Two months ago for the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT launch, we saw the latest mid-range card outperforming high-end cards like the 1080 Ti from a few generations back. The steam survey has 67% of users currently gaming at 1080p and for a lot of them even the RX 6600 XT is more than they need, AMD is launching today the RX 6600 which might fit the bill. It is focused on 1080p performance and runs on the same Navi 23 GPU that the 6600  XT has, with a few things cut back.  Today I’m going to check out how the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter that AMD sent over-performs as well as check out what PowerColor has to offer on their reference clocked option as far as cooling and noise performance goes.

Product Name: PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter

Review Sample Provided by: AMD and PowerColor

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

What is the RX 6600 all about?

To get an idea of where the RX 6600 stands I have the specs broken down with the RX 6600 XT and the last generation RX 5600 XT as well. All three were built on the 7nm manufacturing process and you can see that the 6600 XT and the 6600 share a lot of the same specs because they both have the same NAVI 23 GPU so things like transistor count and die size are the same. Where they differ is with the number of compute units being used which also affects the ray accelerator count as well. The 6600 XT had 32 of each and the 6600 is 12.5% less at 28 of each. That cut the stream precessors down to 1792 from 2048 as well. They also changed up the clock speeds. The 6600XT ran at 2359 MHz with a boost clock of up to 2589 MHz but the RX 6600 runs at a slower 2044 MHz clock speed and the boost clock is 2491 MHz. That is a drop of 13% on the game clock and the boost clock stays a lot closer with a drop of just 3.7%.

They have the same 32MB infinity cache and on the memory side of things the same 8GB of GDDR6 which is 2GB more than the older RX 5600 XT. They both have the same 128-bit memory interface but you can see that the memory bandwidth is lower on the RX 6600. This is because it has a lower memory clock speed which wasn’t provided in the AMD specification listing, but our card ran at 1750 MHz for the RX 6600 and 2000 MHz for the RX 6600 XT. Both cards support PCIe 4.0 and only need an x8 interface where the older 5600 XT needed PCIe 4.0 16x. Then for board power, the RX 6600 is listed at 132 watts and the higher clock speeds of the 6600 XT have it at 160 watts. 

Before diving into the testing, I do like to double-check with GPUz to make sure that our card is running at the clock speeds that it should be at and the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter is running at 2044 MHz with a boost clock of 2491 MHz which fits the AMD reference clocks perfectly. I also include this so our firmware revision is documented and as well as the driver tested with which is the Adrenalin 21.30.17.06 that was provided to press for launch.

Packaging

The box for the 6600 Fighter is surprisingly small, I’ve gotten a little too used to the giant cards we have been seeing and this is the box for a normal mid-sized card. On the front, they have the PowerColor branding up top with the Fighter branding in the middle as the biggest font. Then in the background, you have a black background with a drawing of each from space taking up most of the front of the box. The background doesn’t fit the Fighter theme, but it does look good. Down on the bottom edge, you have the red wrap-around with the AMD Radeon branding and the actual model number. Then on the left, they have small icons, one shows that this is a 1080p focused card, one has the 8GB memory, and the last shows the PCIe 4.0 support.

Around on the back of the box, the wrap-around has the basic system requirements and above that, they have a feature list of the AMD features the card supports. There isn’t a picture of the card which is a bummer for anyone shopping in retail. The back does have three pictures of the cooling broken down to show off the heatsink, the two ball-bearing fan design, and that the fans turn off anytime the card is below 60c. Along with not having a picture, there also aren’t any key specifications like the card dimensions, the display connections, and the clock speed which are all important when shopping.

When you open things up they have used cardboard to fill in the space around the card and for protection and the 6600 Fighter then sits in the middle wrapped in its static protective bag. They have a card with a QR code for the installation guide.

Card Layout and Photos

Well, the small packaging size is explained when you can see the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter as its compact size is a bit of a throwback to cards before the recent push to get bigger and bigger. The Fighter is PowerColor’s reference clocked RX 6600 option and given the smaller cooler design and that it lacks any crazy lighting like their larger Hellhound model means this is their budget option targeted at AMDs suggested pricing. But I think beyond that a lot of people will dig that the Fighter keeps things simple with a design that will fit in more compact builds and has a simple black plastic fan shroud and dual black fans that people who don’t like lighting for example will like.

