Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “PRICE CHECK! RX 7600 “Meets” the Competition”.
Today’S the day, Radeon 7600, is launching and also the pulse 7600, but it’s coming in at 269, less than 300. This is less than the suggested end user pricing for the 6600, when it launched, I thought runaway hyperinflation was going to kill us all. How is AMD able to do this and, more importantly, how is sapphire able to do this with their version of the card it’s launch day? There’S a lot to unpack here we have to dive in 269 that can’t be right. 269 suggested end-user pricing Street pricing, probably gon na, be a little bit more but hey. This is the perfect card for a small form factor build let’s Dive In all right.
So for this review, we’re going to be taking a look at the 7600. How does it perform? What do we got going on it’s already in A3, it’s eight gigabytes of vram. How fast is it does it work? Can you actually buy it for 300? Is it worth buying for 300? What’S the upgrade path? How are you going to do this? Yes, we will get to all of that. So little okay, aib partner versions, aren’t going to be little but look at this Packaging, the amd.com packaging, so nice, it’s a dual fan slightly less than two slots.
It’S a little bit shorter than two slots. You’Ve got three display: port outputs and one HDMI most, but not all of the aib partner. Displayport outputs are going to be 2.1. That’S something to look at if you’re.
Looking for that, some aib partner models they said are going to be DisplayPort 1.4. It just depends. We got a single eight pin power connector, while I’m going to cover the sapphire pulse version more fully in a separate video, be on the lookout for that.
This is an ideal GPU for small form factor systems. Look at this I mean the PCB really is this big and it’s tiny and a lot of fun when we think tiny and Powerhouse we think as rock desk meet you know the Bare Bones version of this is only like 250 dollars. We’Re gon na put this in there to start now.
It turns out it’s a little bit of a challenge to insert this. In there we’ve got our GPU mounted in here tiny little computer. I’Ve even got the Intel reference cooler on this thing.
What more do you want now for our testing in the desk meet it’s an i712 700.? Okay, there’s not even a k. The desk me does let the CPU run a little bit outside power spec, but that’s fine and our other test system is based around the ryzen 7700x. Why don’t we use the highest end CPUs available? Well, because, if you’re buying this GPU you’re, probably not pairing it with a 500 CPU, am I right yeah, probably I’m also interesting to test it actually in the desk meet which I would consider to be real world power and thermals definitely thermals using this GPU for A pretty intense session of uh Callisto protocol actually in the desk mini revealed some interesting things. First, air flier footage. As you can see the exhaust from this thing, 47 degrees C. It was pretty toasty. Our desk meet uh works, pretty well to draw air in from the top and exhausts the hot air out the side. That said, you can hear the fans ramp on this. I run info 64 reports up to 2300 RPM fans for this.
I usually don’t bring up this kind of thing unless I can hear it, it’s audible, you know desktop configuration. It’S important to remember. The small form factor case makes it pretty easy to hear whatever you’re working with in terms of graphics card or noise or fan or whatever, because you can hear the CPU fan ramp. When that’s a problem, you can hear the GPU fan ramp when that’s a problem. This wasn’t annoyingly loud, it’s just you could hear it. Gpu power, as reported by Hardware info 64, was 156 Watts, burst 130 Watts sustained on air kilowatt meter for total power draw at the wall.
While gaming, we were well under 250 Watts. Most of the time. Occasionally, it would spike up to 300 watts, give or take but again, keep in mind that’s total system power and that power draw is well below a rated power supply in the desk meet. So this is a pretty impressive result. Overall. The most negative aspect, of course, is The Thermals. This little box is sitting on your heat, generating 200 300 watts of heat, while you’re gaming, I mean that’s pretty good, considering gaming, PCs and some higher tier gpus will use even more power than that. So if you’re in a power constrained situation, you’ve got a cabinet in the Woods running off solar.
This is actually pretty efficient, considering that it’s only 300 watts, but it’s also a little concerning that. Our memory hotspot and our GPU hot spots are in the 100 to 103 C. Temperature range now reached out to AMD, and I said hey this is normal and they said nah yeah. Basically, if that bugs you don’t forget about Sapphire, it’s a bigger card.
This card won’t physically fit in a case like the desk meet, but our Sapphire RX 7600 is not only cooler. It’S also significantly quieter, so be sure to check that out. Although spoiler alert, the performance is roughly the same, although it reports that it can use a few more watts than our reference model, but hey who’s, counting 65 FPS at 1440p enable fsr2. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to enjoy 1440p on some titles.
Yeah, this is not the card for 1440p strictly speaking, but you can still get a lot of mileage out of it. I was surprised it worked as well as it did without fsr2 1440p in brand new AAA titles like the Callisto protocol, and I bring up close to protocol first because it was the hardest one on the GPU in the Quick Test Suite that we did other games. Maybe not as much of a challenge 93 FPS average in the Callisto protocol, pretty darn good for 1080p. Now that is at 1080p resolution, but all of our other games could manage over a hundred FPS shattered the Tomb Raider at 160 FPS with 120 FPS.
One percent lows: Borderlands 3 on Ultra 117 FPS with 96 FPS for our one percent lows: even Horizon zero Dawn, 121. Fps. Goodness me, that’s just Madness! This GPU did so well. At 1080p, we decided to try 1440p, because maybe you’ve got a phantom gaming monitor like this one you’re moving up from 1080p gaming to 2560 by 1440p Gaming.
