AMD Announces Radeon RX 6600 XT: Mainstream RDNA2 Lands August 11th For $379
Starting next month, AMD's Radeon RX 6000 desktop product stack is about to get a little deeper - and a little cheaper - with the addition of the forthcoming Radeon RX 6600 XT. Announced this evening, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is the next step down in the RDNA2-based Radeon lineup, adding a card aimed at mainstream, 1080p gamers. The card will offer 32 CUs' worth of GPU hardware along with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, and will go on sale on August 11th with prices starting at $379.
The addition of the RX 6600 XT to their desktop lineup has been a long-time coming, as even though the company is already 4 cards deep into their product stack - most recently adding the 1440p-focused RX 6700 XT nearly 5 months ago - AMD hasn't been offering a mainstream-focused RDNA2 desktop video card until now. In fact, AMD's been pretty absent from the mainstream 1080p gaming market as a whole over the last several months, as the capacity-constrained company has been focusing its GPU manufacturing resources on laptop parts and the high-end RDNA2 chips. But finally, and at last, it's time for the 1080p market to get a much-needed boost from AMD's RDNA2 architecture.
Underpinning AMD's new 1080p video card is a GPU we've already seen once before: Navi 23. This GPU was first employed back in May as the Radeon RX 6600M, the cornerstone of AMD's Radeon RX 6000 mobile lineup. Now that the laptop market has had a chance to stock up on Navi 23 hardware, the GPU is making its desktop debut in the aptly named RX 6600 XT. And, unlike the RX 6600M, the RX 6600 XT will feature a fully-enabled version of the chip, giving Navi 23 its first chance to completely show off what it's capable of.