PowerColor Fighter AMD Radeon RX 6600 Graphics Card with 8GB GDDR6 Memory

This card is a bit of mixed bag. If you judge it for what it is - and not what it could have been if AMD tried harder - it's arguably the overall best choice in a new budget card and/or if looking for lower power consumption. It is a sad commentary on the state of budget cards that this counts as probably the best. But there simply is no competition in this segment. Nvidia has done a new budget card in 5-6 years.As far as 3D (games) performance goes this card is about as fast as Nvidia's GTX 1060 and AMD's Radeon 570/580 . Cards released in 2016/2017. The GTX 1650 (released 2019) is a bit slower but if you search you can find versions of that card that can run on the PCIe bus alone - no extra power cable needed. Appealing if upgrading an older computer with a modest power supply.My primary goal was finding the overall best combination of low power draw and still decent performance. The RX 580 can be had new here on Amazon for around $110. Performance is close but it it's rated at 185 watts and under stress pushes 200 watts. The RX 570 cannot be found new but lots of used on eBay. A claimed 120 watt power draw but they lie. The real world power consumption is very close to the RX 580.The GTX 1060 is probably faster than any of the other cards I've mentioned (not by much) but is rated at 180 watts and while a six year old design is still more expensive than any of the cards mentioned, including the RX 6500 XT being reviewed.A few other things. Nvidia cards are well known to stress 3D performance above 2D. So if you primarily play games the Nvidia cards are good to look at. But if you are doing a lot of picture editing or content creation, the 2D scores of Nvidia cards are notably lower. And AMD's cards are well known to suck substantially more power when using a two monitor set up versus a single monitor. One of the appeals of the RX 6400 and RX 6500 XT - for me - is that power consumption for two monitors remains very reasonable.So anyway.... This card - the RX 6500 XT - is basically the little engine that could. It performs substantially better than you would think looking at the specs. Yes, only PCIe 4x lanes and running PCI 3 vs PCI 4 lowers performance. Yes, a narrow PCI bus (64 bit) and only 4GBs of memory. But the memory is extremely fast. And the clock speed of the GPU itself is extremely high. So if you keep game settings moderate so as to not exceed the 4GB onboard memory, this card delivers.Also of interest is that if your motherboard supports it, you can help this card a lot with faster system memory. Actually, AMD's cards seems especially found of faster memory. I'm running DDR 4 4000MHz memory on PCIe 3.0 and synthetic benchmarks are all 10-15% faster than normal for PCIe 4.0.Power draw - something really important to me just a hobbyist - is also appealing. The smaller brother RX 6400 only draws 53 watts and never needs an extra power connector. But it has just been cut back to much and is.... well .... not fast. Nvidia's GTX 1650 is rated at 75 watts (maximum for PCIe only) but is difficult to hard to find not requiring an extra power connector. This card, the RX 6500 XT - is rated at 107 watts and does require an extra six pin power connector. But my on tests using a watt meter (total system draw) and those of professional reviewers all say the same thing. The RX 6500 XT isn't using a lot of power. Single monitor idle is 2 watts. Dual monitor is 10 watts. Running games it is rarely above 85 watts and max at 100. Even if your computer is older and power supply low wattage, you can probably get a four to six pin adaptor and run this card.Overall, the card strikes a good balance between price, performance and power consumption. Sure, it would be a lot better card with 6 or 8GB of memory. Or more PCIe lanes and faster bus. Or both. But then consumers would probably have no reason to purchase the more expensive (and still a great value) RX 6600. At least AMD tries to offer a couple of new budget cards. Something Nvidia hasn't bothered with for a long, long time.

The AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is an outstanding graphics card that truly delivers providing smooth gameplay across a wide range of titles, whether you're into competitive gaming or immersive single-player experiences. Thanks to its powerful architecture ample VRAM, RX 7800 XT handles high-resolution high frame rates with ease.The card also runs cool and quiet, thanks to AMD's efficient cooling design, which means you can enjoy extended gaming sessions without overloading your system. latest technologies, such as ray tracing and AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution, enhances visual fidelity and performance even further.Installation and setup are straightforward, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced enthusiasts alike. Overall, the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT is a reliable, high-performance GPU that offers fantastic value, making it a great choice for gamers looking to elevate their experience without breaking the bank.

This is my first AMD card and I haven't had any issues other than windows since I got it 4 months ago. The card is very big and does consume a lot of watts so a large case and a psu capable of handling it is a good idea. I get insanely good temps with this card I haven't gotten it over 80 C and I've tired. I mean I could disable the fans and burn it out but why. If you going solely for video editing I think NVIDIA would be the way to go but that's not something I'm into so doesn't really matter to me. I seen a lot of negative reviews in regards to this card working initially and then having a lot of issues after the first month or so. I can't comment on why other peoples cards have failed but I can say that windows like to think they can make AMDs products better than they can and will forcefully and without your consent (like a rapist) install over your already working perfectly fine drivers causing lots of issues like people have described. Ever with driver installs disabled through the GPO and turned off in the windows components and windows update areas they will still install their garbage drivers over AMD's perfectly fine drivers. Windows is very aggressive about owing your property and making your decisions for you, kind of like how windows will install it's boot loader onto EVERY HARDDRIVE YOU HAVE all at once which makes sense if their trying to make sure you don't use or own any other operating system as windows does not place nice with other operating systems. Also keeping your drives mounted even after the computer is shut off is kind of dickish I mean since they keep it mounted you can't install anything onto it, just unnecessarily makes it harder to move to a better, faster, more reliable and less rapey operating system. Forcing a person to have a .live account just to use something they bought is a dick move. Fun fact when I installed Linux onto my computer for the very first time the next time I tried to logged into my windows account I was locked out of my own account on my own computer and was told that having to wait 2 hours to use my own computer wasn't that big of a deal and I disagree. Slapping someones keys of of their hands and telling them their not allowed to drive their car that they payed for and they pay insurance and they put gas in would be an absurd thing to do because you don't get to make that decision for someone else. Reason I was given for being locked out of my own computer was that it could have been either too many failed attempts at logging in or due to multiple systems shut downs in a short period of time, both were untrue as I'm the only person who uses my computer. After being allowed to use my own computer again guess what happened they very next day after 0 failed log ins and 1 perfectly normal system shut down yea locked out again. So this video card for me has worked absolutely wonderfully but if you're on windows do your new lil AMD buddy a huge favor and watch his back because windows will brick him without thought and without remorse. Their forums are littered with people having this exact same issue and instead of acknowledging consent as something that matters or allowing others to make decisions for themselves they still continue to forcefully install garbage updates that break your stuff. 2 fatal hardware errors was enough for me. Also when you're forced into reinstalling the proper drivers make sure you are 100% disconnected from the internet because if you aren't the first chance windows gets to get all rapey on you it will and consent (disabling automatic driver updates) is something it doesn't care about.