AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT stock shortage could get worse — here’s why

News
By
published

AMD’s latest graphics card is reportedly a crypto-mining master, and that in turn could make stock even scarcer

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT
(Image credit: AMD)

We’ve seen the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT beat the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 on gaming performance, and now it appears the mid-range GPU could also be a particularly efficient cryptocurrency mining card.

According to the AMD subreddit, the Radeon RX 6600 XT isn’t technically the fastest at digging up crypto coins, but it can work effectively at much lower voltages than other GPUs. If true, this per-watt performance would likely make it even more popular with aspiring miners than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 — though the added demand would be bad news for PC owners who just want one for gaming.

Of course, as one of the more ostensibly “affordable” graphics cards of the current generation, the Radeon RX 6600 XT has already reached a level of demand that’s outstretched supply. The same is true of pretty much all AMD and Nvidia GPUs, as manufacturing shortages have meant there just aren’t enough units — lower-end and 4K-ready alike — to go around.

Even so, if the Radeon RX 6600 XT does offer superlative mining efficiency, that could make it the most in-demand card of all, especially as mining operations require multiple cards running together. Even buying a bunch of Radeon RX 6600 XT at inflated prices might still be worth it, as the lower running costs (compared to more wattage-hungry cards) could eventually make up the difference.

There has been a downturn in mining interest across certain parts of the world, with the Chinese government’s crackdown on the practice even driving a fire sale of used, ex-mining GPUs, but generally it’s still profitable enough to make buying a card for gaming purposes all the more difficult.

Difficult is not impossible, though, and there should still be a chance of finding Radeon RX 6600 XT stock; you’ll just have to rely on luck, and that you happen across a restock in progress before miners, scalpers and their retailer bots can snatch everything up.

James Archer
James Archer

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Paper Shotgun, but before that was Audio Editor at Tom’s Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes noise. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote computing and gaming news for TG, usually relating to how hard it is to find graphics card stock.