Radeon RX 6600 And RX 6600 XT Pricing Leak Suggests Big Value Play Versus RTX 3060
AMD is on the cusp of expanding its Radeon RX 6000 series with the Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600, both of which have been the subject of multiple leaks and rumors over the past several weeks. One of the big question marks is pricing. It seems there is some good news on that front—if the latest gossip is to be believed, the cards will land a little cheaper than originally anticipated.
Some context here is needed. Earlier this month, multiple respected leakers suggested AMD was on the fence about pricing, and thinking about positioning the Radeon RX 6600 XT as a $399 part. That is not egregious, given the expected performance (reported to be around 5 percent of a Radeon RX 5700 XT or GeForce GTX 1080 Ti), but the hope was that AMD would go a bit lower. And it just might.
Apparently an unnamed "industry source" has it on good authority that AMD will launch the Radeon RX 6600 XT at $349. They also said the card is performing better than a GeForce RTX 3060 in rasterized workloads, which in normal times would set buyers back $329. So in essence, the Radeon RX 6600 XT could end up a strong value, offering better performance for $20 more.
This would be a smart move on AMD's part. For GPU-agnostic buyers who are mostly interested in rasterized rendering, the decision then becomes whether to opt for the Radeon RX 6600 XT at $349, or step up to the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, which is said to offer better performance across the board, for $399.
What about the non-XT model? The same source believes will launch the Radeon RX 6600 at $299. This card is said to be on par with the GeForce RTX 3060 in rasterized workloads, though it also lags behind in ray-traced gaming. So once again, this would be a wise value play on AMD's part—buyers who can manage with reduced ray tracing performance can save a decent amount of coin ($50) over the GeForce RTX 3060.
Comparing MSRPs For AMD's Radeon 6000 Series And NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 Series
Actually finding a card at MSRP is another matter entirely, but the GPU shortage notwithstanding, official pricing gives us reference points for comparison. And to that end, here's is what we are potentially looking at, from top to bottom among all current-generation GPUs...
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090: $1,499
- AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT: $999
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti: $1,199
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080: $699
- AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT: $649
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti: $599
- AMD Radeon RX 6800: $579
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070: $499
- AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT: $479
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti: $399
- ***AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT: $349***
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060: $329
- ***AMD Radeon RX 6600: $299***
Both of AMD's upcoming cards are based on Navi 23. if past leaks are accurate, the Radeon RX 6600 XT will feature 32 compute units (2,048 stream processors), 8GB of GDDR6 memory with a 128-bit memory bus for 256GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 32MB of Infinity Cache.
The Radeon RX 6600, meanwhile, is said to have 28 compute units (1,792 stream processors), and the same memory arrangement (including Infinity Cache) as the XT model. GPU clock speeds could differ between the two, but there has not been a whole lot of information that regard.
In any event, here's hoping AMD sticks with these lower price points (compared to past rumors). These would be interesting SKUs in terms of value, depending on how actual performance shakes out.
