REVIEW: PowerColor RX 6600 XT Red Devil 4v6kt

Recently launched in Brazil, the RX 6600 XT is one of the entry models - actually, intermediate, but I'll explain at the end - of the lineup of AMD for 2021 and promises to deliver fluid gameplay at 60 frames per second in Full HD. Showmetech took a sample from PowerColor Red Devil and measured the performance of the GPU with synthetic and practical tests, and the result was quite surprising. 3t5np

AMD has kindly sent a sample of the Power Cooler RX 6600 XT to the site, and after using the hardware as my main board for the past few days, I bring you the full review of the product.

Design 145g70

When taking the RX 6600 XT out of the box we have the first big positive point: its beautiful design. THE Power Color has previously proven that it knows how to work well with high-performance models by developing a very beautiful look. With an intermediate card this, fortunately, has not changed. This Red Devil is splendid in that sense.

The entire GPU look is in a very dark gray tone, with small white channels to the RGB strips — yes, we have a lot of LEDs! The fans are black, each with the Power Color and Red Devil logo, in gray and red, respectively.

The LEDs only work in red light, and they are very intense. There are lights on the front of the plate, near the fans, and at the ends. On the back there is a beautiful backplate, also gray, with a cut out drawing of the Red Devil icon in white, which appears as an RGB. The side of the RX 6600 XT still has the Radeon brand stamped on it, as well as the Red Devil logo again.

Construction 1u5n39

Walking side by side with the visual part, the PowerColor RX 6600 XT Red Devil It has a hell of a sturdy build. Unlike many mid-range boards, which bet on slightly “inferior” components, so to speak, this devil — pardon the pun — doesn't skimp on parts.

When holding the GPU, you can see its weight, and the reason is quite simple. Practically the entire exterior of the board is coated in brushed steel, while the interior is already classic: we have the PCB of the RX 6600 XT under layers of heat sinks (the metallic structures in a row) and heat pipes, the copper “canes” to dissipate heat. On the side there is still the power connector, which here are two connections: one with 6 and another with 8 pins.

As a whole, the card has practically no plastic parts on the body, apart from, of course, the RGB and the fans, which we'll cover in more depth in our own topic about heating.

Hardware 5l4oe

In the introduction I comment that the RX 6600 XT integrates the lineup AMD's entry level for 2021, when, in fact, this card is mid-range. This speech is ambiguous, because, from a certain point of view, the 6600 XT is one of the most basic models, that is, entry level of the new AMD family. Apart from this GPU, the most basic is directly its smaller sister: the RX 6600, without the XT. On the other hand, as we will show in the tests, the model is indeed intermediate.

The device was developed with the RDNA2 architecture and Navi 23 XT chip with 7 nm lithography, with 32 computational units. When compared to its predecessor, the last generation RX 5600 XT, there is a reduction, as this card had 36 compute units. Obviously, AMD's recent release comes out ahead precisely because it is imbued with a new and more efficient architecture, so in the end this kind of comparison is valid, but it needs to be done with care.

The PowerColor model delivers a base clock of 2428Mhz and the boost raises these frequencies to up to 2607Mhz. This means that the RX 6600 XT Red Devil has a small overclock of manufactures. In addition, we have 8 GB of GDDR6 RAM memory manufactured by Samsung, operating at 128-bit and bandwidth at 256 GB/s. This is also a step backwards compared to the RX 5600 XT, and frankly, it does impact certain uses, but not so much in games. The worst scenarios are in the rendering part, for example.

Performance 58a2u

To test the RX 6600 XT, we performed two batteries of tests: in games and benchmarks synthetics. In total there were 5 games and 3 benchmarks used as parameters to evaluate performance.

On our test bench we used another AMD component: the processor. The chosen one was a Ryzen 3600X of 6 cores, 12 threads, base clock of 3.8Ghz and boost for up to 4.4Ghz. In addition, we put 16 GB of RAM (2×8) in dual channel at 2666 Mhz, while the system motherboard is a Gigabyte Aorus B550I PRO AX.

Games 1h295e

Call of Duty: War zone 2vt44

Warzone is one of the hottest multiplayer titles at the moment and it did well in our tests. The game ran in Full HD resolution with everything in ultra at a rate of 104 frames. already with the Ray Tracing activated things didn't change that much, and the frame became an average of 90 fps. Technology isn't as effective in Warzone, so it doesn't affect performance as much. For the competitive scenario it is highly recommended to play with the feature turned off. In Quad HD with everything on ultra, Warzone runs at around 80 to 85 frames, also quite satisfying, but not ideal for this type of game.

Control 5d4m4p

Then it was time to test Control, a game that was one of the first to popularize the technology of Ray Tracing when released. In Full HD with everything on ultra, the game behaves between 70 and 75 frames no choking. However, with the RT on high, the gameplay starts to drop to the 34's frames. This is because there is no image resizing technique available in the game, with the exception of DLSS, exclusive to NVIDIA. unfortunately the FidelityFX Super Resolution still haven't shown up on that title. In Quad HD and without Ray Tracing we've already moved to something around 45 frames on average.

