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.
