ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC Review

Introduction Most of us dream of the big guns, the RTX 3090 and the RX 6900XT level cards but those cards alone cost more than an entire PC, and that’s BEFORE the scalper tax. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, more than 2 out of every 3 gamers are rocking a 1080p monitor. Even among multi-monitor setups, more than 70% of rigs are equipped with a pair of 1080p monitors. If you are a competitive gamer or E-sports fan, you prefer to keep the resolution low for extreme frame rates anyway. To that end, ASRock gives the 1080p focused Radeon RX 6600 XT the Phantom Gaming Treatment. Boasting the near-silent Phantom Gaming 3X Cooling System, Stylish Metal backplate, and Polychrome SYNC lighting, The Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8DB OC Edition is ready to take on your toughest digital enemies stealthily and stylishly. PC Test Bench would like to thank ASRock for loaning us the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC to check out! ASRock’s take on the Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC : The high-end ASRock AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC graphics card features the triple-fan Phantom Gaming 3X cooling system for excellent cooling performance, as well as a unique Striped Axial Fan, Air Deflecting Fin, and Ultra-fit Heatpipe to greatly increase cooling efficiency. The stylish metal backplate strengthens the structure and prevents damage to the board. With the addition of an ARGB fan, ARGB LED board, and Polychrome SYNC lighting control software, users can fully customize and control their own lighting system. The cool black and red appearance and the ultimate factory-preset overclocking settings make ASRock AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC graphics card ideal for hardcore gamers. Features: Polychrome SYNC Phantom Gaming 3X Cooling System Stylish Metal Backplate Striped Axial Fan Air Deflecting Fin Ultra-fit Heatpipe 0dB Silent Cooling Specifications: 7nm AMD Radeon™ RX 6600 XT 8GB GDDR6 – 128-bit bus 2048 Stream Processors AMD RDNA™ 2 Architecture API Support DirectX 12 Ultimate OpenGL 4.6 PCI® Express 4.0 Support 1 x 8-pin Power Connector Standard Power Limit: 145W Max power limit: +20% (174W) Silent Mode Power Limit: -6% (136W) Recommended PSU: 550W Display Outputs 3 x DisplayPort™ 1.4 with DSC 1 x HDMI™ 2.1 VRR Clock Speeds Boost Clock: Up to 2607 MHz / 16 Gbps Game Clock: Up to 2428 MHz / 16 Gbps Base Clock: 2064 MHz / 16 Gbps A Closer Look ASRock’s Radeon RX 6600XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC comes packaged looking almost identical to every other Phanton Gaming video card. We can see it is factory overclocked, targeted at 1080P gaming, has 8GB of memory, and supports PCIe 4.0. The rear of the box has several features called out with full-color pictures with some basic specifications and minimum system requirements listed on the left. Inside, the only thing included is a quick installation guide. Inside the colorful outer sleeve, ASRock’s black box holds a solid foam block that cradles the GPU and its protective ESD bag. ASRock’s Radeon RX 6600XT Phantom Gaming D is a fairly large card with triple fans. The two outer fans are a darker smoked color while the center one is a clear version of the Striped Axial fans. Red accents span out radially from the center. A light brushed finish covers the flat areas. The rear of the card is completely covered with a backplate and it even extends out over the heatsink-only area with a grill to allow airflow. It’s also interesting to note the RX 6600XT Phantom Gaming card only uses a PCIe 4.0 x8 electrical connection even though it has a PCIe x16 edge connector. This is plenty of bandwidth for the overwhelming majority of cards, including this one. The backplate is full cover and quite good looking with the red and black Phantom Gaming accents. The rear of the card is heavily vented for maximum cooling. Like almost every other GPU this generation, the 6600 XT Phantom Gaming card comes with 3 Displayport 1.4 outputs, and a single HDMI 2.1. You can see from this angle that the card is a bit over 2 slots thick. The RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming lights up in glorious RGB as you would expect. Interestingly, only the center of the three fans lights up with adds a nice splash of color without going full-on Vegas Strip. The Phantom Gaming badge along the edge lights up as well. Both are controllable from ASRock’s Polychrome Sync software. System Config & Software CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X GPU: ASRock Radeon RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC Mobo: MSI MEG X570 Godlike Gaming Ram: 32GB HyperX Fury RGB 3200MHz C16 SSD: Corsair MP600 2TB Chassis: Streacom Open BenchTable OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 20H2 Nvidia Driver: 456.16 ASRock Tweak ASRock Polychrome SYNC If you have any other ASRock hardware, you’ll see it in the list to choose from. The RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming only has two RGB zones, the top edge, and the center fan so those two are available to choose from. Other options relevant to other GPU models are a darker grey. When you pick a zone, or the All Zones selection, you get to pick an effect from the