AMD Radeon RX 7600 Graphics Card Review – Performance at Watt Cost?

Just a day after the RTX 4060 Ti review embargo is lifted, AMD just announced the Radeon RX 7600 Graphics Card alongside the embargo lifts for reviews. The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is the third graphics card released under AMD’s RDNA 3 Architecture. Priced at $269 US, the RX 7600 is set to compete with the much pricier RTX 4060, RTX 4060 Ti, and Intel Arc A750 graphics card. Let’s see if the RX 7600 has a place in today’s market, especially considering that it’s up against a market of used GPUs as well as its predecessors like the AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT, RX 6600, and RX 6600 XT.

AMD RDNA 3 Architecture

AMD implements a chiplet-style design on its RDNA 3-powered graphics cards making them similar to the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs. Like its Ryzen counterparts, RDNA3 GPUs have a 5nm Graphics Compute Die and a 6nm Memory Cache Die. These two dies have a 5.3TB/s interconnect, making it the fastest chiplet interconnect available to date.

AMD Radiance Display Engine and Dual Media Engine

Like the AMD RX 7900 Series graphics cards, the newly launched Radeon RX 7600 GPU utilizes the DisplayPort 2.1 interface thanks to the Radiance Display Engine. The new Radiance Display engine doubles the 54 Gbps Display Link Bandwidth per port over RDNA 2, to support maximum refresh rates of 1440p at 900Hz, 4k at 480Hz, and 8K at 165Hz. This makes the RX 7900 XTX. RX 7900 XT, and RX 7600 compatible with upcoming DisplayPort 2.1 monitors.

Like the rest of the Nvidia RTX 40 Series and Arc A Series lineup, AMD’s GPUs including the RX 7600 also have hardware-accelerated support for AV1 thanks to the new Dual Media Engine. The new Dual Media Engine allows two simultaneous Encode or Decode streams for AVC and HEVC up to 8K60. Alongside the new Dual Media Engine is added support for more quality-of-life improvements for streamers such as AMD Noise Suppression

AMD HYPR-RX

AMD Hyper-RX is a feature we’re most excited about but unfortunately, it’s still not available until the first half of 2023. AMD Hypr-RX is a one-click solution that instantly enables AMD Super Resolution, AMD Radeon Boost, and AMD Radeon Anti-Lag providing hassle-free performance uplift and latency improvements. AMD Hyper-RX will have automatic integration in AMD-supported game titles.

AMD Radeon RX 7600

AMD positions the Radeon RX 7600 as a 1080p gaming graphics card targeting the same audience as Nvidai’s RTX 4060 series. Like Nvidia, AMD targets users that sport a GTX 1060, or RTX 2060 to upgrade to the RX 7600 as well as noting that it’s a faster graphics card versus the RTX 3060 and its predecessor, the RX 6600. Priced at $269, the RX 7600 competes with older RTX 30 series and RX 6000 series graphics cards as well as the now low-priced Intel Arc A series GPUs, not to mention the newly released RTX 4060 Ti 8GB at $399 as well as the upcoming RTX 4060 coming in July for $299.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 Specs

Specs-wise, we’re seeing a similar decision path made by Nvidia applied to AMD’s RX 7600. Like Nvidia, AMD has opted for an 8GB frame buffer on the RX 7600 despite marketing its RX 7900 series and older graphics cards being the better choice as these GPUs have higher VRAM than Nvidia counterparts. Despite the same 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, the VRAM on the RX 7600 has faster clocks and higher bandwidth compared to both the RX 6600 XT and RX 6600 albeit in the same 128-bit memory bus. Unlike Nvidia which had the same launch price gen on gen, AMD has lowered the launch price of its x600 series card by $60.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 Unboxing and Overview

Like its team green counterpart, AMD has used the same RX 7900 XTX packaging design on the RX 7600 albeit in a much more smaller format due to the RX 7600’s design. Despite being a mainstream entry-level $269 SEP card, the packaging makes it feel more premium – it’s a shame that there’s no direct AMD reference model available in the Philippines.

The RX 7600 is a very cute card for its size as its length is only about 3/4s the width of the a standard ATX motherboard. Still, AMD has managed to cramp in a dual fan setup to cool the Navi 33 XL GPU. Its design is a shorter and more compact version of the RX 7900 XTX’s reference cooler. The dominantly black color scheme and somewhat sandblasted finish make it feel like a premium GPU.

