AMD announced their latest in the Radeon 7000 family with a budget-friendly and powerful 16GB Radeon RX 7600 XT.
The RX 7600 XT is the new entry in AMD’s RDNA 3 lineup, offering a 16GB card that delivers performance without breaking the bank. For those unfamiliar with modern graphics card specs, 16GB is a lot of video memory for a mid-range GPU, especially considering the NVIDIA RTX 4060 launched with only 8GB. AMD is aiming this card at the 50% of PC gamers who still play on an RTX 2060 or lower, according to Steam survey stats from November 2023. Cards in this performance tier struggle to deliver smooth 60fps gaming in newer titles with all the visual bells and whistles maxed out, so it’s in need of an update.
Enter the 7600 XT, which AMD claims can deliver 1.9x faster average frame rates over the RTX 2060 in modern games. This means that users can achieve well over 60fps at max settings in 1080p, which is very welcome for people who might be sitting on an older GPU and struggling to run games like Cyberpunk 2077. Since this is 2024, AMD is looking to position the 7600 XT as more than just a gaming card, with the 16GB of VRAM perfectly future-proofing this card for next-generation AI workloads and content creation.
Comparing specs to the vanilla RX 7600 reveals the XT variant has higher clock speeds and power draw, which helps ensure consistently better performance thanks to the extra VRAM. AMD called out several recent games where the 7600 XT offered a 20-46% performance uplift over the standard 7600 at 1080p and 1440p max settings. Of course, the impact will vary on a per-game basis, but titles like Forza Horizon 5, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Starfield, and The Last of Us Part I all show notable improvements compared to both RTX 2060 and RX 7600 8GB. I am excited to see how it compares to our in-house benchmarks and the current RTX 4060 GPU.
AMD wants to highlight how its suite of gaming-focused software features gives Radeon users an extra edge. Things like AMD HyperRX, FSR 3 with frame generation, and AMD Fluid Motion Frames work across thousands of games to boost frame rates. Comparisons shown during the announcement detailed how Nvidia’s new RTX 4060 compared to the new RX 7600 XT, averaging 45% and 46% faster on recent titles with all of the special graphical features enabled.
With steaming and content creation a major driver for many consumers, it is great to see the 7600 XT with hardware AV1 encoding, ML-powered upscaling, and 16GB of memory, making it attractive for streaming and creation as well. AMD has included new optimizations shipping for OBS, Smart Access Video, its Adrenaline software suite, and more to improve streaming quality and accelerate creative workloads. There’s even a new in-driver video upscaling feature on the way.
The AMD Radeon RX 7600 XT looks to be an impressive value aimed at the mid-range gaming market that delivers where it matters most. With next-generation gaming features and more memory to handle emerging workloads, AMD could have a winner on its hands. Stay tuned for benchmarks when the card launches on January 24th to see if the promises match the reality!
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