AMD Radeon RX 7600 review

Our Verdict

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 may be cheap and pack powerful rasterised performance for its cost, but its 8GB of VRAM and ray tracing frame rates hold it back from being a brilliant budget buy

This AMD Radeon RX 7600 review comes hot on the heels of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB launch, and the two graphics cards make for some illuminating comparisons. The RX 7600 commits the same cardinal sin as its closest GPU competitor by only packing 8GB of VRAM, but it doesn’t cost nearly as much and can offer better performance in some scenarios.

Costing just $269 / £269, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 is clearly aiming to be the best graphics card for those with a strict budget. We’ll need to wait a while longer before the similarly priced RTX 4060 emerges, but in the here and now, this perky pixel pusher pleasantly surprises me in some ways. However, its ray tracing frame rates leave much to be desired and its 8GB of VRAM already isn’t enough for some games at 1080p.

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AMD Radeon RX 7600 specs

As you might expect, the RX 7600 specs are significantly cut back from its more powerful siblings, the RX 7900 XT and XTX, and it also uses a less powerful GPU too. However, looking at generational differences versus the RX 6600, there are several key improvements.

Here are the AMD Radeon RX 7600 specs:

The RX 7600 is beefier in just about every way compared to its predecessor, packing more stream processors, compute units, and ray accelerators. It has higher boost clocks too, but this all comes at a slightly higher 165W TBP compared to the 132W found on the RX 6600. Our Sapphire Pulse model pushes up power consumption to 185W in a bid to improve clock speeds.

Unfortunately, in its slew of improvements, AMD has chosen not to expand the capacity of the memory bus or VRAM, meaning we’re stuck with the same 128-bit 8GB configuration. This combo mirrors the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, and I’m similarly disappointed here as I am with that GPU. This pairing, particularly the amount of memory, can create performance problems with some games when targeting maximum settings at 1080p, as I’ll highlight later in this review.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 size and design

Both the reference card and the Sapphire Pulse variant I have for this review keep the size and design of the RX 7600 small and sensible.

This dual-slot GPU is cooled by two fans that manage to keep temperatures to a respectable 80°C under load. There’s no coil whine to speak of here, thankfully, but you can expect a tolerable amount of noise from this pixel pusher as it tries to stay cool.

The low TBP of the RX 7600 means its thirst for power can be satiated by a single eight-pin PCIe connector. As a reminder, it is technically less efficient than the RX 6600, but not egregiously so.

1/4

AMD Radeon RX 7600 benchmarks

For my RX 7600 benchmarks, I’ve collected frame rate data for native 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. I ran each benchmark three times to get a median result for both minimum and average fps, using the game’s highest-quality preset, including any additional ray tracing options.

Here are the specs of my test system:

• GPU: Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7600
• OS: Windows 11 Pro 22H2 (22621.1702)
• Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming X670E-Plus (BIOS version 1413)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5 6,000MHz
• SSD: WD_Black SN850X
• PSU: Corsair RMx SHIFT Series 1000W

AMD Radeon RX 7600 performance

Analysing the RX 7600’s performance both surprises and saddens me. On the positive side of things, the Navi 33 GPU powering this pixel pusher shines in rasterised workloads, even outclassing the much more expensive RTX 4060 Ti 8GB. However, it frankly falls apart when ray tracing is enabled and its 8GB of VRAM make maximum settings in some of today’s games off-limits and will undoubtedly not be enough for the future.

At 1080p, the RX 7600 punches well above its weight in games like Total War: Warhammer 3 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, with average frame rates well in excess of 100fps. Sadly, things take a tumble as soon as ray tracing is introduced into the mix.

F1 22 serves as this graphics card’s best ray-traced showing, with a 60fps average, but every other game in our suite isn’t as pretty. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy comes in at 43fps, but both Cyberpunk 2077 and Hitman 3 weren’t really playable on the RX 7600, with the GPU only being able to produce 18fps on average for the former.

As with the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, playing A Plague Tale: Requiem at 1080p using the highest settings proves too much for the RX 7600. In a busy scene, I experience wild jumps in frame rate before the GPU basically gave up and chugged along in the mid-teens due to insufficient memory bandwidth.

I don’t want to spend much time discussing the 1440p results, as they’re much the same as the 1080p ones, albeit with lower frame rates and compounded issues with VRAM. Finally, while the RX 7600 is technically capable of playing some games at 4K… you really shouldn’t, unless you’re a glutton for punishment.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 price

AMD changed the RX 7600 price at the last minute before its launch, reducing its cost from $299 to $269. At either price, its most direct competition, the RTX 4060, is still yet to hit the scene. This puts the RX 7600 in an awkward position, similar to the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB, where its value will ultimately be determined by upcoming GPUs.

The smart thing to do here is to wait a month or two and see how the competition plays out between AMD and Nvidia for the budget battleground. By that time, we’ll have a better understanding of how these graphics cards stack up against each other, and the price of the RX 7600 may even fall (as is typical of AMD).

Is the AMD Radeon RX 7600 worth it?

I feel much the same about the RX 7600 as I do the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB: frustrated. This should be a slam dunk for AMD, as the company has beaten Nvidia to producing the first current-generation graphics card for under $300, but it’s instead a middling success at best.

Despite its positives, I can’t rightly muster my enthusiasm to outright recommend the RX 7600. While it’s mostly a perfectly good card for those not interested in turning on ray tracing or moving up to 1440p, its 8GB of VRAM is a compromise that I wouldn’t be comfortable making. Here’s hoping that the company’s upcoming DLSS Frame Generation competitor can give the RX 7600 a second wind whenever it arrives.

Pros:

• Less than $300
• Surprisingly good rasterisation performance
• Decent TBP

Cons:

• 8GB of VRAM
• Subpar ray tracing performance
• No answer to DLSS Frame Generation

Where to buy the AMD Radeon RX 7600

The Radeon RX 7600 will be available across the globe at retailers including Amazon and Best Buy. We’re still waiting for the GPU to hit store shelves, so watch this space for deals and more.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 alternatives

If the RX 7600 doesn’t seem like the perfect fit for you, check out our best graphics card list for all your pixel-pushing needs.