Radeon RX 7600 XT Review: Can AMD Eliminate The RTX 4060?

[Music] welcome back to Harbor unbox today we're taking our first look at amd's new radon RX 7600 XT which is basically just an RX 7600 with a 16 gab vram buffer so it probably could have and maybe should have just been called the RX 7600 16 GB but I suppose at least it's not an inferior product with the same name I the bars set pretty low but we have seen some pretty dodgy stuff over the years anyway I'm Keen to see what a 16 GB 7600 has for us but before we find out today's sponsor spot is brought to you by Asus and their latest range of z790 motherboards supporting 12th 13th and 14th generation Intel core processors for those of you seeking a budget friendly option one of our favorite z790 motherboards is the tough gaming z790 Plus available in either ddr4 or ddr5 variants with and without Wi-Fi there's also the recently updated version called the tough gaming z790 Pro featuring ddr5 exclusively but for those of you seeking something a bit more high-end we've tested a number of excellent z790 STS boards and for my personal gaming system I'm using the r stricks z790 f gaming Wi-Fi Which packs loads of USB 3 ports PD 3.13 W charging and a powerful vcor vrm using 16 90 AMP power stages and right now for Australian you'll receive a free Corsair Vengeance RGB 32 GB ddr5 6000 C 36 memory kit when you purchase select Asus z790 motherboards with an Asus all-in-one liquid cooler so for more information please check the link in the video description okay so as I've already said the 7600 XT is basically just a 7600 with twice as much vram and that's true the only other change though is a very minor 4% boost to the core clocks from 2,655 5 MHz to 2755 MHz and this is something you can manually do on any 7600 so it's hardly a unique feature of the 7600 XT so like the 7600 the new XT model packs 248 cores with 128 texture mapping units and 64 RS there's also 32 RT cores 2 MB of L2 cache and 32 MB of L3 cache apart from the memory capacity the memory subsystem is the same so that means the 7600 XT uses a 128bit wide memory bus with 18 GBS per second memory for a bandwidth of 288 GB per second and what all this means is in order to double the vram capacity AMD had to go with a clam shell design like what Nvidia did with the 16 GB RTX 460 TI however whereas Nvidia charged a $100 premium for the extra memory AMD is charging a $60 premium taking the MSRP from $270 for the r RX 7600 to $330 us for the 7600 XT so I think a question potential buyers will ask is is the 7600 XT worth the extra $60 us over the standard model and I suspect addressing that question will be very difficult as measuring the improvements offered by 16 GB of vram can be difficult and for a few reasons firstly even once you're able to find a game that exceeds 8 GB of vram and there are plenty of examples out there now it's not always obvious that there's a problem when watching the frame rate counter most games avoid performance related issues by simply not loading the textures that can't be stored in the graphics memory resulting in a visual downgrade with stuff like Blurry looking textures missing details or bad Popin and for game developers this is preferable as the Alternatives which would include stuff like crashing or unplayable performance they simply result in an angry customer and you know most Gamers they're not going to be blaming a lack of vram still we have seen examples where performance tanks and games even crash but this is a less common occurrence in running out of vram the point is simply benchmarking an 8 GB and 16 GB graphics card and looking at the FPS counter it doesn't tell you the whole story so be aware of that as we go over the numbers and if you want a visual comparison of how 8 GB and 16 GB memory buffers compare in modern games then I suggest checking out my 16 GB RTX 46ti review as the rules applied there also apply here there's not too much Point redoing all of that testing because as I said the results apply to all 8 GB and 16 GB graphics cards now for testing we're using our ryzen 7 7800x 3D test system with 32 GB of DDR 56000 memory using the latest display drivers all data has been validated and updated for this video and in total I've tested 12 games some with and without Raad tracing and the resolutions are Focus for this review will be 10 1080P and 1440p okay let's take a look at what we've got first up we have Resident Evil 4 and at 1080p we're looking at a surprisingly large 16% uplift for the 7600 XT over the standard 7600 making it just 6% slower than the RTX 460 so that's a really good Improvement and it would appear as though the extra vram is coming in handy here oddly though the margin is reduced to 9% at 1440p suggesting that