Conclusion
In this review, we had a chance to take a detailed look at the top-of-the-line ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 7600 OC Edition video card. The comparison test card was the AMD Radeon RX 7600. We have a pretty good idea at this juncture if it is worth your har- earned money to pony up $339.99 for the ASUS ROG STRIX Radeon RX 7600 OC Edition.
Performance
In a word, the recurring theme in our benchmarks whether plain raster or ray traced, was 2%. We kept seeing the two cards either having the same performance or being just 2% apart unless the ASUS ROG Strix RX 7600 OC was overclocked. It’s a simple conclusion to note that either card does very well at 1080p in plain raster performance, a constant finding in this generation of AMD video cards. Using upscaling only makes things better. Quite honestly, FSR is probably not necessary in 5 of the 6 games we tested. This is a real complement to the advances in this generation. This is good.
Now, the bad. Our results in ray tracing were subpar. There is not a single game that is playable until you enable upscaling. Even then we can only break into playable territory in 50% of the games. The ASUS ROG Strix RX 7600 OC manages to be marginally better in 4 of the 6 games. There are playable frame rates using FSR in Dying Light 2, Returnal, and Callisto Protocol. That said, it’s only fair to remember we are pushing these video cards to the limit with the highest settings both in graphics and ray tracing. It would be fair to say that if you are wishing to enable ray tracing, the settings will have to be adjusted down…..quite a bit.
We wanted to take a quick look at some previous results….here….although the game suite has changed, the ASUS ROG Strix RX 7600 OC testing uses three identical games and has the identical default settings as the Sapphire Pulse. Chernobylite performs identically, likewise Cyberpunk 2077, with Dying Light 2 better only in FSR. The results are close enough to call them a draw and/or very minimally in favor of the ASUS ROG Strix RX 7600 OC Edition.
Overclocking
The results that we obtained are very much determined by a hard stop placed in the video card BIOS or software or both. As was seen in prior reviews, the frequency sliders are capped at minimal increases. With this, our ASUS ROG Strix RX 7600 OC was able to best the out-of-the-box Game Clock by 4%. In real-time gaming using our test suite, we saw an average of 3-4% increase in FPS. The outliers were Dying Light 2 and Forspoken where 7-10% gains were seen.
We downloaded ASUS GPU Tweak III and found it to be very easy to use. As was stated, we found no gain in overclocking memory and in fact it penalized performance. All the games performed flawlessly at the final overclocked settings.
The shame in all of this is the ASUS ROG Strix RX 7600 OC is seemingly built to absorb temperatures one would generate with higher overclocks. Looking at the power and temperature charts, 204 watts hardly caused the heatsink to pay attention. We would like to see some relaxation of the limitations on this well-built video card. Oh, and it’s very quiet, even at 63% fan cycle you can barely notice the sound above everything else on the test bench.
Final Points
The ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 7600 OC Edition is a well-made video card. It has a massive heatsink and simply feels expensive. The fit and finish are top-notch. Performance however is minimally better or the same as products that are priced well below its MSRP. This video card does run very cool and if the limits were removed from the GPU frequency we think it would overclock exceedingly well. Ray Tracing is not its forte, but that is the nature of the Radeon RX 7600 GPU.
If you want a top-of-the-line RX 7600, this is your card. If you are looking for top performance and money in your pocket, there are cheaper Radeon RX 7600s, there are even cheaper ASUS Radeon RX 7600s. However, if you want the best that ASUS offers, and want that ROG Strix goodness, the ASUS ROG Strix Radeon RX 7600 OC Edition does offer one of the most robust builds we’ve seen yet. It is the top-tier Radeon RX 7600 from ASUS, and for that, it certainly fulfills its namesake. Keep an eye on pricing, and if it nudges down, this video card only becomes more appealing in the realm of Radeon RX 7600 GPUs.