Trying to decide between 6600XT and 6700XT

[guddler]

Can anyone help me out here please? I used to have a GTX1080 xtreme from Gigabyte before I stupidly sold it for a couple hundred quid in 2019 thinking an upgrade was just round the corner (then look what happened!). Since then up until last summer I used an 8GB RX580 Sapphire card until I moved house In September at which point the PC was packed away and has yet to be unpacked. I swore I would never spend over £700 on a GPU again.

This is where I’m baffled. All of this was on a 1440p monitor at high to ultra settings. 3700X cpu and 32GB DDR4 but not super fast. Yes even the lowly RX580 could just about manage this although I’ll admit it didn’t like it. It was pegged at 99% and getting damn hot but it coped. I’m no FPS snob. I tend to play RPGs so if the game looks stunning but maybe 50+ then I’m good. I can tell the difference when we get to 70 or 80+ but I have adaptive sync so I’m not overly fussed.

I’ve noticed prices being a little more sane now and am considering pulling the trigger again. But I’m lost. I’m reading that a £450 6600XT is going to get me 1080p and 6700XT will do 1440 on high but cost me nearer the £600 mark. Have we really gone backwards over the last 2 years in performance? I know we’ve gone backwards in price, but given what my 580 could just about do ??? Or are my standards just lower than most peoples and reviewers?

Im specifically weighing up the Sapphire 6600XT Nitro vs MSI 6700XT. I’ve loved MSI cards in the past yet my last Sapphire was really nice. Im wanting AMD this time because of the pairing with the CPU. Anything I should be aware of with these two?

Monitor is a Dell 27” 1440p. I don’t like it because most of the time it’s connected to my M1 Mac Mini and it looks poor on that but it’s what I have and can’t be binning a perfectly working monitor (ignoring the fact I physically broke the usb socket - oops!)

 

[CuriousTomCat]

The 6600 XT is 144% faster than the RX 580. So if the RX 580 could just about manage the games you play at 1440p then obviously a 6600 XT can.

The 6600 XT isn't going to be slower at 1440p than an RX 580 just because they call it a "1080p card" when the RX 580 was a "1440p card".

While these new categories based on screen resolution mean well, they can be confusing when comparing previous generations.

 

[Joxeon]

I’ve noticed prices being a little more sane now and am considering pulling the trigger again. But I’m lost. I’m reading that a £450 6600XT is going to get me 1080p and 6700XT will do 1440 on high but cost me nearer the £600 mark. Have we really gone backwards over the last 2 years in performance? I know we’ve gone backwards in price, but given what my 580 could just about do ??? Or are my standards just lower than most peoples and reviewers?

Unfortunately we have gone backwards on performance especially at the mid range and lower end, that £450 6600XT only matches the performance of the 5700XT which released at around £400 and could regularly be found in sales for £350.

The 6700XT performs between a 2080 super and 2080ti so for less than £600 you're still getting a superior card than what was available before at that price point 2 years ago and it does have the 4gb extra VRAM but really its the card that should cost £450.

The good news is that the prices are coming down and will continue to do so as the mining customers have dried up and those gamers are who were prepared to overpay already have a card so as the stock continues to build up the larger the price cuts will become. Personally I think in 2-3 months we'll see the bottom once ETH goes POS and the second hand market is flooded so if you can hold out that long then it may well pay to do so.

 

[welshrat]

Honestly I would get the 6700XT for the VRAM, My son has the 6600XT and it performs very well at 1440p however if it was me and you don't want to buy another card for a few years I would grab the 6700XT. The extra Infinity cache will help keep framerates much higher as well in the future.

 

[Zarax]

Personally I'm gunning for a 6700XT (or 6750) mostly for longevity. That will allow 1440p for quite a long time (given that I always buy on discount) and at worst fall back to 1080p.

 

[Gibbo]

Prices are coming down!

Right now on OcUK:
6600 from £329
6600 XT from £399
6700 XT from £549

3060 12G from £399
3060Ti from £529
3070Ti from £689


Pretty much the best pricing in the UK.

 

[guddler]

Prices are coming down!

Right now on OcUK:
6600 from £329
6600 XT from £399
6700 XT from £549

3060 12G from £399
3060Ti from £529
3070Ti from £689


Pretty much the best pricing in the UK.

your pricing is definitely the best right now for sure. There was a point last year where you certainly weren’t but things were all over the place generally to the point I just gave up and went to the PS5. But there’s something about playing on a PC I miss after all these years.

anyway, I’m not reading great things about temps and noise for the MSI 6700XT. I do like quiet computing so is it a card I should stay away from and hope something like the Sapphire comes down a bit soon?

Ultimately I’d like to go to an SFF like the Phanteks but since that would involve a MB, psu, case and cooling, for now ill stick with the BeQuiet mini tower that is the size of a small room and just sort the GPU.

Kudos for being on top on the pricing though!

 

[guddler]

As for all the other replies. I tend to agree and am erring on the side of a 6700XT but I’ve sort of learnt my lesson once. Common sense says to wait longer and hope prices come down further, gut feeling is afraid of then being back into the no stock scenario so contemplating buy now while I can.

That thinking may be outdated however.

 

[Zarax]

Given the current trend we might see MSRP on a few cards by mid april.

 

[guddler]

I swear I didn’t see the Sapphire Pulse at 600 yesterday! Maybe I did and passed it over as there are no comments or reviews (customer ones). I haven’t had a huge amount of time to go trawling review sites and when I do the reviews seem to be from last summer and just rant about pricing which is really not helpful.

 

[welshrat]

As for all the other replies. I tend to agree and am erring on the side of a 6700XT but I’ve sort of learnt my lesson once. Common sense says to wait longer and hope prices come down further, gut feeling is afraid of then being back into the no stock scenario so contemplating buy now while I can.