there are other limitations hitting the na'vi 33 GPU harder than vram capacity in any case the 7600 XT is now able to match the RTX 460 with 71 FPS on average moving on to a plague tail requim we see that at 1080p the 7600 XT is just 3% faster than the 7600 so the difference here purely being that factory overclock but that does mean that the 7600 XT is now 11% faster than the RTX 4060 then when jumping up to 1440p we see that the 7600 XT is just 2% faster than the standard model and 6% faster than the RTX 460 so similar performance across the board there probably something to keep an eye on as we go over all of these results is the 6700 XT which currently costs $33 so the same price as the 7600 XT and here we see that the newer radon GPU is 24% slower so that's certainly not good next up we have cyber Punk 2077 Phantom Liberty and here we're looking at a mild 8% uplift for the 7600 XT over the 7600 making the XT model 6% faster than the RTX 4060 we're also looking at a 6% uplift for the 6700 XT at 1440p making it 8% faster than the RTX 460 though it was also 7% slower than the 6700 XT performance in Dying Light to is much the same as here we find a mere 2% uplift when going from the 7600 to the new XT model and with 96 FPS on average it matched the RTX 4060 exactly and it's a similar story at 440p here the 7600 XT was good for 63 FPS on average which was one more frame than that of the 7600 But one less than the RTX 4060 and a lot less than the 6700 XT in fact it was 177% slower than the previous generation GPU the performance uplift in Watchdogs Legion at 1080p is a little better but not exactly mindblowing we're getting a 6% boost here though that does make the 7600 XT 9% faster than the RTX 460 jumping up to 1440p doesn't change the margins the 7600 XT is still just 6% faster than the standard 7600 it's also 11% slower than the 6700 XT so that's quite a disappointing result the 7600 XT was able to provide an additional 10% performance in forsa Horizon 5 at 1080p averaging 114 FPS which meant it was 133% faster than the RTX 460 and just 3% slower than the 6700 XT and that additional vram becomes even more useful at 40 and 40p and now the 7600 XT is 133% faster than the standard 7600 and a massive 22% faster than the RTX 460 Warhammer 3 isn't a very demanding title when it comes to vram at least not by modern standards and as such 8 GB of vram is more than enough and therefore the 7600 XT only has its core clock to fall back on providing a m 3% performance increase when compared to the 7600 then at 1440p it's just 2% faster with 55 FPS on average so basically the same performance as the RTX 4060 moving on to Spider-Man remastered we're looking at more of the same here just a 5% increase for the 7600 XT over the standard model which means the XT is 133% slower than the RTX 4060 increasing the resolution to 14 40p actually reduces the already small margin and now the XT is offering a mere 3% uplift though now it is just 6% slower than the RTX 4060 next up we have Hogwarts Legacy and again at 1080p the 7600 XT is 5% faster than the 7600 as well as the RTX 4060 and then jumping up to 1440p it chose a mere 4% increase though that was enough to lead the RTX 4060 by double digits now offering 133% greater performance Halo infinite is an interesting title to include in this video because it's a great example of how difficult it is to test vram capacity for example using the ultra quality preset does require more than 8 GB of vram and yet the 7600 XT is just 2% faster than the 7600 however this game doesn't suffer a performance hit when played with insufficient memory rather textures just go missing and we've shown the difference between 8 GB and 16 GB gpus multiple times in the past last the missing texture problem is even more noticeable at 1440p but again when're looking at the frame rate counter you'll almost see no difference between the 7600 XT and 7600 The Last of Us Part One on the other hand does suffer a performance hit when running out of vram at 1080p the 7600 XT is 20% faster than the 7600 and a massive 58% faster when comparing 1% lows so the increased varum capacity is of massive benefit here even at 1080p then at 1440p the 8 GB cards are a stuttering mess in the area of the game we use for testing the 7600 XT solves this and while the frame rates aren't amazing suboptimal I'd say the game is certainly still playable at 47 FPS finally we have Hitman 3 and here the 7600 XT is offering a decent 10% performance uplift hitting 142 FPS opposed to 129 FPS with the standard 7600 that also made it a massive 30% faster than the rtx4 60 then at 1440p we're still looking at a 10% Improvement for the XT over the standard model which meant it was 28% faster than the RTX 4060 now one downside