So the card isn’t an ITX form factor with its dual fans. But it is much more compact than a lot of other cars would be. I don’t have PowerColor’s specs prior to launch, but we can see it comes in at 205mm long and fits in the normal PCI standard with just 5mm over the top of the bracket and is a true dual-slot card, not the normal 2 slot that wouldn’t work with anything next to it.

The side profile of the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter has the dual fans taking up almost the entire card. They are 90mm each and they both have 9 curved blades that are blowing down into the heatsink. We can see that the heatsink has a horizontal layout which often isn’t the best for overall cooling because it has to push the air a longer distance out to the ends of the card. But a horizontal layout on the heatsink does also mean less heat being pushed out the top and bottom of the card which means less heat against your motherboard and towards where most M.2 drives are installed. The heatsink also doesn’t fill the total height of the card, you can see large openings at the top and bottom where the heatpipes that pull heat out from the center over the GPU out to the ends are at. The side profile has PowerColor logos in the center of each fan and then the Radeon logo up at the center but overall the branding is very minimum and without lighting it isn’t in your face at all. In fact, it is just grey on black.

Up on the top edge, they do have the PowerColor branding which is again in the grey on the black plastic fan shroud. The top is also where they have the power connection which is down at the end of the card because the cooler doesn’t extend past the end of the PCB at all for once. The plug has a standard layout meaning clip is away from the PCB and the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter uses an 8-pin plug.

A look around at the edges of the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter tells us more about the cooler design as well. Normally the horizontal coolers struggle with that long-distance airflow, but we can see that once you get past the area over the GPU itself that the heatsink isn’t tight-fitting against the PCB. That gap should help with that airflow, allowing some air to go out the top and bottom. But the downside is that the heatsink once you add the fans on the top and the gap under it with a true 2 slot card is very thin. We can also see that it has three heatpipes to pull heat away with two going towards the PCI bracket side and one towards the end near the power plug.

Now on the back of the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter, it doesn’t have a backplate at all which while I wish it did have one I completely understand that budget-focused cards aren’t going to have them. PowerColor did at least give the card a nice flat black PCB which helps but I do wish given that this is the most visible part of the card that their QC check stickers were a little less in your face than bright yellow. The sticker up on top has the model information and the serial number in case any warranty is needed. Which is in the US and Canada a 2-year warranty.

Then at the end of the card for the PCI bracket, I was really surprised to see that PowerColor included a black bracket. This is something I have been pushing to see more of for years now as I think they blend in better with most cases having black at the back bracket area. The top 2/3 of their bracket is tenting with an arrow design and that I think is a P in the middle. Then down at the bottom, they have four display connections. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter has three DisplayPort connections and one HDMI which is the standard these days.

Test Rig and Procedures

Test Rig

CPU: 

Motherboard: Asus Crosshair VIII HERO WiFi

Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Royal 3600MHz 16-16-16-36

Storage: Corsair MP600 2TB

Cooling – Corsair H100i RGB Pro XT

Power Supply - Corsair AX1200w

Case - Primochill Wetbench

OS - Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Synthetic Benchmarks

As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. Right now we don’t have any other RX 6600’s to compare the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter with, but I am keeping an eye on how it compares with the RX 6600 XT, the last generation AMD cards, and from Nvidia the RTX 3060 and RTX 2060 SUPER.

The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter came in above the RTX 2070 FE and below the Vega 64 in the Fire Strike Performance benchmark which has it 4891 points below the overclocked RX 6600 XT that I previously covered. It also put it right above the overclocked RX 5700’s. In the Extreme detail setting it was still above the RTX 2070 FE but only by 5 points and it fell between the overclocked and stock clocked RX 5700’s. Then in the ultra detail Fire Strike benchmark the overclocked 5700 dropped back down below it again but it once again stuck right with the original RTX 2070 FE.

The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. In Time Spy the Nvidia’s cards tend to perform a little better which you can see how the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter is down farther in the charts but it is still right with the RX 5700 and above the Vega 64 in the base Time Spy test. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter sits just above a group of cards that all have basically the same score with the RX 5700, Vega 64, and the original RTX 2060s. Then it is below another big clump of cards with all basically the same score which has the 2060 SUPER, RTX 3060, RTX 2070, and the RX 5700 XT. The Time Spy Extreme test was similar with the exception of the Vega 64 moving up into the RX 5700 XT range, but the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter still sits in between the RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT as well as the RTX 2060 and 2060 SUPER/2070/3060. Not bad company really.

