Can’t find Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060? AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 series just leaked

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AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600 specs revealed

AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600 leak
(Image credit: AMD)

The extreme difficulty in actually buying a current-gen graphics card hasn’t deterred AMD and Nvidia from repeatedly launching new ones. It looks like the Red Team’s next big GPU releases will be the AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600, according to a new leak.

Videocardz posted alleged GPU-Z screenshots, originally from the Chinese tech forum Chipwell, that show a range of Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600 specs. 

We haven’t been able to independently verify the screenshots’ veracity, but the included details do line up with what we’ve previously heard about the upcoming budget cards. For example, both the Radeon RX 6600 XT and Radeon RX 6600 are listed as having 8GB of GDDR6 video RAM, matching what our sister site Tom’s Hardware reported earlier this week.

It also looks like both cards will use the new AMD Navi 23 GPU, as previously reported. According to the apparent GPU-Z screenshots, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is equipped with a Navi 23 version catchily dubbed “73FF:C1,” while the Radeon RX 6600 will have a presumably lower-specced “73FF:C7” variant.

The latter’s clock speeds aren’t recorded, but the Radeon RX 6600 XT supposedly has a 1,692MHz base clock speed and a 2,684MHz boost clock. By comparison, the mid-range AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT has a lower maximum boost speed of 2,581MHz, but a much higher base speed of 2,31MHz. These two newer cards will also have lower processor stream counts (core counts, in other words): 2,048 for the Radeon RX 6600 XT and 1,792 for the Radeon RX 6600.

It also sounds like there’ll be a laptop version of at least the RX 6600: the leaker claimed that he was using a version of AMD’s Radeon driver version 21.4.1 that included support for the RX 6600M.

Current estimates put the Radeon RX 6600 XT and RX 6600 release date in the second half of this year, one theory being that AMD could announce the new graphics cards during Computex 2021, which runs June 1 through June 5. That would mean they won’t escape the semiconductor shortage that’s strangling GPU supplies at the moment, so don’t expect a huge — or even semi-reasonable — amount of available stock.

Still, sometimes attack is the best form of defense, and if you’ve been struggling to find where to buy the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, simply having another pair of cheaper graphics cards to choose from might make it slightly easier to snag an upgrade. 

James Archer
James Archer

James is currently Hardware Editor at Rock Paper Shotgun, but before that was Audio Editor at Tom’s Guide, where he covered headphones, speakers, soundbars and anything else that intentionally makes noise. A PC enthusiast, he also wrote computing and gaming news for TG, usually relating to how hard it is to find graphics card stock.