Graphics card pricing has finally started to come down, and this might be the best time to get a fancy GPU for your build. It is needless to mention that 1080p is the most popular resolution today. And, a lot of gamers still game at this resolution for its acceptable clarity and sharpness and exceptionally low hardware requirements. Even some of the lowest-end graphics cards in the market are 1080p-ready today.
The most popular options for 1080 gaming include the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3050 and the RTX 3060. Gamers willing to spend a little extra to get the best performance in the latest titles can vouch for the slightly more expensive RTX 3060 Ti. However, the pricing of Nvidia Geforce cards is still not acceptable and they are taking a lot of time to come down to MSRP.
On the other end of the spectrum are AMD Radeon cards. The company came back to competitiveness with its RDNA-based RX 5000 series. With RX 6000, the company is fighting with Team Green for the top spot, both in terms of pricing and performance. The best options from Team Red for 1080p gaming include the budget RX 6500 XT and the RX 6600 (non-XT). The more premium option is RX 6600 XT. All of these cards are available almost at MSRP, thereby becoming a recommendation.
The RX 6600: 1080p Gaming at Maxed Out Settings
The RX 6600 is meant for 1080p gaming with the settings maxed out. The card is available for almost MSRP these days, which makes it a sweet spot for budget and eSports who are not willing to spend a truckload of money. Among all the available RX 6600 cards on a budget, the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle becomes an interesting option. It comes with a premium three-fan Windforce 3x cooling solution, which sets it apart from the competition namely the Asus Dual and the ASRock Challenger variants of this GPU.
We made the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle run through its paces. Check out our findings below.
Unboxing the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle
Gigabyte follows the standard dual-layer packaging layout with their Radeon RX 6600 Eagle card. The packaging is minimal, with sleek branding on top of the card. The card was well-protected within layers of thick foam inside the inner box. It came within a plastic bag that was sealed with Gigabyte-verified tape. However, the plastic bag was not electrostatic discharge (ESD) proof.
A Closer Look at the Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle 8G
Features and Specs
The Gigabyte RX 6600 8G is based on the Navi 23 GPU designed by AMD. Thus, we get all of the features of RDNA 2 like hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and the extremely efficient architecture. This card is rated for an acceptable TDP of 100W. It clocks insanely high, unlike any other RX 6000 series card.
Variant Name | Gigabyte AMD RX 6600 Eagle 8G |
GPU Name | Navi 23 |
Base Clock | 1626 MHz |
Game Clock | 2044 MHz |
Boost Clock | 2491 MHz |
Memory Clock | 1750 MHz |
Shading Units | 1792 |
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) | 112 |
Render Output Units (ROPs) | 64 |
Compute Units (CUs) | 28 |
RT Cores | 28 |
Interface | PCIe 4.0 x8 |
Power Connectors | 1x 8-pin |
TDP | 100W |
Recommended Power Supply | 550W |
Dimensions (LxWxH) | 282 mm x 113 mm x 41 mm |
Weight | 658 gm |
Build Quality
The Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle 8G might not have the best build quality among the cards available on the market. The card does feel a bit frail because of its long three-fan design which is restricted to a two-slot width. However, the card gives a metal-like feel despite being completely made of plastic.
Gigabyte has cheapened out on the quality of the fans as they feel very low-quality on touch. But, this step will help in reducing blade weight, which will help in saving power in the long run.
The company also has compromised on the quality of the PCB. However, it is a few layers thick and looks fine apparently.
PCB Analysis
The PCB of the RX 6600 Eagle does not run as long as the card itself. A first look at the card will reveal that it is too overcrowded. However, a bit of the board in the bottom right corner has been wasted.
At the center of the attention is the Navi 23 GPU. The GPU die covers a surface area of 237 mm². It is based on the TSMC N7 7nm process node, like any other RDNA 2-based GPU.
The company is using 6-phase International Rectifier-made power stages for the GPU voltage. AMD has been using these controllers since the RX Vega days.
The VRMs are fed by Alpha & Omega Semiconductor-made 55A stages.
The card uses SK Hynix-made GDDR6 memory. We see 4 chips of 2048MB each, making for the total of 8096MB video memory this card sports. SK Hynix memory is quite rare in video cards. In a world where most manufacturers Samsung chips over anything else, this is an interesting choice.
The SK Hynix H56CBM24MIR-S2C chips are fed using a couple of QN3102 and QN3106 MOSFETs. These chips are rated for 47A each.
Gigabyte RX 6600 Benchmark Results
We tested the RX 6600 Eagle in both synthetic benchmarks and some modern AAA titles. Since this card is built for 1080p, we did not test it at higher resolutions.
Our test setup was an AMD Ryzen-based open-air bench. This will let the card utilize all in-built technologies to perform the best when paired with an AMD processor.
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X |
CPU Cooler | AMD Wraith Stealth stock cooler |
Motherboard | ASRock B550 Pro4 |
RAM | 2x ADATA XPG Spectrixx D40 8GB @3000 MHz |
SSD | Gigabyte Aorus NVMe Gen4 1TB |
GPU | Gigabyte RX 6600 Eagle 8G |
Power Supply | Deepcool PK550D 550W 80+ Bronze |
OS | Windows 11 21H2 (OS Build 22000.795) |
1080p Gaming Performance
Forza Horizon 5 is a very well-optimized title. At the highest settings possible in-game, we can see this card delivers a bunch of frames per second to suit a variety of gamers.
Far Cry 6, despite being an utterly demanding title, amazed me with the performance metrics. We had the high-resolution texture pack was turned off for this test as they cost a bunch of frames. The pack is not supposed to be used with this graphics card since it has 8GB of video memory. Ubisoft requires players to have at least 10GB or more video RAM to enjoy crisp 4K textures.