With AMD adding ray tracing support I did also slip in testing with 3DMark Port Royal. Here the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter performed down below the RTX 2060’s that it was outperforming in the previous tests and there is a huge gap between the 6600 and everything below it.

The last test was using the Unigine based Superposition benchmark and I tested at 1080p with medium detail and again at 1080p with the extreme detail setting. In the extreme detail setting the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter came in right in the middle of a few RTX 2060s and the RX 5700’s.

VR Benchmarks

As for Virtual Reality, I love it but it is more demanding than traditional gaming. This is partially because of the resolutions needed to render for two eyes and because they render more than what is immediately visible. But also because of post effects to get the proper “fisheye” effect for it to look proper in your eyes with the HMD. You also have to have much higher expectations for frame rates in VR, skipping frames or lower FPS can cause motion sickness in VR. Because of that, I ran a few tests.

My first test was again in Superposition. This time I tested the VR Maximum and VR Future tests using the Vive resolution. Here the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter came in just above the RX 5700 on the more demanding VR Future test but behind the RTX 2060. But on the VR Maximum test, it fell right in between the RTX 2060 and the RTX 3060 which matches up with what we saw in some of the other synthetic benchmarks.

My second round of VR testing was in VRMark which has two tests that are similar to the VR tests in Superposition. One is future-looking and extremely demanding and the other (cyan room) is more like modern VR games. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter performed in VRMark similarly to what we saw in Superposition. In the more demanding blue room test it struggled and even came in below the RX 5700. But it did much better in the Cyan Room test, outperforming the RTX 2060 there and coming up behind the RTX 3060 which was in the 198 FPS range to the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter’s 185 FPS.

In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 9 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 48 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier to read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter do? Well AMD has the 6600 targeted right at 1080p gaming and it did well there. At 1080p four of the results were up over 120 FPS and all were at or above 60 FPS. 1440p is possible as well with none of the results being unplayable, but there were 5 that were lower than I would suggest playing. That still leaves a majority of the results up over the 60 FPS benchmark. But when things get turned up to 4k the 8GB frame buffer and the small 128-bit memory interface choke things down to a crawl with none of the tests reaching 60 FPS and 2/3 of those were unplayable at under 30 FPS.

Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. For starters, I should point out that these graphs are sorted by the 1440p results but I am focused the most on the 1080p results. The highest ends cards get a little flat at 1080p as they get CPU limited, sorting by 1080p can make for some confusing results when you see cards like the 3080 Ti on par with cards that cost half as much. The first results in Watch Dogs for example show that the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter is a few FPS behind the RTX 3060 at 1440p, but the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter is faster at 1080p, the AMD cards perform a lot better at 1080 in Watch Dogs. But the performance gap between the 6600 and the 6600 XT is also really clear, especially in those early tests. Diving in more we see a lot of the same things that we saw in the synthetics. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter stays out ahead of the RTX 2060 and trades blows with the RX 5700 but stays behind the RTX 3060. There are a few exceptions like in Total War where it comes in behind the RTX 2060. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, it is even running right with the RTX 2060 SUPERs.

Compute Benchmarks

Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases people who game also do work on the side. So it is also important to check out the compute performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. My first test was a simple GPU Compute benchmark using Passmark’s Performance Test 9 and the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter did surprisingly well coming out with 7672 points and running just behind the RTX 2070 SUPER and ahead of the Radeon VII.

In Basemark I test with the DirectX12 setting and again with OpenGL. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter had the same issues that all of the AMD cards have had with the OpenGL test. As for the DirectX 12 tests it came in a hair below the RTX 2060 FE and out ahead of the RX 5700 by a big margin.

Blender is always my favorite compute benchmark because the open-source 3D rendering software is very popular and it isn’t a synthetic benchmark. Here I render two scenes and combine the total time it takes. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter took 252 seconds to complete the render of the two scenes. This was a few seconds faster than almost all of the RTX 3060’s that I have tested and was out ahead of all of the RX 5700 XT’s as well.

Cooling Noise and Power

For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage. For this, I use our Kill-A-Watt hooked up to the test bench to record the total wattage of the system. I ran two tests with the first using 3DMark Fire Strike to put the system under a load similar to normal in game performance. Here our test system with the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter pulled a total of 278 watts which was 43 watts lower than even the RX 5700 and 57 below the RX 6600 XT which has the same GPU with more cores and a higher clock speed. With the AIDA64 stress test and without the CPU being loaded that number dropped down to 213 which was 116 watts lower than the overclocked 6600 XT that I tested. Then back to 3DMark again using GPUz we could see that the peak power draw on the chip was registering at a solid 100 watts when under load, only 45 less than the 6600 XT.

