AMD is reportedly set to release a cut-down version of its RX 6600 XT GPU soon, but the first leaked benchmark suggests that Nvidia shouldn’t worry too much about the competition to its entry-level RTX 3060 card.
The leaker HXL posted a screenshot purporting to show 3DMark benchmarks of the new card. The graphics benchmark comes in at 8,155 points with the rig as a whole producing a score of 8,612. VideoCardz, which first reported on the leak, notes that this means the RX 6600 currently trails the RTX 3060 in the same test by about 350 points, making Nvidia’s card 5% faster.
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There are, of course, a lot of caveats to add to that statement. The first is that all leaks should be taken with a pinch of salt until they can be officially confirmed. Also, benchmarks don’t often tell the full story, and in-game performance can be better or worse, often varying from game to game.
RX 6600Source: QQ pic.twitter.com/JFqiVUl5CvOctober 8, 2021
The second is that even if the numbers are accurate, they are still taken from pre-release hardware, and that means that performance could dramatically change once software optimizations have been finalized.
Thirdly, and most importantly, even if the numbers are right, and even if they don’t improve via optimizations, we may not be comparing like for like. We don’t have a price for the AMD RX 6600, and if it significantly undercuts the RTX 3060 then it may still prove to be the better option even if it is objectively the inferior product.
Plus, of course, it’s not a good time to buy a graphics card, with the global chip shortages badly impacting RTX 3060 stock. When it comes to GPU availability in 2021, the mantra “beggars can’t be choosers” feels pretty apt, with buyers having to settle with what’s available when restocks sporadically occur. In that kind of market place, weighing up every single benchmark feels considerably less pressing, especially if we’re only talking about a real-world performance difference of around 5%.
According to rumors, the AMD RX 6600 is set to differ from the XT model with slightly slower clock speeds and fewer stream processors: 1,792 instead of 2,048. Otherwise, the claimed specs are similar, right down to the 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM. We should find out if these claims are true soon enough, with the rumor mill pointing to an unveiling as early as next week.
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