Let me tell you that is really nice to be able to do that and enjoy 1440p 2560 by 1440p Gaming, or maybe you want to you know, do a wide 1080p monitor those are out there they’re still kind of a thing. Well, it does pretty good with 1440p as well, generally stays above 60 FPS, 90 FPS in some titles. So your AAA titles, if you’re willing to live with medium or medium-high settings, you can probably stay well above 60 FPS for those 1440p titles.
Of course, High refresh rate monitors are becoming all the rage: 60 90 144 FPS for the actual panel refresh, especially if you’re rocking something even higher end like OLED, although if you’re buying OLED you’re, probably buying a more expensive graphics card, it’s nice to be able to Run all of those things at 90, Hertz and Beyond so really. The 7600 is your 1080p gaming card for that, but if you’ve got an eye towards something even higher end know that you can also do some 1440p gaming in terms of the competitive landscape. Here it’s it’s pretty weird: we did the comparison with the 3060, which of course the 7600 uh trounces.
I mean it’s no contest, you shouldn’t the 30 60. No, no 7600 is a better deal pretty much across the board. [ Applause ]. So what’s the verdict? Well, the 7600 reference Edition can do things that pretty much no other 7600 can do, albeit at a little bit of a temperature penalty. The pulse 7600 performs a little better and has better Cooling and the hot spots are nowhere near as hot okay cool. But what about the landscape of gpus this GPU got a pricing update just before launch 269 or 269 is the suggested end user pricing.
Now the sapphire pulse is going to cost a little more than that. That’S no problem because you see it’s better cooling physically bigger card so far has added some of their special sauce to it, and that is worth something that is sapphires built their brand and their reputation on quality, construction and everything else. The problem here is the larger landscape.
Nvidia just launched the 4060 TI and we know from nvidia’s own benchmarks that the 4060 TI is going to slot in at roughly where the 3070 was in in most benchmarks. The memory geometry is going to be a little bit of a penalty for the uh 30 or for the 4060 TI versus the 30 70. When we’re talking about like 1440p resolutions, but the 4060 TI could pull ahead. The problem is that those cards are basically neck and neck in the 30s 70s. A two-year-old card at this point and the pricing hasn’t really changed. 40 60 TI is coming in at the same price for basically the same performance. Let’S call it the same performance.
The these cards aren’t that 269 is actually cheaper than the when the 6600 launched uh quite a bit cheaper and also the dollar is worth less now than it was. So it’s even cheaper to pull out the win with a 7600 AMD. Also, had you know it’s already in A3: there’s all those improvements that sort of thing, but it seems like that wasn’t enough of an improvement for AMD.
They also increased the total board power a little bit with the 7600 and that’s probably to do with the junction temperatures, and you know it’s probably related to that, and it’s probably because AMD is uh. Super focused on the competitive landscape. Here, listen Nvidia is basically checked out check out our 4070 review.
We basically sum it up. Nvidia is getting to a point where they’re, relying on frame generation Technologies like DLS S3, to convince you that their cards are the better value, not that the card is actually doing the work and Hardware. The software thing is something that will benefit everybody and sure, maybe in some parallel universe. That is a thing I mean vote with your wallet and all that kind of stuff, but for the raw performance of the card in terms of what the card is able to do, uh Nvidia is just not they’re not electing to really compete. The pricing is not good on the 4060 TI. To put it bluntly, it was not great on the 40 70., the 4070 is still probably the better value overall, if you have to go Team Green and the 40 90, even with the insane pricing is, you know the highest to your card, whatever? Okay, that’s fine, but I think also a lot of reviews are going to miss Intel. Intel’S gpus are coming in also around that 300 mark a little more like 330 340 somewhere through there for a 16 gigabyte card, and that’s really the threat here. Eight gigabytes of vram is getting to be not enough.
It’S enough today, but six months from now or a year from now, eight gigabytes is going to be a little limiting it’s gon na be like maybe the four gigabyte cards of yesteryear, but the problem on the Intel side is you don’t necessarily always get the raw Performance or consistent performance across all titles, don’t worry, Intel will catch up and I think AMD sort of knows that so the out the gate. Pricing with the 7600. These are priced to move and for a 1080p card for a system like this they’re they’re, basically good to move for 1080p gaming. This is a very competent card. It is an excellent value. I think at 269 279, something like that in this landscape of carts and also being rdna3, you know latest and greatest AAA titles are going to run great.
Our own performance testing shows that it runs great. Everything is pretty awesome now check out our Linux review, because our Linux review is really awesome with the pulse 7600. This is plug and play in Linux. If I had to sum up that review in basically one word AMD still has the superior Linux experience and this card doesn’t even require that you do anything exotic in terms of firmware. This is an excellent excellent option, but watch that review for for more more info macro economic conditions. Notwithstanding, I’m sure that AMD would love to be able to charge more for their GPU, but if they feel good charging the 270 to 300 ish dollar range, then I think this is pretty good for gamers. Yes, it would be nice to have more vram. Yes, it would be nice to have something a little bit higher end, but generational regeneration.
The improvements here are amd’s doing better than Nvidia they’re, improving, more Geno and Jen than Nvidia is, which means that there will be a crossover point at some point in the not too distant future, where amd’s got the performance leadership, because moving from the 4060 TI to The and I say that to be a little bit inflammatory because the 4060 TI really should be a 20 faster card. The 40 70 should have been the 40 60.. The 4060 TI should have been the 4050 TI. 1050 TI. Remember that that card was okay ish. I don’t know that’s enough, rambling, I’m a little this level, one I’m signing out.
If I’m in the level one forms foreign .