to adding more vrm is power usage and we see that here in Hitman 3 where total system usage was increased by 16% that means when compared to the RTX 4060 total system usage is 33% greater but the 7600 XT was 28% faster in this test so performance per wat ends up being pretty similar that said though efficiency is much worse than a game like Spider-Man remastered as here the 7600 XT pushed total system usage 33% higher than that of the RTX 4060 while delivering 6% less performance so that's not great okay so now it's time to go over the 12 game average data and we'll start with the 1080p results here the 7600 XT was on average 8% faster than the standard 7600 and 6% faster than the RTX 460 so about what you'd probably expect to see across a range of games then at 1440p the 7600 XT was just 5% faster than the 7600 When comparing the average frame rate but a much more substantial 19% margin can be seen when comparing 1% lows so that's an impressive set of results for the 7600 XT though it was also 12% slower than the 6700 XT now although I didn't bother going over the 4K data as this isn't really a 4K GPU I do have the data so let's take a quick look at the 12 average here the 7600 XT was 9% faster on average and 25% faster when comparing 1% lows it also blew the RTX 460 out of the water increasing the average frame rate by 23% next we're going to take a look at R tracing performance and we'll start with Resident Evil 4 using the r tracing quality preset at 1080p the 7600 XT was really no faster than the 7600 making it 18% slower than the RTX 460 which is a disappointing result result a plag toil recm though kills at GB gpus when using the ultra quality preset with r tracing enabled the 7600 is completely unusable and the RTX 460 is really no better the 4060 TI 8 GB looks okay based on the 41 FPS average frame rate but the 1% lows reveal just how poor the experience is the fact that the 1% lows of the 7600 XT are 56% greater as one thing but it's the discrepancy between the 1% lows and the average frame rate that really tell the story for example there's a 43% margin between the 1% lows and the average frame rate for the 7600 XT but a 128% difference for the 8 GB 460 TI still the 7600 XT is pretty slow here so you will have to use upscaling which frankly sucks in terms of visual quality at 1080p doesn't really matter if it's FSR or dlss all upscaling techniques are pretty bad at 1080p so you would probably be better off just disabling R tracing all together at which point the 8 GB models are perfectly fine now cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty has been tested using the r tracing medium preset at 1080P and despite that frame rates are very low on these more entry level gpus even the RTX 4060 was good for just 38 FPS on average and again using dlss to boost performance isn't an optimal solution given how poor upscaling quality is at 1080P and likewise frame generation also doesn't work very well when the Basse frame rate is just 38 FPS so there's no good fix for this the 7600 XT was 17% faster than the 7600 But also 26% slow on the RTX 460 so while rate tracing support on the GeForce GP is questionable here it's completely useless on the Radeon gpus Spider-Man remastered has been tested using the highquality preset with high quality R tracing and at 1080p the performance is excellent the 7600 XT spat out at 104 FPS on average which is great though it's really no better than the standard 7600 this also meant that it was 17% slower than the RTX 460 the 7600 XT fell just short of 60 FPS in Star Wars Jedi Survivor using rate tracing with the Epic quality preset making it just 5% slower than the RTX 4060 it was also 10% faster than the standard 7600 But also 11% slower than the 6700 XT finally we have for and the Epic quality settings with Hardware rate tracing enabled is a bit too much for the 7600 XT as it was good for just 35 FPS on average a 9% increase from the 7600 But 20% slower than the RTX 4060 okay so across the six games tested the 7600 XT was on average 30% faster than the standard 7600 or a massive 64% faster when comparing the 1% lows so that's a serious performance uplift there by simply doubling the vram but of course of course as we saw in examples such as a plague toil requium that was the difference between playable and completely unplayable performance still despite having just 8 GB of vram the GeForce RTX 4060 was faster overall delivering 133% greater performance on average though the 1% lows were much the same also something worth noting is the fact that the Arc a770 was as fast or typically faster than the 7600 XT across these R Racing titles making it not just more affordable but also better for R tracing now it's time to check out the cost