Kudos to AMD for providing a full metal backplate on its sub $300 graphics card. Like the RX 7900 XTX, the backplate has bumps all over and the red triangle highlights albeit in different placements compared to its bigger brother.

AMD designed the side of the RX 7600 to have an exposed side with little-to-no obstructions except for the small bump for the Radeon text to be visible on the side for optimal cooling. As said in our RX 7900 XTX review, this design has to be the cleanest GPU side we’ve seen to date.

AMD has ditched the latest 12VHPWR connector in favor of user compatibility by using a single 8-pin PCIE power connector for the Radeon RX 7600. AMD has also gone an effort to place its 8-pin PCIE connector to the side of the GPU. The RX 7600 has a rated TGP of 165 Watts which is 5W higher than the previous gen RX 6600 XT and the recently launched Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB.

While both the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT reference cards have a USB Type-C port on their video IO, the RX 7600 revets to the standard three Display Port 2.1 port and one HDMI 2.1a port. I personally would’ve preferred the USB type-C port for future-proofing but it’s understood that adding it would’ve made the $269 much higher.

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 is currently the shortest reference GPU we’ve seen to date. It’s also the shortest nonsingle fan card we have in the labs. Its compact size and 165W TGP make it an ideal card for compact and ITX SFF builds.

Benchmark Setup and Test Methodology

Gadget Pilipinas’ testing philosophy is to provide detail-oriented results as accurately as possible so that our readers can replicate our tests given that these conditions are met. Different benchmarking apps and sequences are used depending on the component or device being tested.

We use CapFrameX 1.7.1 Beta as our primary FPS capture and analysis tool for all our gaming benchmarks. The latest build version of Windows 11 Pro and WHQL-certified drivers are used for our benchmarks. Readings such as temperatures and power draws are recorded using HWINFO64, and other relevant software for cross-checking.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 Gaming Benchmarks

COUNTER-STRIKE: GLOBAL OFFENSIVE

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive aka CSGO is an 11-year-old first-person shooter title that’s still widely popular despite its old Source Engine. CS:GO is a great game to test out CPU performance as the game is heavily CPU-dependent like any other FPS title. Our CS:GO benchmark process uses ULLETICAL’s FPS Benchmark workshop mod to measure the hardware’s performance.

Marvel’s Spider-man: Miles Morales

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony is one of the most popular PC port titles last 2022. Its one of the few modern game titles that support upscaling technologies FSR, DLSS, and XeSS making it a great title to use for benchmarks.

CALL OF DUTY MODERN WARFARE

The latest installment in the Call of Duty franchise is a sequel to the much-loved Modern Warfare game that launched in 2019. Call of Duty Modern Warfare II is one of the most demanding titles to date, pushing the latest hardware from Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. CODMW2 is one of the few games that comes with the DLSS feature without Ray Tracing.

Far Cry 6

FarCry 5 is an FPS game published by Ubisoft and uses the Dunia engine. It heavily relies on and takes advantage of DirectX 11 to render a realistic environment that makes it taxing to both the CPU and GPU. Far Cry 6 is the latest installment in the franchise which utilizes DirectX 12 to run the virtual world of Yara.

Rainbow Six Siege

Rainbow Six Seige is one of the few popular AAA games that’s still popular in 2021 due to its competitive gameplay mechanics. R6S uses the AnvilNext game engine, which the game’s publisher, Ubisoft, developed. As of writing, Rainbow Six Siege is currently the most popular Tom Clancy title beating out Wildlands, Breakpoint, and even Division 2.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably the most hyped game of 2020. Developed by CD Projekt Red, the dystopian open-world, action-adventure RPG sports is one of the most demanding titles to date. Cyberpunk 2077 also supports three Ray Tracing settings as well as DLSS which makes the game a great tool to measure Ray tracing performance for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.

Shadow of The Tomb Raider

Shadow of The Tomb Raider or SOTR is the latest installment of the Lara Croft Tomb Raider franchise. Developed by Square Enix, SOTR uses the Foundation engine and is further enhanced by Eidos Montreal. SOTR is also one of the first games to come out with Ray Tracing and DLSS support.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus is the third Metro game trilogy based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels. The game is a first-person shooter with survival horror and stealth elements. The post-apocalyptic game uses 4A Engine by 4A games. Released last 2019, Metro Exodus remains to be one of the most graphically pleasing and demanding games that’s popular to date.

Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is the latest franchise installment from Ubisoft. It’s by far the most popular and stable Assassin’s Creed title since AC IV: Black Flag. It uses the AnvilNext 2.0 game engine, an updated version of Rainbow Six Siege’s game engine, and uses the DirectX 12 API.

F1 22

F1 2020 is the official video game of the 2020 Formula 1 and Formula 2 championships developed by Codemasters. F1 2020 is the twelfth installment in the franchise and uses the Ego Engine 3.0. F1 2020 is a good representation of racing games thanks to its realistic graphics and fairly demanding spec requirements.

HORIZON ZERO DAWN

Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most popular console-port RPG developed by Guerilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Horizon Zero Dawn is a multi-award-winning action RPG, and its popularity resulted in an exclusive Complete Edition game bundle on Steam.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 Temps and Power Draw

With a peak power draw of 166.203W, the RX 7600 managed to record a peak temperature of 76°C. Compared to the RTX 4060 Ti GPUs in our test suite, 76°C is high considering it’s a 165W card but when you take into account the size of the cooler, 76° is acceptable. Its high idle temp at 39°C, however, doesn’t sit quite well as a card of this size should have an idle of at least below 33°C.

AMD has reached out to us saying that our press drivers have an issue that affects the fan curve performance particularly when the fans will immediately drop their speed after a workload has ended. This issue may have been the reason why the idle temps are higher than what we expected. According to AMD, the public launch driver will have this issue fixed so expect your RX 7600 GPUs to have a much lower idle temps than ours. As far as our testing goes, the temperatures didn’t reach to a level where the card throttle or no longer can sustain its boost speeds, so given the same configuration and conditions you should have similar FPS numbers with our benchmarks.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card despite having a great 1080p performance relative to its $269 price tag is undercut by cheaper RTX 30 series and RX 6600 cards flooding the market. On games where anything memory related isn’t an issue, the Radeon RX 7600 beats RTX 3060 12G in various titles by as much as 40% in our benchmarks. However, in the case where VRAM is needed, particularly in higher resolutions, the RTX 3060 closes the gap and in some cases, matches the RX 7600 GPU. Compared to the newly launched RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, the RX 7600 is on average 20% slower in 1080p and the gap is considerably higher as we get to higher resolutions despite both GPUs having the same memory size and bus width – probably due to the RTX 4060 TI’s higher L2 cache.

Despite all of this, the AMD Radeon RX 7600’s saving grace is its price to performance. Originally, the card was set to launch at $299, rivaling the upcoming $299 RTX 4060 in July. Since Nvidia’s announcement of the RTX 4060 family, AMD has lowered the launch price of the RX 7600 to only $269 – a much-welcomed change. That said, if the card were priced at $299 we would be hard press to recommend the RX 7600 as the impending RTX 4060 at the same price would’ve had a better feature set namely DLSS 3, Reflex, and RTX Super Resolution. Going back to the $269 SRP or roughly Php 18,000 converted, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 offers a competitive price as the “discount” is for users only looking for pure raster performance above anything. As we’ve said in our RTX 4060 Ti review, 8GB VRAM seems to be a deal breaker for some as the same “performance penalty” can be seen on the RX 7600, especially on higher resolutions, and made more evident compared to the RTX 3060 12G.

That said, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 is a solid value option for gamers looking to get the best price to performance to power efficiency available for 1080p gaming. It sports the latest features such as AV1 encoding and decoding, the latest display output technology, and of course, ray tracing and upscaling support despite being clunkier than its team green counterpart. So, should you get the RX 7600? The answer will depend on the type of games you play at 1080p and if you’re willing to forego team green’s exclusive feature set for the sake of pure raster performance, power efficiency, and a slightly discounted price. Else, you’re better of with the previous gen RX 6000 series GPUs or wait for upcoming GPUs like the RTX 4060 or a higher tier RX 7000 series card.

Grant Soriano

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Grant is a Financial Management graduate from UST. His passion for gadgets and tech crossed him over in the industry where he could apply his knowledge as an enthusiast and in-depth analytic skills as a Finance Major. His passion allows him to earn at the same time help Gadget Pilipinas' readers in making smart, value-based decisions and purchases with his reviews and guides.