 1080p with Ray Tracing. So not all will give you difficulty, it really depends so specifically on the game you are playing. You may find several games very playable at 1080p with Ray Tracing on the RX 6600 XT as we said above.
We experienced a major bug in Watch Dogs Legion that did not allow us to test Ray Tracing, unfortunately. The performance was in the single digits with Ray Tracing turned on, indicating a bug, it was literally at 1FPS. Something was wrong there. Cyberpunk 2077 was too slow with Ray Tracing to be playable, and so was Metro Exodus Enhanced. At least with Metro Exodus Enhanced, you could turn down the Shaders quality to allow it to be playable at 1080p, but you’d have to turn it down to at least medium quality to be able to even barely run Ultra Ray Tracing.
FSR and DLSS
Like it or not, resolution upsampling is becoming a thing, it’s becoming more prevalent, and supported. It’s also just the way that allows you to play with max game settings at high resolutions, or with Ray Tracing turned on. We got to use AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution FSR in Godfall on every card in this review today, both AMD and NVIDIA, it worked just fine.
FSR improved performance on every video card, at 1440p, and with Ray Tracing it definitely improved performance to new levels on each video card. The XFX MERC 308 RX 6600 XT video card was still faster than the GeForce RTX 3060, except at 1440p with Ray Tracing. However, in every situation, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti had the most performance regardless.
You should also take DLSS into consideration on the GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. In Cyberpunk 2077 for example, DLSS allowed us to have playable gameplay at 1080p with Medium Ray Tracing on the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti. It also lets us play at Ultra Ray Tracing on the RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p with DLSS. Though not shown, DLSS also provided a 1440p playable experience on the GeForce RTX 3060. DLSS also let the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti hit 60FPS at 1080p with the highest in-game settings. Also, with DLSS in Red Dead Redemption 2 1440p on the RTX 3060 was playable. DLSS does wonders for the RTX 3060 honestly, it makes it much more competitive with the Radeon RX 6600 XT.
Overclocking
We were quite impressed with the ability to overclock the XFX SPEEDSTER MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black video card. Using AMD’s Radeon Software Performance tab provided all the control we needed. We were able to set the Power Limit up 20%, which is more than usual. We were also able to have plenty of headroom on memory and GPU to overclock with.
We were able to raise the memory frequency as high as possible, up to 18.4GHz versus 16GHz. This moved the bandwidth up from 256GB/s to 294GB/s. We were able to increase the GPU frequency pretty high, up to 2800MHz on the slider. This resulted in an average overclock increase of 119MHz above the default or 5%. Frequencies on the new NAVI 23 GPU run very high, by default it was running around 2588-2628MHz and overclocked it was 2708-27489MHz which is just very high in terms of frequency. The video card was very easy to overclock. We saw anywhere from 8-19% performance increase due to overclocking. Overclocking certainly made the Radeon RX 6600 XT more competitive.
1080p or 1440p
AMD is marketing the Radeon RX 6600 XT as a 1080p video card. We, and many enthusiasts, were worried prior to this launch that the smaller 32MB Infinity Cache and 128-bit memory bus combo would bottleneck the video card at 1440p. Sure, it might perform well at 1080p, but what about 1440p? Would it just hit the brakes and hit a wall?
The answer is no! We were thoroughly surprised to see it performing very well at 1440p considering all the factors. It was on par, or faster than the Radeon RX 5700 XT at 1440p. It did not seem to break down until Ray Tracing was applied in certain games, but some games were still playable even with Ray Tracing. Part of its success at 1440p may be up to the fact it has 8GB of VRAM, which is certainly appropriate for it. It’s not going to be the fastest video card at 1440p, the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti still comes out on top, by a lot. However, compared to the other video cards in our lineup here, it was at the top mostly at 1440p game performance, which is impressive. It stayed above the GeForce RTX 3060 at 1440p.
We aren’t going to go out and say 1440p is the best resolution for the video card. However, we can say 1440p is a viable gaming resolution for the video card if you turn down a few game settings. Maybe don’t play at “Ultra” but turn things down to “High” or even “Medium” and it should be just fine for the most part at 1440p. It kills 1080p, but it’s not exactly a brick at 1440p as some might have thought with only 32MB of Infinity Cache and a 128-bit bus.
Final Points
Make sure to check out our AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Pricing Editorial to see our thoughts on AMD’s pricing for the Radeon RX 6600 XT. In this summary, let’s focus on the XFX SPEEDSTER MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black video card itself. XFX has put together a well-made video card. It’s robust, and the cooling is exceptional. The GPU remains cool, and the video card is built to allow for extreme overclocking, and the design does not hold that back. We were impressed with the overclocking and we are specifically impressed with the fan curves on this video card. XFX has set a great fan RPM to stop at 1200RPM up to 89c GPU temp, and the GPU does not get anywhere near that temperature while gaming. This means the fans run at a lower RPM, and thus it is a very quiet video card.
Beyond that, the aesthetics are pleasing, it’s a video card that looks very nice. The LED logos lit up are classy, and not too flashy and distracting. In terms of performance, it outperforms the GeForce RTX 3060, is on par with a Radeon RX 5700 XT, and provides a 50% performance upgrade from the Radeon RX 5600 XT. The inclusion of 8GB of VRAM for this GPU is perfect, we wouldn’t have wanted any less.
It provides a great gameplay experience at 1080p. We do feel the price is high for this video card, but that is mostly down to AMD’s MSRP choice, which we talk about in our editorial. Otherwise, if you can catch this video card at MSRP, and not inflated, it provides a worthy option in the Radeon RX 6600 XT lineup.