per Frame data and of course we will start with an MSRP comparison sadly with an extra $60 us tacked onto the price the 7600 XT is much worse value than the original 7600 increasing the cost per frame based on our 1440p data by 177% that said though the added benefit of doubling the vram it's not always realized in these benchmarks as I noted in Halo infinite for example so the fact that the 7600 XT and RTX 460 represent similar value in terms of cost per frame in games like Halo the 7600 XT can enable a much higher visual experience simply because it can load all required textures moreover if you want 16 GB from the current Nvidia lineup you have to buy the RTX 4060 ti6 gab which is only 20% faster than the 7600 XT despite costing nearly 40 % more and that's at the new $450 us MSRP anyway msrps don't always reflect real world pricing so let's take a look at the current retail prices right so in the current market the 7600 XT doesn't look great and that's because for roughly the same money you can buy the 6700 XT which still packs 12 GB of vram but was an average 133% faster and perhaps worse still is the RX 6800 which is a 16 GB graphics card and although it currently costs 27% more it's also 42% faster and much more usable in situations where you want to enable Ray tracing there's also Intel's AR a770 Which packs 16 GB of vram for just $300 making it better value than the 7600 XT now before wrapping things up let's quickly take a look at some custom board partner designs and please note there isn't a reference model version of the 7600 XT the model I use for testing is Sapphire's pulse a reasonably compact dual fan model that's powered by dual 8 Pin PCI power connectors though sadly it doesn't support dual bars functionality for testing it was installed inside an ATX case with a room temperature of 21° and was placed under gaming load for an hour after an hour The Junction temperature picked at 69° with a GPU Hotpot temperature of 87° and this was achieved with a fan speed of just 1300 RPM so a very impressive result the memory also peaked at 86° which is acceptable and clocked at 2,238 MHz with the cores typically operating at 2,595 MHz also on hand for testing is the XFX Speedster quick 309 7600 XT which is a much larger higher end looking model but also the quick 308 RX 7600 is an MSRP model available for $270 us so it's quite possible that the quick 309 will also be MSRP model selling for $330 us and if so it's a very impressive model for that price packing dual bar support a triple fan cooler massive heat sink and a full aluminium back plate and performance-wise it's very good The Junction temperature peaked at 62° and the hot spot hit 83° so both slightly less than that of the sapphire pulse though the fan speed was also slightly higher at 1600 RPM we also saw a similar memory temperature at 85° with the big difference here being the operating clock speed as the cor is typically clocked at 2750 MHz and that's 6% higher than that of the sapphire model so a good result there for XFX then finally we have the gigabyte gaming OC 7600 XT and these gaming OC models have been a bit hit and miss lately this 7600 XT version for example it does look quite good it's a relatively large model with a triple fan cooler the heat sink is very big and it includes a full-size aluminium back playay sadly though it was quite loud with a fan speed of 2,000 RPM and despite that the operating temperatures weren't amazing sure the junction temperature 56° was good but the GPU Hotpot still hit 84° a degree higher than that of the XFX model the memory temperatures though they were pretty good peaking at 78° and that's a 7° improvement from the speeds to Qui 309 so overall it is a decent product but without dual bias support for something like a silent bias it's not the most optimal out-of thebox experience and temperatures will likely suffer when turning the fan speed down from 2,000 RPM to something more suitable like 1600 or even 1300 RPM okay so there you have it amd's new radon RX 7600 XT we've just looked at a hi benchmarks what do we actually make of this thing I think it's fair to say that evaluating a product like this is a bit difficult because the cost per Frame data doesn't necessarily tell the full story and that's because the frame rate uh it's not always an Apples to Apples comparison like what we see in Halo infinite for example although two cards can be producing similar FPS numbers the resulting image quality can be quite difficult so yeah not Apples to Apples data and we absolutely hate that unfortunately because of the way most games handle insufficient vram you have to carefully analyze stuff like image quality but even then it can be difficult as many games will require you to play