Fortnite performed as expected. The game is very stuttery, a problem that Epic Games does not work on fixing. This resulted in pretty poor 1% and 0.1% numbers.
In Control. we get a completely playable experience. The card comfortably delivers 60+ FPS using the highest settings in the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 also amazed us in terms of performance. Using the highest settings possible in the game, we got almost 60 FPS, and the experience was almost smooth with very few stutters here and there.
The Witcher 3 is a seven-year-old game at this point. But, we heavily modded it. The main mods used are Meadows, 4K textures for Geralt’s model and the environment, HD Reworked, Reworked cloud textures, ReShade with Photorealistic preset, Fires, and a few more. The card still managed to deliver 60+ FPS with very few stutters here and there.
In PUBG, we did notice quite a few stutters here and there. The framerate gets choppy for a few milliseconds as soon we enter a new building or a new area on the map. The game was tested in Erangel, which features complex geometry and dense vegetation. But, most of the time, the framerate hovered around 100 frames. Competitive gamers can easily enjoy the game at high framerates on a high refresh rate monitor.
Halo: Infinite is a well-optimized title. The game is not particularly difficult to run, and even a weaker RX 5500 XT delivers a playable experience. On average, the framerate with the RX 6600 Eagle delivered almost 100 frames in the game, but a few stutters increased the frame time from 10ms to 20ms.
Ray Tracing Performance
Since the RX 6600 features AMD’s first generation ray tracing cores, we are not expecting the card to have super good RT performance,, unlike the Nvidia RTX 30 series cards. Turning on ray tracing should ideally scoop up to 30 – 35% of the performance without ray tracing. Let us have a look at the performance graphs now.
Turning on ray tracing in Forza Horizon 5 took away 48% of the performance, reducing the number to less than 60 FPS. The 1% and 0.1% lows are pretty bad too. Forza Horizon 5 supports ray tracing in the Forzavista mode only. Both of these numbers were recorded in the Forzavista mode with the same car (maxed out Porsche 911 GT1 Straßenversion) for a fair comparison.
In Far Cry 6, we lose a respectable 35% of the game’s performance with RT turned off. Ray tracing is not particularly demanding in this title. We still get over 60 FPS with ray tracing turned on. The 1% and 0.1% low numbers are quite respectable too. Overall, the game is quite playable with ray tracing turned on.
In Control, we can choose between Medium and High settings while turning ray tracing on. Turning RT on with medium settings reduces the performance metrics by 33%. Turning the setting up to High reduces the performance metric further by 20%. The game is barely playable at this point. However, ray tracing in Control is fairly demanding. We are satisfied with the performance this card can output.
We were amazed by the performance metrics obtained in Cyberpunk. Turning on ray tracing using the low preset only takes away 14% of the game’s performance. Pushing the settings to Ultra takes a further 4% away from the game’s performance. The Psycho preset is insanely demanding on hardware and does not improve the visuals significantly. Thus, we did not test the card using that setting.
The numbers we obtained showcase how much CD Projekt Red has worked on the game’s optimization on PC. The game would stutter and drop several frames in some high-end cards like the RTX 3080 upon launch. But, the RX 6600 is capable of delivering playable experiences today.
Ray tracing in Fortnite is extremely demanding. We see the biggest performance loss after turning the setting on in this game. The game dropped below 30 frames, and cannot be considered playable provided it is an online multiplayer title that requires fast user responsiveness. But, players do have the option to turn off ray traced shadows and reflections, which does add a bunch of frames and pushes the framerate to the 50s. But, the visual difference is too negligible to lose 40 frames at that point.
Overclocking Experience
OC variants of cards are specifically binned. These cards can clock higher and achieve much more stable overclocks compared to the cards without the letters “OC” written on their boxes. The RX 6600 Eagle does not have an OC version. This means that these cards will not overclock well. But, we tried it anyway to check the quality of chips Gigabyte is using on these cards.
The results were underwhelming. The Radeon RX 6600 did not scale very well. The card was extremely sensitive to voltage tweaks. Changes made to the core clock and memory clock did not improve the scores by a collosal margin either. When we increased the core clock by 300 MHz, Time Spy scores increased by a meager 26 points. The results paint a similar idea across other benchmarks like Unigine Superposition and 3DMark Fire Strike.
Overall, RX 6000 cards do not scale well because they already run at pretty high core clocks and memory clocks. But, if you want to push your card anyway, do not get an RX 6600 Eagle.
Lighting and Software
The RX 6600 Eagle is a barebones card. It does not have any form of lighting built into it. This might be underwhelming for some users. But considering this card is a budget offering from the company, we see it as a perfect move.
This card comes bundled with the Aorus Engine software. We cannot say that this utility is as polished as some other options available like MSI Afterburner. In our testing, we found the software to be extremely clunky. It displays only a little information about the card, and overclocking control is not that polished either. GPU monitoring did not have a ton of features like real-time monitoring in-game or logging. A few of the software’s features refused to work. This includes the auto-update feature.
Overall, we are not a big fan of the bundled software. It needs more work to get to a refined state. However, this is an aspect that can be improved with software updates over time and thus is not an alarming issue. Also, users can use the MSI Afterburner software to control and monitor this card. So, uninstalling Aorus Engine is an easy way out.
Value and Conclusion
The RX 6600 Eagle is one of the cheapest variants of the GPU. It is currently available for around $310, and is very close to its MSRP of $300. This makes the card an interesting choice for the 1080p gaming crowd. And, this card does not disappoint. It has a few downpoints, like it cannot OC well and the bundled software needs some work. But, none of those can cause issues with its gaming performance. The card does not get awfully loud under load and neither do the temperatures get out of control. We think it is a solid card for anyone looking for a new video card for their shiny new system.