list. Some effects are not very configurable such as the default Rainbow, you can only select the speed it goes. Other effects will have a lot of options that light up below and on the color selection wheel to the right. Synthetic Testing & Performance Testing was performed at stock ‘Out-of-the-box’ settings except for system memory which had its XMP profile applied. Futuremark 3DMark 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your PC and mobile devices in one app. Whether you're gaming on a smartphone, tablet, notebook, or desktop gaming PC, 3DMark includes a benchmark designed specifically for your hardware. At 1080p, the 6600 XT Phantom Gaming holds a solid lead over the last generation's flagship 5700 XT as well as easily eclipsing most of Nvidia’s 2000 series lineup. At 1440p and 4K, the raw power falls a bit and just passes the 5700 XT. Still decent performance for a card targeted squarely at good 1080p performance though! Timespy 1440 and 4K testing shows a similar result. Port Royal test and compare the real-time ray tracing performance of any graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX Raytracing—including multi-GPU systems. Port Royal is meant to test Ray Tracing, claimed to be the next big thing for gaming by a certain green team. The 6600 XT is certainly capable of ray tracing, but blowing your visual socks off at high settings probably isn’t going to happen. 3DMark – VRS Feature Test The 3DMark VRS feature test is designed to help you compare differences in performance and image quality when using variable-rate shading. The test also offers an interactive mode for experimenting with different VRS settings and exporting frames for comparison. Variable Rate Shading shows typical gains at lower resolutions but really comes into its own when faced with an oversized test like running at 4K. ASRock’s 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D is able to nearly double its frame rate with the shading load cut down at 4K. Futuremark VRMark The performance requirements for VR games are much higher than for typical PC games. So if you're thinking about buying an HTC Vive or an Oculus Rift, wouldn't you like to know that your PC is ready for VR? VRMark includes three VR benchmark tests that run on your monitor, no headset required, or on a connected HMD. At the end of each test, you'll see whether your PC is VR-ready, and if not, how far it falls short. You wouldn’t really expect a more mainstream-oriented card to do so well in a VR environment, but the 6600 XT Phantom Gaming handily aces both the orange and cyan level tests, able to provide more than 100 FPS to each eye. If you’ve been itching to tear into Half-Life: Alyx, you should have a good time. Comparatively, the 6600 XT Phantom Gaming is a decent choice for most VR needs. Unigine Superposition Extreme performance and stability test for PC hardware: video card, power supply, cooling system. Check your rig in stock and overclocking modes with a real-life load! Also includes interactive experience in a beautiful, detailed environment. ASRock’s RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming holds a 15% lead over the previous flagship RX 5700 XT in 1080p. At 4K, that lead shrinks considerably, but it’s still leading. Passmark Performance Test - GPU Mark 3D “Fast, easy to use, PC speed testing, and benchmarking. PassMark Performance Test ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.” In Passmark’s 3D Mark test, it again holds a small but noticeable lead over the 5700 XT. Blender Benchmark 2.90 – BMW27 A new platform to collect and display the results of hardware and software performance tests. Aimed at an optimal comparison between system hardware and installations using open-source software and testing content in the public domain If productivity is your game, the 6600 XT Phantom Gaming won't win any records but does a fair job for a mid-tier card aimed at gaming. Game Testing & Performance Ashes of the Singularity Planet by planet, a war is raging across the galaxy. The technological singularity has given humanity the power to expand further than they ever have before. Now, they compete and their sentient artificial intelligence adversaries for control of newfound worlds. Ashes of the Singularity is getting a little long in the tooth these days at over 5 years old, but still presents a decent load to modern graphics cards. The 6600 XT Phantom Gaming does a great job at 1080p as expected, but also manages to hold it's own clear up into 4K land. Quite impressive! Far Cry 5 Anything can happen. Everything will. Welcome to Hope County, Montana, land of the free and the brave, but also home to a fanatical doomsday cult—known as The Project at Eden’s Gate—that is threatening the community's freedom. Stand up to the cult’s leaders, Joseph Seed, and the Heralds, as you spark the fires of resistance that will liberate the besieged community. 