AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT review: revisiting the super-performers

We begin our benchmarking with the 'super-performers'. These are the four games that showed some of the biggest gen-on-gen gains when we first tested next-gen graphics cards including RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series against prior generations. The reason we see larger margins here is complicated, but one element is that each game here is built on a modern engine that can make full use of high core counts CPUs like the 10900K in our test rig. This allows the GPU to stretch its legs further than in games that use older engines and graphics APIs.

We've run our benchmarks at three resolutions: 1080p, 1440p and 4K. For ultra-wide resolutions, you can consider 2560x1080 between 1080p and 1440p, and 3440x1440 almost exactly between 1440p and 4K in terms of expected performance.

Note that our benchmark results are presented a little differently to what you might be used to from other publications. On mobile, you'll get a basic overview, with simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons. On desktop browsers, you'll get embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video to see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. You can even choose exactly what GPUs at what resolutions you're interested in and it'll update in real time. Below the real-time stuff is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an pinpoint accurate replay of real performance.

Let's see how the RX 6600 XT holds up. We're expecting performance between the RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti, but which Nvidia card is the closer point of comparison - and how does it change from game to game?

Doom Eternal

Doom Eternal is our first game, where we're using the memory-heavy Ultra Nightmare preset to test how graphics cards perform when their memory subsystems are pushed to the limit. This is a cruel game to start with, as this looks like it could be the RX 6600 XT's biggest weakness, just looking at the raw specs as we did on the previous page. And indeed, the RX 600 XT doesn't perform well here - it's just three percent faster than the RTX 3060 at 1080p while costing $50 more (on paper), while the RTX 3060 Ti gets you 24 percent more performance for an extra $20. The 6600 XT is at least fast enough to equal the last-gen RX 5700 XT at 1080p while costing $20 less than that card did at launch - two years ago. Unfortunately, the comparison gets worse if you check in at 1440p, where performance drops to 111fps average - significantly behind the RX 5700 XT at 160fps. This precipitous drop smells like a memory bandwidth issue, and makes the older AMD card a much better choice at higher resolutions than 1080p. If we take a look at the RTX 3060 and 3060 Ti, the smaller Nvidia card is 43 percent faster while the bigger is 80 percent faster than the RX 6600 XT. You still end up with a playable frame-rate, and you could certainly cut the memory texture size to regain the lost performance, but these measures aren't necessary on other graphics cards - all RTX 20-series and 30-series cards are faster here.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands 3 is another game with a relatively punishing (and humorously named) 'ultra' preset, so we've selected it here. The RX 6600 XT comes off much better here, leading the RX 5700 XT by a solid nine percent at 1080p while beating out the RTX 3060 by a healthy 29 percent. That's more like it! Compared to the RTX 3060 Ti, there's not much in it - the Nvidia card leads, but only by four percent. Again though, the results here are fast enough that 1440p gaming also ought to be on the table, but the RX 6600 XT does comparatively worse here. The lead over the 3060 drops from 29 to 23 percent, while the RTX 3060 Ti extends its lead over the 6600 XT to a double-digit percentage. The RX 5700 XT also gets within a few frames per second, continuing the trend of the older card becoming increasingly competitive against the new at higher resolutions than 1080p. A 63fps 1440p average is still perfectly playable, of course, but normally we'd expect to see the gaps between different cards not change so drastically as resolutions increase.

Control

Let's get this one over with quickly. Control with RTX is one of the most punishing games ever devised for AMD GPUs, and the same game without ray tracing is still unduly tough on RDNA2. The RX 6600 XT manages 83fps at 1080p, a quite playable result, but this is less than the RTX 3060 which costs $50 less and records an average of 86fps. Meanwhile, for an extra $20, you can pick up the RTX 3060 Ti and get 39 percent faster performance. If we look at 1440p, that advantage grows to 45 percent. The RX 5700 XT comparison is also interesting. The higher-tier but last-gen card is a few frames per second behind at 1080p, but is able to lead the RX 6600 XT by the same margin at 1440p.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider's integrated benchmark has three scenes, allowing us to see how cards can be close in performance in some game sections and divergent in others. This underscores the importance of reading a range of reviews, as other publications will have different testing methods, different games and different scenes, all of which can affect the results slightly. By checking in with other respected outlets, you'll be able to eliminate outliers and establish a critical consensus.

We'll leave performance in different scenes as an exercise for the reader this time, and instead just focus on the averages: the RX 6600 XT (132fps) comes between the RTX 3060 (124fps) and 3060 Ti (157fps), making it closer in performance to the smaller Nvidia card despite costing nearly as much as the larger card. The RX 6600 XT is at least faster than the RX 5700 XT by a wide margin this time, a solid 10 percent, and this gap is more or less maintained at 1440p too. At 4K though, both cards offer essentially identical performance, with the RTX 3060 being around 10 percent faster and the RTX 3060 Ti being 45 percent faster. Clearly, the RX 6600 XT doesn't have as much range as most of its competitors, despite a reasonable result at 1080p.

So far, the 6600 XT doesn't quite hit the heights we were expecting, but let's see how the GPU fares outside of games where Nvidia's 30-series cards are at their strongest.

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT analysis

• Introduction and hardware analysis
• Doom Eternal, Control, Borderlands 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider - Game Benchmarks Part 1 [This Page]
• Death Stranding, Far Cry 5, Hitman 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey - Game Benchmarks Part 2
• Metro Exodus, Dirt Rally 2, Assassin's Creed Unity - Game Benchmarks Part 3
• Control, Metro Exodus, Battlefield 5 - RT game benchmarks
• AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT - the Digital Foundry verdict