AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT

The AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT is a mid-range desktop graphics card that is based on the RDNA 2 architecture and uses the Navi 23 chip. It offers 2,048 shaders and 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM with a 128 bit memory interface (16 Gbps, 256 GB/s max).

The RDNA2 architecture offers new features like SAM (Smart Access Memory) and Infinity Cache. PCIe 4.0, RIS (Radeon Image Sharpener) and Raytracing support are also included in the RX6600XT.

The gaming performance of the RX 6600 XT is comparable to a GeForce RTX 3060 (Desktop). The previous generation Radeon RX 5600 XT can be easily bested. Therefore, the RX 6600 XT is best suited for demanding games in 1080p and high details.

The power consumption is rated at 160 Watt (TGP) by AMD and therefore similar to a GeForce RTX 3060 (170 Watt).

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 (Desktop)

The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 is an entry level graphics card for desktops based on the Pascal architecture. It uses the same GP107 chip as the GTX 1050 Ti, but with only 640 instead of 768 shaders. The chip is manufactured at Samsung in 14 nm (opposed to the 16 nm TSCM based Pascal chips of the 1060 and up). The performance and specs should be similar to the GTX 1050 laptop version, that will be released later (early 2017). Compared to the faster GTX 1050 Ti, the 1050 offers less shaders (640 instead of 768) and only 2 GB of GDDR5 (instead of the 4 GB of the 1050 Ti).

Gaming benchmarks by Nvidia state that the GTX 1050 is about 30% faster on average than the Radeon RX 460 with 2 GB VRAM. The 4 GB version of the RX 460 should be about 10% slower and the older GTX 950 should reach a similar performance level as the new GTX 1050. Therefore, the GTX 1050 should be ideal for 1080p gaming with high detail settings (but not max settings).