Early AMD Radeon RX 6600M leaked tests show somewhat slower overall performance compared to the Nvidia RTX 3060 mobile GPUs
Initial tests for the AMD Radeon RX 6800M mobile GPUs showed quite good performance metrics that situate it between the max power RTX 3070 and RTX 3080 mobile GPUs from Nvidia, with the benefit of a fairly lower price point. On the other hand, the ray tracing performance is not yet on par with Nvidia, while the FSR feature has yet to be implemented, and some OEMs are still limiting the GPU potential through slower RAM kits and no MUX switch. These are not, however, the only Team Red mobile GPUs launching this summer. We were expecting to see some leaks for the RX 6700M first, but instead, we now get some detailed performance comparisons for the RX 6600M models through a leaked review coming from Chinese site Zhihu.
To make things as fair as possible, the Zhihu review pitted AMD’s RX 6600M model against the RTX 3050 Ti and RTX 3060, all running on the same Ryzen 7 5800H processor. GPU-Z shows that the RX 6600M is actually designed to take on the RTX 3060, with 1792 Stream processors, 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, 128-bit memory bus and 32 MB of Infinity Cache. The TGP values are not exactly the same from one card to another. The AMD model can use from 60 W up to a maximum of 100 W +20 W via Smart Shift. The RTX 3060 also starts at 60 W but can push power consumption up to 130 W, while the RTX 3050 Ti starts at just 35 W and can go up to 95W. Nevertheless, the TGP chart reveals that the AMD GPU has a more linear performance increase with each TGP target, which suggests better power efficiency.
As far as synthetic tests go, the RX 6600M and RTX 3060 seem to be equal. The Fire Strike tests are dominated by the AMD model, but the TimeSpy and Port Royal go to the RTX 3060, so the Nvidia model is only 0.74% faster overall, whereas the RTX 3050 Ti lags by around 32%. The Chinese review then splits the gaming selection into e-sport and AAA titles. For 1080p, the RX 6600M is again neck and neck with the RTX 3060 in e-sport games, but lags behind by 7% in AAA games. The gap is widened for 1440p, where the RTX 3060 is almost 13% faster overall.
There is also a ray tracing comparison for games such as SOTTR and Metro Exodus. We already know AMD’s ray tracing performance is no match for Nvidia’s on a tier to tier basis, but it is interesting to note that the RX 6600M is around 23% faster than the RTX 3050 Ti in this case. It will be interesting to revisit this test when AMD’s FSR is launched.
Crypto miners will not find the RX 6600M particularly enticing as the tests show the new GPU performs worse than even the previous gen RX 5600M model. This is quite surprising since AMD said it would not really bother limiting the mining capabilities of the RDNA2 desktop cards. The Chinese review concludes by pointing out that each RDNA2 mobile GPU SKU appears to require different motherboard designs, so there would be at least 3 designs as opposed to only 2 designs for all four SKUs from Nvidia. This is problematic for laptop OEMs as it essentially means that they will need to increase R&D expenditures.
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