My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter with its dual fans running at 100% was almost dead even with the XFX 6600 XT that I had previously tested and was in the 1/3 to ½ range on our charts. Testing the noise levels after letting the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter run using AIDA64 for a half-hour with the stock fan profile had the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter higher up in the charts at around the halfway point, however. The 100% fan speed results do better than the RPM chart indicates that it should at least with it around halfway up the chart at 3496 RPM.

To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up. Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter came in at 66c. Without another RX 6600 to compare things too it is hard to see just how well the PowerColor cooler is performing, but we do know that their fan profile has the dual fan card running 4 degrees less than the XFX 6600 XT. With the fans cranked up to 100% fan speed that number dropped down to 52c but the card itself stayed right in the middle of the chart. Given how low the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter was on the power charts it shows that the Fighter cooler isn’t the best possible solution. But that isn’t a big surprise given the more budget-friendly focus on its design as well as the thin heatsink. 66c with the stock profile and 52c at full speed however is more than enough cooling for most people unless you plan on doing heavy overclocking and the 14c delta does still show there is some room in the cooler above the stock fan profile that PowerColor has given the card.

While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. The left side or the fan side of the card has its hottest point just under the left fan. The VRMs are on that side of the GPU and they are close to the GPU itself which puts a lot of heat in that one area. Combine that with the horizontal heatsink layout that is pushing the warm air in that direction I’m not too surprised. The other fan is almost half the temperature and isn’t having any trouble keeping things cool. I do have to wonder if the heatpipe layout shouldn’t have head the double piped side be on the side that doesn’t also have to handle the VRMs. The top-down view shows more of the same with even hotter temperatures on that left side of the card on the direct PCB. The same goes for the back where you can see exactly where it is getting the hottest right in the middle of those VRMs and over near the GPU.

Overall and Final Verdict

Like a lot of other new cards that come out that aren’t at the top end of the product stack, the new Radeon RX 6600 has a lot of comparisons when it comes to performance with the last generation RX 5700. Where the RX 6600 sets itself apart however is when we get into the power usage as it does manage to use less power than the RX 5700. That also means that the card isn’t fighting the heat like those original reference cards were as well. Even with the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter design which is a lot smaller than a lot of other cards on the market and it is a true 2 slot card and doesn’t go up over the standard PCI card height, its cooling performance is much better than those 5700 reference cards. I do think however that there is still a lot of room left on the table as far as cooling goes. The heatsink itself is thin once you take away the space for the fans and with it not being form-fitting around the components on the board. I also feel like the heatsink would benefit from a different heatpipe layout that doesn’t add more heat to the side of the card that is also dealing with the VRMs. The PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter ends up having a hot side and cool side to the card.

All of that said, I like where the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter is performance-wise. In most tests, it falls right above the older RTX 2060 and under the newer RTX 3060. When it comes to 1080p performance which is the focus for the RX 6600, that is the sweet spot. It will handle anything you throw at it at 1080p, even with the latest titles at their highest settings, and it's going to get you at 60 FPS or well above in some situations. The issues I had with the cooling design mean that it isn’t the coolest card out there, but it also isn’t running hot and being a reference clocked budget-focused card that is about what you should expect. I also like the simple blacked-out design that has no lighting, very little branding, and no over the top styling. I do wish it had an even basic backplate, just because that is the most visible part of the card and also because ours has the bright yellow quality control sticker right on the back as well.

Now when it comes to pricing, the market is completely out of control still frankly. The RX 6600 has a suggested price of $329 which is the same price as the RTX 3060 launched at. If the market wasn’t completely jacked up, I would say that is a little high given that the 3060 is a faster card. But right now, I’m more concerned that most buyers won’t be able to find the 6600 even at that price. Compared to the prices things are going right now, that price isn’t too bad and while we won’t know for sure until cards go up for sale today (I’m writing this before the launch obviously) but I’m expecting that the PowerColor RX 6600 Fighter be PowerColor’s $329 card given its basic design and reference clock speeds. If you are aiming to game at 1080p and get the chance to get a card. This wouldn’t be a bad pick up.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.