Fortnite 1s191r

Bringing one of pop culture's biggest phenoms to auditions, Fortnite it ran at almost 120 frames in Full HD and epic quality, however, we noticed some annoying stutters in this gameplay. When reducing to high quality the gameplay goes up to around 150 frames and stabilizes. With Ray Tracing we have the worst case scenario: 20 frames. In Quad HD we can activate the competitive settings, leaving the gameplay around 160 frames.

Resident evil village 5z1u3

One of the biggest releases of 2021 so far, Resident evil village it has a good optimization on PCs and arrives with very realistic graphics when taking players to villages and castles in Romania. In the tests, we put all the qualities in Full HD and high setting, having about 110 frames easily. With Ray Tracing e FidelityFX Super Resolution in quality mode, the gameplay is around 70 frames, excellent for playing games. In Quad HD and without Ray Tracing we managed to play well at almost 100 frames.

synthetic tests 634x2u

Fire Strike Ultra 4k432a

Built for testing powerful GPUs with benchmarking tessellation, volumetric lighting, smoke simulations, dynamic particle lighting and post-processing. The RX 6600 XT scored a total of 6.522 points, which is not bad, but definitely not the best of qualities in this regard.

Port Royal 5c437

The second test is aimed at PCs with cards that ray tracing, Port Royal, and tests dynamic reflections, ambient occlusion, post-processing effects, tessellation, depth of field, procedural generation, physics, etc; scoring 4.543 points in the benchmarking, which marks an acceptable performance, although not the best.

Blender 332772

Finally, the Blender is an open source tool used for modeling, animation, texturing, compositing and video rendering. In this test we used the BMW demo to render the scene via GPU. The PowerColor RX 6600 XT took an average of 80 seconds to complete the test.

Heating and noise 4r2f28

When it comes to heating, the RX 6600 XT does relatively well, but could be better for the entire scope of its build. In idle mode, the card varies between 44 to 51 degrees in everyday tasks, but most of the time, the fans are off. The fans only turn on in some slightly more challenging situations, like some with heavy.

In games, things get better, as the temperature is around 62 to 65 degrees on average, with rare peaks of around 70°C. Oh yes, you can already hear the fans spinning with higher rotation, but nothing that isn't unusual on another video card and that didn't bother me. In software In video editing, you can hear the fans oscillating and reaching considerable noise when rendering, but again, nothing unusual.

Conclusion 60664y

After playing a lot with this video card, the question remains: is it worth investing? First of all, we need to talk about values. The PowerColor RX 6600 XT Red Devil costs R$ 5.038 at Amazon, but, on the other hand, we find a model of the AsRock for R$4.439 at Pichau, and a Sapphire Pulse for R$4.499 at Kabum! This makes the RX 6600 XT chip worth an average of R$4600 — rounding up — in Brazilian retail.

From this we have some important questions. The first is that the GPU market prices are completely crazy, so it doesn't matter what model: you'll pay dearly, and that's not the fault of AMD, PowerColor or NVIDIA. This is a current market situation. The second point is that AMD sells this card as its own for Full HD at high frame rates, being in competition with the competition's RTX 3060. In this case, the RX 6600 XT takes an advantage of about 15% more performance in games.

On the other hand, the RTX 3060 is more expensive. In a quick search we found models a little over 5 thousand reais and reaching R$ 6.000, offering a little less performance, but bringing a feature already stabilized like DLSS. In addition, the NVIDIA card takes advantage of yield and content creation, as the RX 6600 XT — thanks to memory reductions — leaves something to be desired.

In this way, the RX 6600 XT clearly delimits its audience: gamers, in fact, and does not offer such a prosperous two-way street for those who work with the internet. Although this is not to say that the card is bad for yield. Not. It's just inferior. However, for Full HD games, I believe it's a good option, and if you want to venture into Quad HD, just make a few adjustments here or there. For the Ray Tracing, FidelityFX Super Resolution needs to evolve and keep up with technology, so that depends on whether or not you intend to enjoy these super-realistic rays of light.

In the end, the PowerColor RX 6600 XT Red Devil surprised me in games, and yes, I would use this card as my main card if the idea was to build an intermediate gaming machine for Full HD.

Technical sheet 3e3x30

Brand	PowerColor
Córdoba	RX 6600 XT Red Devil
chip	Navi 23
Lithography	7nm
VRAM	8 GB GDDR6
stream processors	2048 units
base clock	up to 2428MHz
clock (boost)	up to 2607MHz
memory clock	16.0 Gbps
memory interface	128-bit
Bandwidth	256 GB / s
DirectX	12
PCI Express	4.0
power pins	1 × 6 + 1 × 8
Pig iron	500w
Slots	2 slots
Connectivity	3 DisplayPort / 1x HDMI
Price	R$5.038

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