in the past amd partners sapphire's nitro plus cards have been associated with bigger coolers
and higher-end skus for example there wasn't a 5600
xt but for this generation there's actually a 6600 xt nitro plus card
and is this one that much better compared to the less flashy pulse card let's take a look
welcome to machines and more if you've been shopping for a gpu the 6600 xt has been one of
the more satisfying and refreshing launches since you can actually get stock at least
reasonably easy enough and still today it's not terribly difficult to buy they were on shelves for
quite a while on launch day and the prices right now are a little bit higher than msrp
supply has tightened up a little bit but they've stabilized around 500 550 or so and for a lot
of you yeah from a percentage standpoint it's still quite a bit more than the phantom msrp of
but from a dollar perspective the premium is a lot lower than on other cards right it's only
like 125 bucks and that's easier to justify if you absolutely need a card for your build right now
as a reviewer that gets these cards on the second round for reviews i'm getting to check out these
cards after the first round launch day reviewers have gotten them and test them out so there's
less value that i can offer you in that benchmark arena so instead of telling you what you probably
know already in terms of the gaming performance i thought that another way that i could add value
and inject some interesting facts into the discussions just to look at the differences
between these two cards and compare contrast these two models you might be in a situation
where you can actually choose from either of these two cards when stock does appear so
for my review of the 6600xt i'm gonna focus on that comparison and also share some data
for performance between these two cards compared to a few other cards and then i'll wrap up with my
overall impression of the series so navi 23 6600 xt that's the so-called entry-level card in amd's
rx 6000 series and it's the replacement for the navi 10 5600 xt which was one of my
favorite cards in the previous generation just because of its spectacular performance per dollar
the 6600 xt follows in that same trend and the general performance is slightly above that of a
5700 xt however it's way more efficient and that also means a small card small coolers
those are the norm here now this is the closest i've ever seen nitro plus and the pulse models
when both are available in the same series typically the nitro plus cards are three fan
models so i really was intrigued by the difference here since on the outside to look really similar
they're both dual fan two slot designs the pulse card i have here is a review unit from sapphire
i already did some thermal testing with this that you might have seen on the nr200p max optimization
video so big thanks to them for their support and the nitro plus card here i just purchased myself
for my own build coming up soon so let's just take a quick look here both have a metal back
plate with a semi flow through cooler cutout and it's just a small notch passed to pcb
a single eight pin power port and the nitro plus has rgb and with that comes a three-pin drgb
port that theoretically can communicate to downstream devices and a three-position toggle
switch which enables a software-controlled v bios plus two manually selectable v bios modes
for the two switchable v bios's there's a quieter silent and there's a performance mode on the
coolers themselves these heatsinks look remarkably similar and i wouldn't be surprised if they're the
exact same one but the fans even though they look alike they're a little bit different there's the
nitro plus ones do spin in opposing directions presumably to create a different turbulence
pattern and i don't know necessarily that that matters too much when we take a look at the
thermal differences but on paper the game clock of the nitro plus is 25 48 megahertz versus 23.82
on the pulse but does it really matter for an extended half and 4.0 run the pulse is actually
boosting to a higher clock about 50 megahertz above the nitro plus in its performance mode
and as you can see the silent v bios on the nitro plus just clocks in lower the total board power
in the silent mode is about 130 watts while that figure is around 140 for both the pulse and nitro
plus in performance mode the coolers boost fans up to between 1000 and 1300 rpm at the 25 degrees c
room temp i tested in the pulse is more aggressive here and the silent v bios definitely runs at a
more consistent lower level and it doesn't need to run as high since that v bios is drawing less
power i don't see a compelling reason to run the card in the silent bios personally what i would
do is just run into performance mode to get the full boost clock and then just dial back the fans
let the card run a little bit hotter if you want i think at that point the performance hit will
still be less than that gap that you see here at the end of the day the pulse card does run
a bit cooler due to the higher fan speeds it is also louder of course by about .3 decibels
it's just a smidgen though because these coolers are both very quiet and these are refreshingly
low rpms or a graphics card these days and let's just take a quick listen to what these sound like
