On May 24, AMD revealed its new Radeon RX 7600 graphics card. This is an entry-level card positioned to play the newest games at 60+ frames per second (fps) at 1080p. It supports very efficient streaming using the latest AV1 encoding technology. According to AMD, the card performs 1080p gaming 29% faster on average than the AMD Radeon RX 6600.
AMD’s latest RDNA 3 generation of cards have marked ray tracing improvements over the previous RDNA 2 versions. Our tests show that the Radeon RX 7600 can get close to the performance of the Radeon RX 6700 XT midrange card in ray tracing benchmarks such as Speedway and Port Royal. The RX 7600 achieved around 86% of the performance of the midrange card in both tests using default driver settings.
The Radeon RX 7600 is based on the AMD RDNA 3 architecture and includes revamped compute units with unified ray tracing and AI accelerators. It features AMD’s Infinity Cache technology from the second generation of cards.
The Test Platform
The AMD Ryzen 5 7600X processor, the Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, the GIGABYTE X670E Aorus Master motherboard, and a G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo 2x16GB DDR5-6000 EXPO memory kit — which were all provided to IDC by AMD — comprised the test PC hardware components. The primary Windows 11 disk was a 1TB GIGABYTE Aorus NVMe Gen4 solid state drive.
A be quiet! Silent Loop 2 280mm water cooler was fitted for the processor, which was coupled with a be quiet! STRAIGHT POWER 11 Platinum 850W power supply. A 34” Dell Gaming S3422DWG monitor — a quad-HD 3440*1440 display with a 144Hz frame rate, FreeSync, 10-bit colors, and high dynamic range functionality — was also used.
The reviewers utilized the motherboard’s optimal default settings, set the memory profile to EXPO 6000, and made sure that smart access memory was enabled. No special tuning, optimization, or overclocking was carried out for the tests.
Synthetic Benchmarks and Productivity Performance
Blender Benchmark 3.5.0 was used to evaluate the graphics card’s rendering performance. The Radeon RX 7600 ranked in the top 29% of all benchmarks, thanks to the Heterogeneous Interface for Portability — AMD’s compute language for GPUs utilized by Blender Benchmark (as opposed to OpenCL, which does not utilize it). A far quicker result than expected was delivered. This is good news for gamers who do light personal and family photo editing or enhance pictures for social media posts.
The system’s 3DMark Time Spy score of 10,557 was better than 60% of all results, which is respectable for an entry-level gaming machine.
Gaming Performance
Various old and new video games were tested on the platform, including next-gen versions.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
This game averaged 134fps at 1080p with the maximum graphics settings and AMD’s FidelityFX Contrast Adaptive Sharpening enabled. With ray traced shadow enabled at high settings, the game ran at an average 77fps with a low of 53fps. Increasing the quality of the ray traced shadow to extreme resulted in an average 70fps and a minimum of 43fps.
Far Cry 6
This game averaged 118fps at the 1080p high graphics quality setting, registering a minimum of 98fps. During testing, all DirectX Ray tracing (DXR) and FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) capabilities were activated. Increasing the graphics settings to ultra quality resulted in an average 99fps and a minimum of 85fps.
Cyberpunk 2077
At 1080p, this game averaged 37fps with a minimum of 22fps. Ultra ray tracing presets and FSR 2.1 capabilities were activated automatically. The game performed at an average 50fps and a minimum of 35fps using the medium ray tracing setting, resulting in a much smoother experience.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Next-Gen
This game averaged 38fps at 1080p, with a minimum of 26fps. Ultra ray tracing presets and FSR 2.1 capabilities were activated automatically. The game functioned significantly better at the medium ray tracing setting, clocking an average 57fps and a minimum 46fps. Without ray tracing, rasterization performance averaged 104fps and registered a minimum of 76fps in extreme settings.
Frequency, Power Consumption, Temperature, and Noise
The RX 7600 operated at an average frequency of 2545MHz, consumed 160W of power, and attained an average temperature of 79C when playing The Witcher 3 in ultra ray tracing mode, with the GPU loaded to 99%. Due to their small size and low revolutions per minute, the two 90mm fans kept the card cool and noiseless.
Final Words and Conclusion
According to IDC’s monitor tracker, about two-thirds of new monitors still have a max resolution of 1080p. There is a massive installed base of such monitors. Not every customer with full HD aspirations is seeking the best and most costly gear. For example, Minecraft and Roblox are popular among youngsters, while Fortnite in performance mode is popular among teens. Such groups will be very delighted with a PC powered by the RX 7600, and their parents will not have to seek a loan to build it!
AMD faces increased competition now that Intel has entered the arena, alongside Nvidia and AMD. Difficult macroeconomic conditions — ranging from inflation to a war on the ground in Europe — are reducing consumer purchasing power. However, AMD has wisely evaluated the market conditions and taken quick and clever measures to adjust, such as reducing the proposed end-user price of the Radeon RX 7600 from an anticipated $299 to $269! AMD has also reduced the prices of its previous generation RDNA 2-based RX 6000 series cards, thereby providing gamers and customers with a wide selection of goods at various price points.
In conclusion, there is a lot to like about the AMD Radeon RX 7600. It is an affordable, sleek, and compact dual slot, dual fan graphics card that delivers impressive 1080p gaming performance at 50+fps on the highest graphical settings with FSR and ray tracing enabled.