them for extended periods of time in in order to fill the vram buffer Halo for example can take 15 to 30 minutes before the 8 GB cards run into trouble and when they do the FPS counter it's none the wiser rather you'll notice blurry textures and missing details without question though 16 GB of vram is much better than eight but also the navi 33 GPU it's not super powerful so you're less likely to be running at resolutions and quality settings that will saturate an 8 GB buffer though of course you still can and it certainly does happen but how often will depend on the games you play there's also the future games angle how well is an 8 GB 7600 going to age over the next few years when compared to the 7600 XT probably not that well despite the fact that these are lower in gpus and as an example the 8 GB version of the RX 580 Works significantly better than the 4 GB model using medium to lowquality settings in modern games and in fact you can turn the textures up for a much higher quality presentation ation so naturally we can't expect the same thing to happen with 8 GB versus 16 GB graphics cards and we'll probably see that come to light over the next few years of course we already are seeing examples of this but I expect it to be much more common place in the near future I think a $60 us premium for an extra 8 GB of vram is decent but the problem for me is just the starting price when I reviewed the RX 7600 about 8 months ago now I said it really needed to cost no more than $230 us and I stand firmly behind that claim my Hope was that the 16 GB version would step in and match the price of the RTX 4060 essentially eliminating the GeForce competition at that price point but at $330 us it's rather an expensive entry level GPU and the argument could be made that the 6700 XT for around $340 us right now is a better deal it also doesn't shut down the RTX 460 which will remain a viable option delivering similar performance and value with generally better Raad tracing performance though I do question how useful RT support is at this performance tier there's also the arc a770 16 GB for $300 which is a seriously good deal though it might come with a few headaches as we're yet to test an AR GPU and a reasonable range of games and not have it run into at least one annoying problem but things are certainly getting better on that front at the end of the day the 7600 XT is another frustrating release from AMD as they once again just managed to miss the Mark had they released this thing at $300 us it would have matched the value of the 6700 XT coming in a little bit slower but also a bit cheaper with a bit more vram it would have eliminated the RTX 4060 and while it might have done the same to the $270 RX 7600 they could have either discounted or discontinued that product really what AMD should have done here was release the RX 7600 at $300 8 months ago but with 16 gabt of memory I mean ideally I would have wanted that product at $270 but given what we ended up getting I think a 16 GB model for $300 8 months ago would have been a much better option for everyone well everyone but Nvidia so while it is nice to have more options and I really do prefer the 16 GB 7600 XT to that of the 8 GB 7600 think it's going to be a much better investment this particular product it's also not necessarily a product that I would hire High recommend and it's certainly still a tossup between something like this and the RTX 4060 which is a bit of a shame because AMD really could have shut the door on Nvidia at this price point so with that let me know what you think about the 7600 XT in the comments section below and of course I will be reading your feedback and taking that on board for future evaluations for now we are done with this one if you liked the video you know what to do subscribe for more content because believe it or not we have more new GPU content coming up on the channel very short shortly so you're not going to want to miss that also we have float plane patreon if you want more hard R box goodness signing up to either one of those things will give you access to exclusive Discord server monthly live streams Q&A behind the scenes content lot of cool stuff there so check that out if you're interested but if not that's perfectly fine and of course I would like to just thank you for watching this video if you made it this far then yeah we uh really do appreciate you so good job there but yeah nothing else to say really other than I'm your host Steve and I will see you again next time [Music] [Music]

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 156,979

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: Lcb1dpe2IhE

Length: 26min 48sec (1608 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 24 2024