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AMD Radeon RX 6600S

AMD Radeon RX 6600S: A Balance of Power and Efficiency in 2025

Review for Gamers and Enthusiasts

Introduction

In 2025, mid-range graphics cards continue to be the most popular choice for gamers and users who do not require extreme performance, but value stability and an optimal price-to-quality ratio. The AMD Radeon RX 6600S is one such model that combines modern architecture, energy efficiency, and support for the latest technologies. Let's explore what sets it apart from competitors and who it’s suitable for.

Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3: Evolution Over Revolution

The RX 6600S is built on the RDNA 3 architecture, which debuted in 2022, but received optimizations in 2025 to reduce production costs. The card is manufactured using TSMC's 6nm process, providing a balance between performance and energy consumption.

Notable Technologies Include:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 3.0): An enhanced upscale algorithm with frame-generation support. It allows for a 40-70% FPS increase in games with Ray Tracing enabled.

- Ray Accelerators: Hardware blocks for ray tracing. Its quantity (24) is lower than that of the flagship models, but sufficient for 1080p gaming.

- Smart Access Memory (SAM): A feature that boosts performance when using an AMD CPU + GPU combination.

Memory: Fast, but Not Without Compromises

GDDR6 and 8GB: A Standard for 2025?

The RX 6600S comes with 8GB of GDDR6 memory and a 128-bit bus. The bandwidth reaches 224 GB/s (14 Gbps frequency). This is adequate for most games at FullHD and QHD, but in 4K or at maximum texture settings, volume shortages may occur.

Why Not GDDR6X?

Using GDDR6 instead of GDDR6X reduces costs and heat, which is important for compact systems. However, in heavier scenes (such as the modded Cyberpunk 2077 with HD textures), 8GB can become a bottleneck.

Performance in Games: 1080p is the Realm of the RX 6600S

Testing in Current Projects (2025):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, RT Medium, FSR 3.0 Quality): 68-72 FPS at 1080p, 48-52 FPS at 1440p.

- Starfield (Ultra, FSR 3.0 Balanced): 85 FPS at 1080p, 60 FPS at 1440p.

- Call of Duty: Black Ops V (Extreme): 110 FPS at 1080p, 80 FPS at 1440p.

Ray Tracing:

Enabling RT reduces FPS by 30-40%, but with FSR 3.0, the card manages well. For example, in Alan Wake 2 (RT Medium) at 1080p, we get stable 50-55 FPS. For 1440p, RT requires settings to be lowered.

4K is Not Its Strong Suit:

Only in lighter projects (CS2, Dota 2) does the RX 6600S achieve 60+ FPS at 4K. For AAA games, FSR 3.0 Performance Mode will be needed, which degrades detail quality.

Professional Tasks: Not Just Gaming

Video Editing:

In DaVinci Resolve, the card shows good rendering speed due to support for OpenCL and hardware AV1 encoding. Exporting a 10-minute 4K video takes around 8 minutes.

3D Modeling:

In Blender (Cycles engine), the RX 6600S lags behind the NVIDIA RTX 4060 by 15-20% due to less optimized drivers. However, for beginner 3D artists, the performance is sufficient.

Scientific Computing:

Support for OpenCL and ROCm allows the card to be used in machine learning, but with caveats: libraries like TensorFlow are better adapted to NVIDIA's CUDA.

Power Consumption and Heat Generation

TDP of 100W: A Dream for Compact Builds

The RX 6600S consumes up to 100W under load, making it ideal for mini-PCs and Micro-ATX cases. A recommended power supply is 450-500W with an 8-pin connector.

Cooling:

Even in reference models, a dual-fan system is used. Temperatures under load do not exceed 70°C, and noise levels are at 32 dB. For better thermal regulation, we recommend cases with 3-4 fans (e.g., Fractal Design Meshify C).

Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA RTX 4060 (8GB):

- Pros of NVIDIA: DLSS 3.5, better optimization for RT, CUDA support.

- Cons: More expensive by $30-50 (RX 6600S price - $269 vs. $299 for RTX 4060).

Intel Arc A770 (16GB):

- Pros of Intel: Larger memory size, good performance in DX12.

- Cons: High power consumption (190W), driver issues with older games.

Conclusion: The RX 6600S outperforms its competitors in price and energy efficiency, but falls short in specialized tasks (e.g., CUDA rendering).

Practical Tips

1. Power Supply: Don’t skimp! Even 450W will suffice, but choose models with an 80+ Bronze certification (e.g., Corsair CX450).

2. Compatibility: The card requires PCIe 4.0 x8. There won't be performance loss on motherboards with PCIe 3.0.

3. Drivers: Use Adrenalin Edition 2025.4.1 or newer. Avoid “beta versions” for critical tasks.

4. Game Optimization: Enable FSR 3.0 in settings – this will boost FPS without significant quality loss.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Ideal for 1080p gaming.

- Low power consumption.

- Support for AV1 and FSR 3.0.

- Attractive price ($269).

Cons:

- Only 8GB of memory.

- Weaker than NVIDIA in ray tracing.

- No equivalent of DLSS Frame Generation.

Final Conclusion: Who Is the RX 6600S Suitable For?

This graphics card is an excellent choice for:

1. Gamers with 1080p/144Hz monitors who want to play at high settings without overspending.

2. Owners of compact PCs where low heat output and silence are important.

3. Budget builds: At a price of $269, the RX 6600S offers the best price/performance ratio in its segment.

However, if you work with 3D rendering or want maximum FPS in 4K with Ray Tracing, consider the NVIDIA RTX 4070 or AMD RX 7700XT. But for most users, the RX 6600S will be a reliable companion for the next 3-4 years.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

January 2022

Model Name

Radeon RX 6600S

Generation

Mobility Radeon

Base Clock

1700MHz

Boost Clock

2000MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 4.0 x8

Transistors

11,060 million

RT Cores

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

112

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

7 nm

Architecture

RDNA 2.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR6

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1750MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

224.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

128.0 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

224.0 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

14.34 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

448.0 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

7.311 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

1792

L1 Cache

128 KB per Array

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

80W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.3

OpenCL Version

2.1

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 Ultimate (12_2)

Power Connectors

None

Shader Model

6.5

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.