AMD Pushes Flawed RX 7600 Comparison to Trash RTX 3060 8GB

Radeon RX 7600
Radeon RX 7600 (Image credit: AMD)

AMD's latest Radeon RX 7600 was just a hairline from making the list of best graphics cards — a price cut to bring it closer to the RX 6650 XT would help. So when challenged by a Twitter user to compare the Radeon RX 7600 to its rivals, Sasa Marinkovic, senior director of gaming marketing at AMD, tweeted a chart where the Radeon RX 7600 dominates the GeForce RTX 3060. However, the cheeky comparison was against the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB, a cut-down version of the original, rather than the far more common GeForce RTX 3060 (12GB).

Marinkovic's chart showed that the Radeon RX 7600 delivered, on average, up to 34% faster performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB at 1080p (1920x1080) and maximum settings. The Radeon RX 7600 was up to 61% in some titles, such as Borderlands 3. While we don't think AMD's results are inaccurate, we believe the chipmaker should have made the comparison with the 12GB RTX 3060 and not a hampered variant that no sane person would buy.

Besides the difference in memory capacity (8GB vs. 12GB), the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB has a narrower memory interface. Nvidia reduced the original 192-bit bus to 128-bit on the 8GB model, so the memory bandwidth took a substantial hit. The trimmed-down memory interface diminished the bandwidth by 33% on the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB.

The GeForce RTX 3060 8GB was basically a stealth release, similar to the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB, except it was a considerably less desirable graphics card. While we never had the opportunity to get the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB in our lab for testing, multiple publications have corroborated that it's approximately 15% slower than the regular GeForce RTX 3060 with 12GB of memory.

That means the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB lands about midway between the 12GB card and the GeForce RTX 3050. That in itself isn't the problem. The real deal killer is that the 3060 8GB launched at the same price as the 12GB card. These days, it's about $20 cheaper, but it's still not a popular card. The RTX 3060 12GB starts at $279, RTX 3060 8GB at $259, and RTX 3050 at $219.

The Radeon RX 7600 is faster than the GeForce RTX 3060, but only in rasterization performance. Nvidia still has an edge in ray tracing performance. By our benchmarks, the Radeon RX 7600 offers 17% higher rasterization performance than the GeForce RTX 3060 at 1080p with ultra settings. However, the Radeon RX 7600 is up to 22% slower in ray tracing performance. The only reason AMD used the GeForce RTX 3060 8GB for comparison was to make the Radeon RX 7600 look better. Logically, a 34% delta looks way more compelling than 17%.

It's also worth pointing out that AMD doesn't factor in DLSS performance. While FSR 2.0 can often deliver similar performance gains for AMD GPUs, we've seen numerous cases (most recently in Diablo IV and Lord of the Rings: Gollum) where FSR 2.0 results in far blurrier images than DLSS. DLSS support is also more widespread than FSR 2.0 support.

There were many doubts about the Radeon RX 7600 before the graphics card's launch. Many users were concerned about whether the Radeon RX 7600 could offer a worthwhile performance improvement over the existing Radeon RX 6650 XT. The Navi 33-based graphics card ended up beating its predecessor by an insignificant margin, with a higher price and similar power draw. That explains why AMD hasn't posted any data comparing the Radeon RX 7600 to the Radeon RX 6650 XT.

The Radeon RX 6650 XT is why the Radeon RX 7600 doesn't have a seat around the best graphics card table. The Radeon RX 7600 launched at $269, and with custom Radeon RX 6650 XT models retailing for as low as $229, it's hard to justify the $40 difference when the Radeon RX 7600 offers a minimal performance uplift. You do get AV1 encoding support, but it's not a particularly exciting package.

As we said in our review, the RX 7600 isn't a terrible graphics card by any stretch, but it costs more than similarly performing AMD GPUs that were already available. As long as supplies and pricing of the RX 6600-class GPUs dominate the value graphics card sector, the 7600 will have a tough time attracting potential buyers.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • virgult
    >RTX 3060 8GB $259
    >RX 7600 $269

    AMD picked the closest competitor for price, and you're giving them grief???
    Reply
  • DougMcC
    virgult said:
    >RTX 3060 8GB $259
    >RX 7600 $269

    AMD picked the closest competitor for price, and you're giving them grief???
    But RTX 3070 12GB $279 is equally close in price. So you can save $10 either way, but if you spend the extra 10 you get more performance.
    Reply
  • ThisIsMe
    >RTX 3060 12GB $279

    Just as close, sooo…

    Although, in the article it’s claimed the 6650xt is the predecessor to the 7600 when it seems the obvious predecessor is the 6600. So, it would beat its predecessor by a bit more than claimed. However, it seems the 6650xt was selected for comparison because of its relatively close performance and lower price. Still though, it’s an opinion piece so expect a lot of fluff to support the rant.
    Reply
  • qwertymac93
    ThisIsMe said:
    >RTX 3060 12GB $279

    Just as close, sooo…

    Although, in the article it’s claimed the 6650xt is the predecessor to the 7600 when it seems the obvious predecessor is the 6600. So, it would beat its predecessor by a bit more than claimed. However, it seems the 6650xt was selected for comparison because of its relatively close performance and lower price. Still though, it’s an opinion piece so expect a lot of fluff to support the rant.
    Don't let the name fool you; the 7600 replaces the 6650XT, not the 6600. The 7600 is as far as Navi33 can go with no disabled cores/memory and high clocks. There's no "XT" in the name purely because AMD couldn't justify cheapening the name with such pitiful performance. They are trying to save face since by all accounts, the 7600 is not really an upgrade from the 6650XT (or even 6600XT) despite clearly being intended to replace them.
    Reply
  • jgraham11
    qwertymac93 said:
    Don't let the name fool you; the 7600 replaces the 6650XT, not the 6600. The 7600 is as far as Navi33 can go with no disabled cores/memory and high clocks. There's no "XT" in the name purely because AMD couldn't justify cheapening the name with such pitiful performance. They are trying to save face since by all accounts, the 7600 is not really an upgrade from the 6650XT (or even 6600XT) despite clearly being intended to replace them.
    What happens when there is a 7600XT? Isn't Navi 32 on 5nm, what if they release a cut down version and call it a 7600XT?
    Reply
  • all this really shows is the AMD 7600 8gig 128bit is faster than an 3060 8gig with 128bit ram
    Reply
  • Udyr
    "AMD is faster. However, and hear me out..."
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Only thing I think is important right now is the prices come down. When comes to 200 us no one will blame amd or nvidia
    Reply
  • SunMaster
    The article claims «no sane person« would buy a 3060 8gb. Funny how the same conpany is selling newer cards in the rx 4000 series with the same 8gb. I guess no sane person buys any 8gig Nvidia card then.
    Reply
  • speaker4thedead97
    I recently built my am5 pc. I built it with the Intel arc a750 and loved it. My son needed a new gpu so I sent him my arc and I bought the RX7600 on the day it launched. I bought the MSI version. I love it. Granted I’m only playing on 1080 but had no issues playing all the way through the last of us on the highest settings. I have just started Jedi Survivor on the highest setting with no issues.

    Anyone trashing this card is just trashing it to trash it…

    At least now I have full control over my gpu. Arc control software never worked for me
    Reply