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1080p became the ultimate goal for gamers back when the seventh generation

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of consoles launched and even the pcs of mere mortals were able to reach that

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holy grail with aaa titles by the time Radeon hd5970 and GeForce gtx 480 came

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out in 2010. so why are we still getting

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excited about 1080p graphics cards in 2021

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especially when they cost what almost 400 dollars

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am i in a time loop oh man not a

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maybe if i review it it'll stop or maybe if i tell you about our sponsor i fix it

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repair services find out more about ifixit's essential electronics tool kit

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at the end of the video

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the rx 6600 xt is a strange release in many ways

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yeah it makes sense to release a GPU that's less than half the die size of

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the rx 6800 xt and yeah it makes sense

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that it would use 16 gigabit gddr6 chips

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both of those things make it far easier to manage supply constraints that have

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been strangling production and are projected to continue into 2022

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or even 2023 depending on who you ask no what's strange is the pricing which

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we will get to i promise but also the fact that because there isn't an AMD

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branded card this time around AMD has made the decision to send

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factory overclocked cards to reviewers which means that everything you see from

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this point on needs to be taken with a pinch of salt sure the card has all the

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same basic features it's it got eight gigabytes of gddr6 memory 32 compute

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units and as many megs of infinity cache and all the goodies that come with rd

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and a2 like ray accelerators real-time ray tracing support but that's where the

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similarities between the basic spec and what they've sent us end and what they

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sent us is asrock's seriously overbuilt phantom gaming d card with a whopping

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three fans and as many heat pipes to handle the 160 watts worth of heat this

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thing is supposed to be kicking out the overclock itself is pretty mild at about

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80 megahertz in game and under 20 megahertz at peak boost which AMD says

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will be typical of other factory overclocked cards so this atypical

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cooler is probably overkill the back plate for its part is thin and seems to

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mostly be for show with what looks to be a pair of thick boy thermal pads on the

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back of the pcb i say looks like because in order to get the back plate off

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you need to take the cooler off and we've got benchmarks to do before we

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mess with the card's thermal characteristics you know the drill GPU

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bench latest updates AMD's immediate family and the two NVIDIA gpus that the

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6600 xt is most likely to take head-on

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you'll note we're using more RAM than before dual rank memory is good for you

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you should try it helps keep ryzen fit anyway all our games will be running 1080p max settings with ray tracing

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turned to minimum where applicable starting off with some surprising wins

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forza horizon 4 and assassin's creed valhalla put AMD's mid-tier GPU ahead of

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NVIDIA's rtx 3060 ti by about 15 to 25

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which is absolutely fantastic considering the cards are priced so

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close together unfortunately this pattern doesn't hold up as we move on to

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other games like final fantasy 14 and f1 2021 where even with ray tracing off the

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Radeon loses out by about 10 percent putting it closer to the cheaper rtx

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3060. this gets even worse when ray tracing is

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enabled and especially for a global illumination title like metro exodus

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where we see the diminished ray accelerator count really bring the pain

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thankfully global illumination is not really common yet but it's worth testing

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all the same none of these results are especially bad to be clear the lowest non-ray tracing

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result was still well over 60fps and one percent minimums and it's consistently

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much faster than the rtx 3060 but when you're forking over 3060 ti money it all

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starts to look like an advertisement for that card instead as always with cards

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this low on the ladder productivity isn't a major consideration but we're

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including benchmarks here because it's very possible that you need something affordable for work at home and given

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that for 20 more the rtx 3060 ti punches

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up the trade blows with the rx 6700 xt it's no surprise that the cut down 6600

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xt can't really compete here either even against the rtx 3060.

