AMD Radeon RX 7600 Review

AMD shoots for the 1080P market with the Radeon RX 7600. Let's see how it fares!

If we’re going with Steam’s Hardware & Software survey, as we usually do to check the landscape of things, 1080p still accounts for the majority of primary display solutions. It doesn’t look like that’s going to change soon, so Full HD is in for the long haul. With that said, the AMD Radeon RX 7600 looks to power things up on this resolution, and we’re here to see how it fares on our system. Let’s have a go at it.

UNBOXING AND DESIGN

The AMD Radeon RX 7600 comes in quite a compact packaging, and pretty sure this will be around the same size across the board for dual-fan variants. Also, to note, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to get your hands on the reference edition here in the country. We’ll be on the lookout for one if there’s ever a listing, but we’re not holding our breaths here. Still, this is a good opportunity to get a baseline on the performance of the Radeon RX 7600, so here we are.

As for the Radeon RX 7600 itself, it. is. a. looker. While we see AIBs equipping RX 7600s with triple fan setups, the reference edition is definitely looking great. AMD has more often than not produced really gorgeous reference editions for its graphics cards, and while that is probably more of a personal opinion than a straight up fact, can't deny that it's a looker.

Somehow the reference edition reminds me of Overwatch’s Ramattra because of the accents on the center of the fans. The matte black paint job adds up to the premium looks. And the markings of AMD on the output plate accentuates it further. 

For the ports itself, the Radeon RX 7600 features 1 HDMI 2.1 Port and 3 DisplayPorts. Power is supplied via an 8-pin connector, so thankfully you won’t have to hunt for a 12VHPWR adapter.  

PERFORMANCE

The Radeon RX 7600 is a 165W graphics card that looks to be a proper generational upgrade over the Radeon RX 6600. While this is still an 8GB GDDR6 graphics card, it does come packed with several upgrades from its predecessor, including AI Accelerators, AV1 Encoding and more. 

We’ll be testing this on our setup with a Ryzen 5 3600X and a GIGABYTE AORUS X570 ELITE motherboard with 16GB of RAM.

Motherboard	AORUS X570 ELITE
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU	AMD Radeon RX 7600
RAM	Kingston FURY Beast 16GB DDR4 @3600MHz
Cooler	Noctua NH-D15
PSU	CORSAIR RM750 80 Plus Gold
Case	Thermaltake Core P3
OS	Windows 10 Pro
Storage	Plextor M9Pe(G) NVMe 512GB M.2 SSD
Monitor	ASUS VP249QGR 144Hz 24-inch Monitor

3DMark Time Spy

3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming PCs. Time Spy is one of the first DirectX 12 apps to be built the right way from the ground up to fully realize the performance gains that the new API offers. With its Extreme counterpart rendering visuals in 4K.

3DMark Firestrike

Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for modern gaming PCs. Its ambitious real-time graphics are rendered with detail and complexity far beyond other DirectX 11 benchmarks and games. With Extreme and Ultra versions raising resolution in 25650 x 1440 and 4K.

3DMark Port Royal

We really don't want to mess with Ray Tracing as we value performance fluidity over graphics. We'd rather crank up everything to max barring Ray Tracing, because games without it still look beautiful. So, here's 3DMark Port Royal if you're looking for Ray Tracing numbers.

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers

The Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers official benchmark tool uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance. A character creation tool is also included, allowing you to view a playable character as they will appear in-game.

Settings:

Graphics Settings: Maximum Preset

Real-time Reflections: Maximum

Anti-aliasing: FXAA

Transparent Lighting Quality: High

Grass Quality: High

Parallax Occlusion: High

Tessellation: High

Glare: Standard

Texture Filtering: Anisotropic x16

God of War

God of War is now on PC and looks beautiful. So, what better way to crank it up all to Ultra and play from there. 

Settings:

Preset: Ultra

Texture Quality: Ultra

Model Quality: Ultra

Anisotropic Filter: Ultra

Shadows: Ultra

Reflections: Ultra

Atmospherics: Ultra

Ambient Occlusion: High

Vsync: Off

Triple Buffering: Off

DLSS: Off

AMD FSR 2.0: Off

Render Scale: 100%

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. The game features an integrated benchmark tool that we can use for testing.

Settings:

Preset: Ultra

DLSS: Off

Dynamic Resolution Scaling: Off

FidelityFX Super Resolution Off

Anisotropy: 16

Local Shadow Mesh Quality: High

Local Shadow Quality: High

Cascaded Shadows Range: High

Cascaded Shadows Resolution: High

Volumetric Fog Resolution: Ultra

Max Dynamic Decals: Ultra

Screen Space Reflections Quality: Ultra

Level of Detail: High

Ray Tracing: Off

Vsync: Off

Maximum FPS Off

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 is a racing game that features gorgeous visuals 

Temperature

Our temperature tests are done with the system idle in the first 30 minutes after boot up, and afterwards a load test of 3DMark Time Spy on loop for another 30 minutes.

CONCLUSION

So, here we are again. We love things designed for the masses. There's that huge focus and attention to the price-performance ratio, so you can get your money's worth as much as possible. When it comes to the AMD Radeon RX 7600, it's an exceptional GPU that can perform well within its intentions, and even beyond for less demanding titles. It's overall a decent upgrade over its predecessor, with performance and features in mind. Is it something you'll upgrade to if you're coming from an AMD Radeon RX 6600? Most likely not. But if you're jumping from way previous generations or altogether building a new gaming desktop, the RX 7600 is one of the most competitive graphics cards at the moment with its sweet, incredible value.