all right so let's take a look at a few benchmarks apologies i don't have access to a 3060 otherwise
i would have just thrown that in there as a comparison but let's just compare to the 6700 xc
that i tested a few months back and also the card that the 6600xt is replacing which is the 5600 xt
for the heaven benchmark in 1440p the two cards are pretty closely positioned the pulse is edging
out the nitro plus here for the 4k optimized benchmark in superposition again small margin
here between the two currents but the pulse leads same story here with 3d marks time spy extreme
cutting over to 3d mark port royal the 5600 xt is dropped here because it can't ray trace but
just to give an idea of where these cards stack up i threw the 3070 fes score in here now these
cards wouldn't be a good choice for ray tracing titles for that i'd look more towards the 30 60
and 30 3060 ti in this performance bracket of course if anything either of these are better
than the 5600 xt in that regard since that card's not equipped for rt at all finally
for the synthetics a quick check over on 3dmark strike the pulse is again still ahead slightly
title like civ 6 would be fine even in 4k for the these two cards but let's just do 1440p
and that 50-ish megahertz advantage the pulse has over the nitro plus does translate into something
not very meaningful for this title but it is a 3 fps advantage but in something like red dead
2 that difference is inconsequential and these two cards are basically identical in performance
at this level now i personally wouldn't be playing even in 1080 ultra at these frame rates but that's
just to keep things consistent between all the cards tested if you do drop settings around medium
you'll see around 60 fps in 1440 and 80 fps and 1080 so very playable as long as you're willing
to drop settings a little bit and i think for most aaa titles this is fine as long as you're
realistic with your settings for a rendering task these cards are still pretty similar
my newt two second advantage here for the pulse so this pulse card pretty impressive it's actually
running a little bit better than the nitro plus it's supposed to be kind of slightly lower than
if you want to mess with the nitro plus though of course you could just throw a little more power
at it and overclock it a little bit and you get the same performance just you know dial up the
fan speeds be out of the box the pulse is looking like the better performer here that's impossible
to predict retail pricing especially in this current market now but at least micro center's
site gives us a little indication of that the difference between these two cards is a mere 20
so what are you getting for the extra 20 bucks on the nitro plus well at the end of the day it looks
like it's just rgb and an arguably better looking cooler now that's a subjective but for many of you
i think this might be totally worth it because of that but suffice to say the pulse version performs
every bit as good as the nitro plus and hey if you don't need the rgb at least you know you're
not giving away performance and you're also saving a few bucks and likewise for just 20
you're not really getting better performance but i personally do like the looks of the nitro card
a little bit better and i think i'll be throwing this nitro plus card into a
medium powered sub 10 liter build soon so we'll see how it performs there
now overall i really like the 6600 xt series i really like the 5600 xt and for a lot of folks
like myself i don't need too much card and at full load this thing is drawing under 140 watts so it's
perfect for those medium powered small form factor builds both from a compact size perspective and
also from a heat management perspective now even if the performance is coming in at the previous
gen's 5700 xt level i didn't like those big heavy coolers the 5700 xt was drawing upwards of 225
watts and a lot of the dual fan versions just ran way too loud like the msi meko c that i
had for a while you can't get a 5700 xt right now for a reasonable price just due to ethereum
mining but if this is the level of gaming performance that you need now you can get it
in a very small lean and quiet form and i think that's the beauty here of the 6600 xt sure it's
definitely on the lower end of the performance spectrum right now but when you consider that
you can actually get either these cards for a reasonable price given the current market for
example at least right now in late september a 30 60 is gonna run you about a hundred dollars more
than either of these cards on the market if you can even find one right if you need ray
tracing and dlss i would steer you towards team green's direction but hey if you're like me
and you just want to kick back and enjoy some rts titles with the occasional aaa title and you
don't want to turn your desk into a small furnace these cards are a breath of fresh air and i'd say
as long as you can get one for around 500 bucks definitely go for it and wholeheartedly recommend
these over a used previous gen gpu i hope you found the information and the review enjoyable if
so give a like i'll also be leaving links for the cards and also other test components down below
please check those out and please subscribe if you haven't already thanks for watching