Test Setup
Please read the information on our GPU testing procedures and methodology here. Note that our GPU Testing Bench has been upgraded to the Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU and AM5 platform.
We are using the motherboard’s current default BIOS settings on the latest release BIOS. We have enabled PCI-Express Resizable BAR in the motherboard BIOS. This means we are utilizing Resizable BAR on NVIDIA GPUs and AMD Smart Access Memory on AMD GPUs in all our testing. We have enabled EXPO I in the BIOS for the memory.
We are using a fresh install of Windows 11 Pro with the latest Windows Updates, including the 22H2 Fall 2022 update. We have the latest drivers installed including the latest chipset drivers from AMD. We are using the “Balanced” power profile in Windows Settings. Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling is ENABLED in Windows. VBS is DISABLED and Game Mode is ENABLED.
In this review, we utilized an MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT GAMING X 8G video card that we manually overclocked to the GPU and Memory frequencies of a Radeon RX 6650 XT to represent the performance of that GPU. The MSI factory overclocked RX 6600 XT is almost at the 6650 XT GPU speeds just from its base factory overclock, so we did not have to bump it up that much higher on GPU, and then we bumped up the memory clock appropriately to 6650 XT speeds. It fully represents the performance of a stock Radeon RX 6650 XT.
We also included an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Founders Edition video card, which carries the same MSRP at launch of $399 as the new GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition, therefore they are a direct comparison from the last generation to the next generation.