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 our review today we are using two custom AIB video cards for comparison. We are using a SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 6600 GAMING video card and an EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING video card. We did not have access to the 8GB RTX 3060 at the time of testing. Both of the video cards used operate the stock reference clock speeds for each GPU respectively, so they fully represent the stock reference GPU performance of each type.
Driver Note
Prior to the launch, AMD made the press aware of a driver issue between two different versions of drivers. It seems a driver that was circulating from AIB partners may not have had performance optimizations for the Radeon RX 7600, and therefore if a reviewer used this driver, performance may not match the official AMD press driver release. Note that we used the correct driver in our testing from the beginning, the AMD-supplied press driver as shown above, which does have the performance optimizations for the Radeon RX 7600. We just wanted to post this as it could skew results between launch reviews as you read and watch videos of the reviews today. Our review represents the correct driver and performance dynamics.
[“Note: we’ve been made aware that a pre-production version of the software driver has been provided by partners, with the version number 23.4.2 in the filename. This driver does not include game and other optimizations for the Radeon RX 7600. If you received this second driver, we strongly encourage you to conduct your testing of Radeon RX 7600 graphics cards with the official press driver made available by AMD named, “AMD-Software-Adrenalin-Edition-23.10.01.16-Win10-Win11-RCP2-Navi33XL-May15.””] – AMD