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As we saw with the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, the RX 7600 XT ends up targeting a very specific niche. Yes, it's faster than the RX 7600, but it also costs more. For gaming purposes, there are a lot of titles where the extra VRAM isn't even that useful, and then it's just down to clock speeds. It's not necessarily a worse proposition than the RX 7600, but then we've opined that that was one of the most disappointing AMD GPUs of all time.
If you know you need 16GB of VRAM — whether for multiple monitors, large AI models, content creation, or even some particular game — and you don't want to spend a lot of money, the RX 7600 XT gets the job done. It won't be a super fast 16GB card, but not everyone wants that.
Across our extended 18-game test suite, there were only three games where the added memory proved beneficial at settings that were still viable: Forza Horizon 5, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Total War: Warhammer 3. Those all showed at least a 20% advantage compared to the RX 7600, though the last only evidenced that at 1440p.
Could future games increase VRAM use? Sure. We're already starting to see that happening, but with both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X more or less targeting 12GB or less, 16GB is generally overkill. It's why the RX 6700 XT still looks reasonably promising. But then the 6700 XT doesn't have AV1 encoding support or enhanced AI features, which might be worth the slight loss in gaming performance.
Building the perfect GPU and graphics card is difficult, and decisions about what features to include or cut get made often two years before the products are released. When AMD designed the Navi 33 GPU and opted to stick with TSMC's older N6 node, it was a compromise to hit lower prices and so we only got incremental improvements over the prior generation Navi 23 parts.
With the RX 7600 XT, AMD basically cranked the performance dials as far as they would go on Navi 33. The chip was already fully enabled in the RX 7600, so higher clocks and more VRAM were the only real upgrades available. As a mainstream-budget GPU, though, pushing the price up to $329 starts to feel a bit much. It's too bad there's no current generation GPU with 12GB on a 192-bit interface that doesn't cost less than $400, because that would still be our preference — and it's why the RX 6700 XT still steals some of the draw for the 7600 XT.
Current prices put the 7600 XT about $60 higher than the RX 7600. That's not a terrible price to pay, but neither does it make for an amazing deal. If AMD and its partners can get the 7600 XT down to $300 or less, though, it becomes quite a bit more enticing. At one point Intel was only charging $30 extra to go from an 8GB A770 to a 16GB card, which was basically a no-brainer (if you wanted an Arc A770 at least). With the RX 7600 and 7600 XT, you'll still have to exercise your gray matter a bit and decide what it is you really want and need.
The bottom line is that we now have one more option to consider, and that's never a bad thing (unless you suffer from decision paralysis). We still feel like the best overall packages from this generation are in the $450–$600 range: the RX 7700 XT, RX 7800 XT, RTX 4070, and RTX 4070 Super, and Nvidia has the upper hand. The 7600 XT comes in well below that range on price, but it also takes a big hit on performance. Unless you just need 16GB, in which case it's either this or the Intel Arc A770 16GB.
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