With all that's been happening in the GPU market lately, you'd think that AMD will be among those that will want to stop releasing new graphics cards. But perhaps this time, let's try to forget that we are in a crisis and appreciate hardware teases in the meantime.
VideoCardz just reported on a leak that apparently reveals the existence of the brand new RX 6600 series of graphics cards from AMD. Based on the Navi 23 chip, the GPUs were leaked by the German tech site Igor's Lab, again--the same site that has been leaking out a lot of new tech information lately.
If proven true, then these rumors point to the existence of the supposedly low-cost Navi GPU below the current low-end SKU in the RX 6000 product stack, the RX 6700 XT. The cards are apparently slated to release this June, which is pretty soon.
So, What Kind Of Specs Are We Talking About?
The rumored Radeon RX 6600 XT from AMD will be the first x600 card in its next-gen lineup, replacing the pretty powerful mid-ranger RX 5600 XT. With how it's named, it can be assumed that the 6600 XT is going to be a primarily mid-range card aimed at 1080p gaming, or maybe even entry-level 1440p.
Tom's Hardware reports that it does have the hardware capability to fit into the aforementioned category. The underlying architecture, called Navi 23, is alleged to feature 2048 stream processors, 128 compute units, and 8GB of GDDR6 memory. As for ray tracing, it has a total of 32 ray accelerators (or at least those might be ray tracing cores, but it will not be known until AMD announces the GPUs).
As for clock speeds, the card isn't a slouch either, according to Hexus who posted supposed GPU-Z screenshots of the card. The images state that the GPU runs at a 1689 MHz base clock, with a 2000 MHz boost. That 8GB GDDR6 memory might be held back a bit by that 128-bit bus, however.
Aside from the RX 6600 XT, AMD is also rumored to prepare a non-XT version which will be a cut-down version of its brother. The Radeon RX 6600 will have 256 fewer stream processors, but will have a similar memory configuration (8GB GDDR6, 128-bit bus). It's not much of a step-down if you compare the two cards, but maybe Team Red is looking to price the 6600 non-XT quite competitively (assuming they don't get nabbed by scalpers who will jack their prices way up).
Following In NVIDIA's Footsteps?
NVIDIA just confirmed the existence of the low-end Ampere cards RTX 3050 and RTX 3050 Ti in sub-$1000 gaming laptops. With the RX 6600 XT and 6600 non-XT leak, it seems like AMD is following in NVIDIA's footsteps with regards to their current-gen RT-capable cards. Though it's still not confirmed whether the new 6000 series GPUs will also be available to laptops first.
Should the Radeon RX 6600 series release soon, let's hope that it manages to fulfil its potential as killer 1080p/1440p cards without being affected by the graphics card shortage.
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