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that's not to say that there aren't some AMD wins in productivity though even

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though the infinity cache is much smaller with this card its ridiculously

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fast speed helps it in memory intensive tasks like the energy and medical tests

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in specuperf although chances are this class of card will

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never see that kind of workload so it's a hollow victory

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sort of like how our water bottles are hollow you gotta fill them with victory

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you know ltdstore.com for thermals considering

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neither the cooling nor the clocks are stock and this car is probably not

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destined for a workstation we'll do something a little different today and use two loops of five laps in f1 2021 to

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simulate gameplay and see if that game clock can endure some heat as it turns

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out AMD's total power estimate was pretty accurate with an average of about

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180 watts and a peak of 225

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well below the rtx 360 ti but unfortunately also about as far

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above the rtx 3060. the extremely overbuilt cooler does the

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job fantastically though with temperatures hovering around 60 degrees

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at all times in our closed chassis bench it kept boosting too with clocks

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throughout the test staying stable at about that 2.6 gigahertz advertised

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maximum not a bad showing at all but then again this is a factory overclocked card your

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mileage may vary and here's another weird thing about this launch see these

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these pins here as the pre-launch rumors suggested they're 100 per shell

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you can even see where they stop being connected to anything

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yeah this GPU is wired for only eight lanes of pci express

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which seems like a waste of material like why have a full x16 card edge connector

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filled out with pins i guess it helps with physical stability

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i mean this genuinely threw me for a loop when i first noticed it but eight

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lanes of gen 4 makes sense when you think about it not only are they equivalent to 16 gen 3

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lanes most gpus at this performance level won't even begin to utilize the

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full bandwidth of a 16 lane slot this means that you're giving up nothing

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to use one of these cards in one x 16 slot and then populate the other with a

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dual NVMe card or something without compromising the performance of either

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heck if you're not squeamish you could safely mod the card for use in a server

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chassis or something without losing any functionality the pins simply are not

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connected but now we've got to talk about the price

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at 380 for the base model it's a steep ask when this card was announced we went

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into the reasons why this price while painful makes sense in today's

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marketplace but it's going to continue being compared to the launch price of the rtx

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3060 and especially the 3060 ti which is

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priced very competitively at 400 the only problem with this take though

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is those prices no longer exist and

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arguably never did third parties were charging well in excess of that before

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those cards launched there's no founders edition for the 36t and third parties

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are going to prefer higher margin cards with the precious few gpus they're able

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to get in my opinion that msrp only really exists as a

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contractual obligation to make it seem like it's cheaper than it really is in

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order to undercut the competition and i suspect the same is true of the rx 6600

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xt's msrp2 just look at how much backlash they got for saying 379. in

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fact it seems that they're so concerned with perception that they wouldn't even

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tell us how much this particular asrock card costs and neither does rock if they

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pipe up before the video is done i'll put the price on screen now all of which

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is to say it's impossible to tell you what the

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real msrp of any of these cards is other than what NVIDIA and AMD say they are

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that makes it difficult to put the rx 6600 xt into perspective on the one hand

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it's slower than the rtx 3060 ti that is

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its true price competitor but on the other whether that price exists or not

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depends on who you ask our recommendation therefore is this

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if msrp matters to you the rx 6600xt is

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an underwhelming but not disastrous GPU you could do way worse if features

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matter to you the competition has dlss at this price point and their video

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encoder is better for you streamers out there and if scarcity pricing matters to

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you well our recommendation as always is to

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get it if you can be careful though we've got a video coming on how scam

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gpus are becoming even weirder so be sure to get subscribed so you don't miss

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that and okay i know that people don't like that buy it anyway recommendation

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it sounds like i'm telling you to just be a mindless consumer i get it but the

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uncomfortable truth for both you and i is that even if you don't want it to

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sound move for as long as demand outstrips supply thankfully i've got

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more than enough supply of segways for sponsors like ifixit thanks to ifixit

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for sponsoring today's video the ifixit essential electronics toolkit is a great

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basic kit for new users it gives you what you need for the most essential

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bits they're all held in place with high density foam so you can throw it around

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without any of the bits falling out they've got a lifetime warranty so

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go ahead and get one today at ifixit.com LTT

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thanks for watching guys go ahead and check out our recent video on just how

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viable old gpus can be for modern games maybe if you're still rocking an old

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flagship you don't need to worry about these selling out right away you know