“Best entry-level graphics card”: AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT reviews released

AMD today began sales of the mid-level Radeon RX 7600 XT video card, and specialized foreign press published reviews of the new product. And if reviewers mostly spoke negatively about the regular Radeon RX 7600, many liked the new product, mainly due to the large amount of video memory: “ 16 GB VRAM changes things ” and “ Lots of VRAM for AI and future games .”

Radeon RX 7600 XT from ASUS, XFX and Sapphire. Image Source: Computer Base

The Radeon RX 7600 XT is powered by the same 6nm Navi 33 GPU with RDNA 3 architecture as the Radeon RX 7600. The chip contains 2048 stream processors, 64 AI units, 32 ray tracing accelerators, 128 texture and 64 raster units. The Radeon RX 7600 XT graphics processor received higher clock speeds than the chip in the Radeon RX 7600: the game frequency was increased from 2250 to 2470 MHz, and the boost frequency was increased from 2660 to 2760 MHz.

Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 XT Pulse PCB. Image source: TechPowerUp

A more noticeable change, which reviewers point out, is the doubled amount of video memory in the Radeon RX 7600 XT compared to the Radeon RX 7600. At the same time, the memory speed and bus width have not changed and are 18 Gbit/s and 128 bits, respectively.. Bandwidth also remained unchanged – 288 GB/s. Larger memory and higher frequencies led to an increase in power consumption to 190 W.

Tom's Hardware received the Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 XT Pulse video card for testing. According to test results, the Radeon RX 7600 XT video card is on average faster than the Intel Arc 770 and GeForce RTX 3060, but does not catch up with the Radeon RX 6700 XT and GeForce RTX 4060 in games at 1080p resolution (1920 × 1080 pixels) and with maximum graphics settings and, if possible, with maximum ray tracing settings.

Gaming tests in 1080p 01.jpg View all images (21) 02.jpg 03.jpg 04.jpg 05.jpg 06.jpg 07.jpg 08.jpg 09.jpg 10.jpg 11.jpg 12.jpg 13.jpg 14 .jpg 15.jpg 16.jpg 17.jpg 18.jpg 19.jpg 20.jpg 21.jpg See all
images (21) If you do not take into account games with ray tracing, then the new AMD product turns out to be faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, but still falls short of the Radeon RX 6700 XT. And looking at the ray tracing tests separately, it is clear that the Radeon RX 7600 XT loses to the GeForce RTX 3060 and Intel Arc 770.

Also, the Radeon RX 7600 XT turned out to be quite capable of handling games at 1440p resolution at maximum graphics settings – here the card benefits from a large amount of video memory. True, if you turn on ray tracing to maximum, the new product will no longer be able to provide playable FPS in most games. For 4K, the new video card turns out to be almost completely unsuitable, except that without ray tracing you can get a little more than 32 FPS on average.

Gaming tests in 1440p 01.jpg View all images (14) 02.jpg 03.jpg 04.jpg 05.jpg 06.jpg 07.jpg 08.jpg 09.jpg 10.jpg 11.jpg 12.jpg 13.jpg 14 .jpg View all
images (14)

As noted by Tom's Hardware, in only 3 of the 18 games from the test set, additional memory was useful: Forza Horizon 5, Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Total War: Warhammer 3. In all these games, the new product showed at least a 20 percent advantage over the RX 7600. But reviewers note that the Radeon RX 7600 XT has a good headroom for future games that are becoming more and more demanding on video memory.. This reviewer also notes that the new product performs well in work tasks such as 3D rendering and in the work of AI algorithms, for example, in Stable Diffusion.

The ComputerBase resource, which tested the XFX Radeon RX 7600 XT Qick 309, generally confirms the above-described theses: the Radeon RX 7600 XT outperforms the GeForce RTX 4060 without ray tracing, but is inferior to it when tracing is enabled. The new product is capable of providing more than 60 FPS in many modern games at 1080p resolution at maximum graphics quality settings, but without ray tracing. At the same time, there are many games where the Radeon RX 7600 XT produces lower frame rates, but on average it does not drop below 40 FPS.

Radeon RX 7600 XT averages 9% faster performance than Radeon RX 7600. And this is very impressive, because the new product uses the same GPU, the frequency of which is only 2-3% higher. That is, the main increase is provided precisely by the increased amount of video memory. Still, 8 GB is not always enough, but 16 GB is already good. Computer Base notes that the Radeon RX 7600 XT is capable of providing worthy competition to the GeForce RTX 4060, implying an 8 GB version of the latter. Even ray tracing does not save the latter, because 8 GB is not enough here.

The Radeon RX 7600 XT turned out to be more power hungry than the Radeon RX 7600, but less noisy and not as hot, although this is most likely due to non-standard coolers. In the case of the Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 XT Pulse, the average GPU temperature in games was 66.9 ° C versus more than 73 ° C for the reference RX 7600. The noise level under load was only 38 dBA. Average gaming consumption was 190 W (at 1080p), which is slightly higher than the consumption of the much more powerful GeForce RTX 4070 with its 183 W, and also noticeably higher than the 154 W of its sister Radeon RX 7600.

Reviewers agreed that the Radeon RX 7600 XT is a good entry-level gaming graphics card. True, it was scolded for its slightly inflated price – in the USA the recommended price is $329. ” However, if AMD and its partners can bring the price of the 7600 XT down to $300 or below, it will become much more attractive ,” Tom's Hardware noted. Perhaps a more attractive choice right now is the Radeon RX 6700 XT, which can be had for $350 in the US. “ Despite all its shortcomings, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT is currently the best entry-level video card in the price range up to 400 euros ,” concluded Computer Base.