4K maxed out is starting to push the limits a bit, but we still see a playable 50+ average frame rate. Drop to 1440p or 1080p and the 6600 XT Phantom Gaming handles this scenic stroll through a fictional Montana readily. Far Cry New Dawn Face off against the Highwaymen and their leaders, the Twins as you fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic frontier. Form unexpected alliances, build a deadly arsenal of makeshift weapons using the remnants of the old world. Far Cry New Dawn is going to run well at 1080p or 1440p, and even 4K isn’t out of range with a slight reduction in settings from max. Shadow of the Tomb Raider Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is quite playable at 1440p and even 4K is doable if you knock the eye candy down a touch. For this type of game, even 40 FPS isn’t terrible if you are gaming on a variable refresh rate display. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Originally created by legendary game designer Sid Meier, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wage war, conduct diplomacy, advance your culture, and go head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders as you attempt to build the greatest civilization the world has ever known. The RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming provides great frame rates with 4K averaging just under 60 FPS on average and 1080p going much faster than this type of game needs. Comparatively, It won't win any records, but Civ 6 is going to be an enjoyable time, even at higher resolutions. Quake II RTX Quake II RTX is a cutting-edge, ray-traced reimagining of id software's old school classic, by NVIDIA's Lightspeed Studios. Global lighting effects, including realistic reflections, refraction, shadows, ambient occlusion, and global illumination are a result of the path-traced simulation of light. We typically test Quake RTX at 4K, so keep in mind that dropping down to 1080p or even 1440p will provide a much better experience if you are interested in taking a classic title for a test drive in its new Ray-traced glory. Minecraft with RTX (Beta) Minecraft with RTX brings fully path-traced rendering, physically based materials, and NVIDIA DLSS 2.0 to Minecraft, delivering bleeding-edge visual fidelity and realism that can be experienced on all GeForce RTX GPUs. Well… That was pretty rough. Keep in mind that this is ENTIRELY ray-traced and is incredibly demanding as far as RTX titles go. You can make it playable at 1080p or even 720p if you back the settings and render distance off a bit, but raw ray tracing performance is not really what the 6600 XT is all about. Crytek Neon Noir RTX Benchmark Neon Noir was developed on a bespoke version of CRYENGINE 5.5, and the experimental ray tracing feature based on CRYENGINE’s Total Illumination used to create the demo is both API and hardware agnostic, enabling ray tracing to run on most mainstream, contemporary AMD and NVIDIA GPUs. Even at 1080p, Heavily ray-traced games are going to be difficult to run at satisfactory frame rates. Overclocking Using Asrock’s Tweak software, you get 3 default profiles to choose from. The “OC” profile boosts the memory speed to 2100MHz base. Our stock graphics score was 9740, and this takes us up 168 points which is a small, but notable 1.5% increase. We also like to see what a card can do with a higher power limit, as this is often the bottleneck for upper-range cards. ASRock provides a generous 20% increase to power which a new TDP of 174W available maxed out. This gives us a similar but slightly smaller boost than just the OC Mode gives. Increasing the memory clock a bit at a time, we were able to claw our way up from 2000 Mhz to 2300Mhz. This gives us a larger jump, up a touch over 5% from stock. We tried boosting the core clocks up, but it really didn’t impact the score much at all as the card already boosts as far as it can go within its limits. We did check temps after about 15 minutes of stress testing and got the above results. We saw a max of 62C in the core, with it spending most of its time in the upper 50C range. Our ‘Hot Spot’ reached 81C. GPUz reports 127W used by the GPU cores, which appears accurate as our Nvidia PCAT system recorded total board draw in the 145W range. Final Thoughts and Conclusion AMD’s Radeon RX 6600XT has proven to be a solid contender for the real world, mainstream gamer. ASRock’s Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC version of it takes it up another notch. Performance at 1080p should make most happy, and if you aren’t into the ultra-competitive scene, it can handle 1440p and even some 4K gaming as well as long as you don’t just max all the eye candy sliders. The only real shortfall is Ray Tracing performance, but that’s just a limit of this segment of AMD’s lineup rather than something ASRock can fix. There is enough there to play with it but stick to traditional Rastering rather than ray tracing. Performance aside, ASRock’s Phantom gaming treatment of the card gives you plenty of good looks and a healthy dose of silence. The fans certainly kick on under full load, but they hovered around the 1200-1400 RPM range which is inaudible more than a few feet away, and core temps barely broke into the 60C range. Core overclocking is pretty pointless, the boost algo AMD uses already keeps the card maxed out, but throwing a few hundred megahertz at memory speed does net a few more points in every benchmark. The OC profile available in ASRock Tweak already adds another 100Mhz to the memory for you. All in all, if you can get your hands on one, it’s a pretty compelling choice for any gamer looking for price to performance in the current market.

ASRock RX 6600 XT Phantom Gaming D 8GB OC Review

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