That thinking may be outdated however.

Not sure what its worth but I have the MSI Gaming RX6800 and its a very quiet card. Also owned the Vega 56 Sapphire Pulse which wasn't as quiet but not loud. However Vega was a hot chip.

 

[guddler]

Not sure what its worth but I have the MSI Gaming RX6800 and its a very quiet card. Also owned the Vega 56 Sapphire Pulse which wasn't as quiet but not loud. However Vega was a hot chip.

Well tbh that matches my past experience with the AMD MSI card I owned in the past. We're going back a good few generations now though. But I'm reading idle temps in the high 40's and gaming temps in the 80's but noisy with it. The problem is that noise is subjective and I'm very fussy about noise. If I could go fanless then I would but it's just not realistic. The constant ramping up and down of the Ryzen CPU annoys me even though it's technically quiet. Maybe MSI just dropped the ball on the 6700XT at the time of release in order to get something out? Maybe it's even been resolved now we're 8 months down the line?

 

[uscool]

Well tbh that matches my past experience with the AMD MSI card I owned in the past. We're going back a good few generations now though. But I'm reading idle temps in the high 40's and gaming temps in the 80's but noisy with it. The problem is that noise is subjective and I'm very fussy about noise. If I could go fanless then I would but it's just not realistic. The constant ramping up and down of the Ryzen CPU annoys me even though it's technically quiet. Maybe MSI just dropped the ball on the 6700XT at the time of release in order to get something out? Maybe it's even been resolved now we're 8 months down the line?

CPU fan ? constant ramping up and down of the Ryzen CPU you should be able to add delay for when to react to the temp change which helps with the ramping up and down

 

[BUDFORCE]

If you can, I'd give it until mid April, that's what, 3 weeks?

Once those April energy prices kick in and a couple of weeks for things to adjust, I reckon you'll see prices drop a fair amount even in that short space of time.

 

[Game]

have an rx6700xt with a 1440p monitor and its excellent

If you can, I'd give it until mid April, that's what, 3 weeks?

Once those April energy prices kick in and a couple of weeks for things to adjust, I reckon you'll see prices drop a fair amount even in that short space of time.

I dont know if that will really make a difference I could be wrong but we are talking a couple of old 100watt light bulbs running here with a rx6700 on full pelt not the blackpool iluminations

 

[guddler]

I guess I can wait a few more weeks. I've been waiting since the start of 2020 after all. With the house needing rewiring I'd need to unplug a bunch of stuff just to be able to use the PC at the moment

But I hadn't really considered the hike in energy prices. Isn't that just going to be yet another excuse for retailers to increase prices, not decrease them?

I didn't really intend to get into pricing too much in this topic as I'm sure there's enough of that anyway but of course it comes into everything at the moment. I'm pretty much up there with 6700XT now that I've been able to do a bit more reading and noticed the increased number of PCI lanes, the increased memory bandwidth and the more obvious increase in the amount of memory over the 6600XT. But now I'm debating the merits of individual 6700XT cards as there's a massive difference from the top to the bottom of the price range.

Of course it would make decisions a lot simpler if I sold the 8GB RX580 that's been sat on my desk in it's box since I moved in back in September. But it's the only thing I have if I did want to get the gaming PC back up and running so you know, reluctance again.

 

[ASMB]

As for all the other replies. I tend to agree and am erring on the side of a 6700XT but I’ve sort of learnt my lesson once. Common sense says to wait longer and hope prices come down further, gut feeling is afraid of then being back into the no stock scenario so contemplating buy now while I can.

That thinking may be outdated however.

I think like the last mining boom ended, unless mining picks up again, cards will stay in stock and prices drift down. I don't think that we are at the bottom of the market for at least some of the models as some retailers seem to still have higher priced old stock. However, how low they will go is hard to guess as there have certainly been some price increases since the cards were first introduced with, for instance, both TSCM and memory manufacturers having increased pricing along with some extra shipping costs.

I think that this is probably among the best value AMD cards at the moment, Sapphire Radeon RX 6600 XT Pulse Gaming 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card | OcUK (overclockers.co.uk)
However, as people have said if you want to keep your card for a few years it is best to try and move upto the 6700xt.

I suspect that there might be less buying pressure on the 6700xt around October/November, if the Nvidia 4070 is announced then, as people are more likely to want it than the 6700xt. It could be that as a result AMD lower the price of the 6700xt then as they did with Vega 56 in the past when the new Nvidia generation came out, but I wouldn't bet on it

 

[guddler]

I think if one of the Sapphires (6700XT) was priced the same as the MSI then I'd pull the trigger. Finding info on whether the Nitro is worth the extra 50 quid over the standard Pulse is a lot harder but my impression is that it's probably not a big deal. I've never really been too concerned about specific clock speeds in the past, just model A vs model B. At the end of the day, science is involved and more Mhz = more heat = more noise so it has to be a significant boost in end result to be worth it.

Of course, and extra 50 quid for nitro wouldn't be a big deal either if I wasn't already pushing things up from a 6600 to a 6700.

 

[The_Arbiter]

That 6700xt for £650 ain't bad at all! But reality is waiting is best and is what i'm doing now, again. However i did try for some OC special deals and failed, and sent my 6500xt back sadly.

IF summer sun won't eat up your leisure time, i'd be looking at the 6600 or 6700xt, the middle ground just isn't worth it imo. Buy 6600 now and hope(!) for some sweet discounts in another 9 months or go semi safe on the 6700xt. The 6600 is fine if sensible with settings.

In regards to OC, yeah their pricing was higher before, but least they had stock! And were doing deals. No other shops were doing this.

 

[uscool]

£650 for 6700xt is still poor I got the 3080FE for the same , thats because it dropped from when it was higher doesnt make good now its like you been tricked