Name: RX 7600
Item: RX 7600
Rating: 5

At the end of last year, AMD released its RX 7000-series graphics cards with two heavy-hitters aimed at high-end gaming setups. While NVIDIA did something similar, team green has been steadily releasing GPUs with lower price points using its latest technology, and, well, AMD has been silent. That is, until now. Today, AMD is introducing the RX 7600, a GPU aimed at 1080p gamers with an impressive retail price of $269. This comes in at an additional $30 below the RTX 4060, while delivering pretty impressive performance. I’ve spent the past week with AMD’s latest RX 7600 GPU, and have come away with one take in: could this be the king of budget graphics cards? Read on to find out why this will become one of our go-to recommended graphics cards for low- to mid-range gaming setups.

Specs:

32 Compute Units & Ray Accelerators
2048 Stream Processors
2.25GHz Game Clock
Up to 2.66GHz Boost Clock
8GB GDDR6 Memory
18 Gbps Memory Speed
128-bit Memory Bus
32MB 2nd Gen AMD Infinity Cache
165W Total Board Power
Up to DisplayPort 2.1 (dependent on board partner integration)
AV1 Hardware Encoding
Single 8-pin PCIe Power Connector

AMD RX 7600 GPU hands-on review

The RX 7600 unit that we’ve been testing for the past week is one of AMD’s reference models, and honestly, the build quality is pretty impressive. It has a full metal back plate and holding the RX 7600 and the RX 6750 XT in hands…the RX 7600 almost seems a bit heavier. It’s stout for its small self, that’s for sure. And, the performance is no slouch either.

Our unit is a 2-fan card and we honestly saw no thermal throttling during our testing. Speaking of testing, our bench system had the following specs:

AMD RX 7600 Test Bench:

As you can see, for the most part, we went with a pretty run of the mill system. Yes, the motherboard and power supply are a bit overkill, but it’s what we had on hand and those don’t have a whole lot of affect on the system performance. However, the Ryzen 5 7600X paired with the SK Hynix P31 give a pretty similar performance graph to what you can expect from a more entry-level gaming system.

AMD’s RX 7600 GPU speaks for itself

Now it’s time to get into some of the testing. We put the RX 7600 through several games and a few benchmarks to really get a feeling of what it was capable of, as well as tested at two different resolutions. The result: it exceeded our expectations. When AMD first told me that they were launching a $269 graphics card aimed at 1080p gamers, I was a little hesitant. Would it really handle 1080p gaming well? What if I wanted to dip into 1440p a little? Could it handle that too? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding yes. Our experience was pretty great overall, testing the slew of games that we did, though we did occasionally get some frame drops into the single digits. But, that could be server-related as typically we saw those frame drops in MMO or FPS titles that rely on server ping for a quality experience.

AMD RX 7600 Performance: Forza Horizon 5

Just like in our recent RTX 4060 Ti review, we put the RX 7600 through the Forza Horizon 5 built-in benchmark. While the RTX 4060 Ti came out on top, it also costs 67% more and doesn’t deliver near 67% more performance. In Jordan’s testing of the RTX 4060 Ti, he saw frame rates at 94 FPS at 1440p, but that was with NVIDIA’s frame generation technology enabled. Turning things down a bit and only having DLAA enabled with frame generation off, Jordan was able to achieve 66 FPS on the RTX 4060 Ti.

What did the AMD RX 7600 get? With FSR 2.2 turned on with balanced settings and the graphics preset turned to extreme, we were able to achieve an average of 70 FPS at 1080p. Turning up to 1440p did drop us below the 60 FPS threshold to around 55 FPS in-game, but at 55 FPS for 1440p, that’s only 20% below what the RTX 4060 Ti achieved, and that card costs 67% more.

Jedi Fallen Order is a superb experience all around

This was a title I hadn’t fired up in a while, and even though it’s not the latest, it’s still a pretty stellar game. The RX 7600 was able to achieve 144 FPS (the max the game allows) at both 1080p and 1440p when turned to ultra settings, meaning it’s the perfect card for games like that. I had zero problems playing Fallen Order on the RX 7600, and will continue to enjoy Cal’s story on AMD’s entry-level card with great pleasure.

Synthetic benchmarks tell the same story

While the RTX 4060 Ti achieved a Heaven Benchmark score of 71.1 FPS, the RX 7600 scored 61.1 FPS. That’s just 16% slower than the RTX 4060 Ti, which is extremely impressive for a card that’s a fraction of the cost.

AV1 encoding makes this a streaming and rendering powerhouse for the price

While the RX 7600 GPU from AMD might not be poised to take the place of high-end cards for 4K, 6K, or 8K video editing workflows, it actually has some pretty impressive specs when it comes to streaming and rendering. This is, to date, the lowest-cost graphics card with support for the AV1 codec. For comparison, all of NVIDIA’s GPUs have the AV1, though the RTX 4060 is the lowest-cost model at $299 right now. Intel’s Arc Alchemis also packs AV1, but the Arc A750 launched with a MSRP of $289, a full $20 above the RX 7600’s MSRP. So, AMD is getting in on the ground floor in a good way here, offering stellar streaming, recording, and rendering performance (in supported programs) without breaking the bank.

Thermals and power is equally impressive

Following a similar testing setup to what Jordan did with his RTX 4060 Ti, we wanted to take a look and see what the power draw was under load. When testing, we saw the thermals top out at around 71C while the power usage hit 163W. That might be more than the 115 to 120W that the RTX 4060 Ti drew, the RX 7600 is also just a two fan card verses the three fan for the 4060 Ti, which could contribute to the temperatures and power draw.

Regardless, at 165W and 71C on a 2-fan stock cooler, the RX 7600 is mighty impressive for what it’s capable of delivering in the performance department. I was pretty impressed with the overall experience that the card provided in all aspects.

Electronicsforward’ Take

The AMD RX 7600 is the card to beat, in my opinion. The RX 4060 Ti might have it bested in performance, but it comes at a cost…67% more cost, to be exact. The RX 7600 achieves stellar performance for the price and size, and it’ll be the card that I recommend to anyone who wants to build a gaming or streaming setup on a budget.

AMD spoke well when it said that this card was made for 1080p gaming. While it can do 1440p in some titles, this really is made for 1080p if you’re wanting close to or above 100 FPS. Some games, like Forza, it might be worth sacrificing some games for the extra clarity 1440p provides. But, in something like an FPS or more story-based AAA title, you’ll want to stick to that 1080p resolution that AMD is aiming for here.

If you’re good with gaming at 1080p though, it’ll be hard to beat the RX 7600. It’s impressive on all fronts, and the built-in AV1 encoder means you can even game and stream from one computer without having to add extra load to the GPU this time around, which is something we typically don’t see on sub-$300 graphics cards.

The RX 7600 gets a glowing recommendation in my book as it comes in at a stellar price point with pretty impressive performance. If you’re still rocking a GTX 1060, RTX 2060, or even an RTX 3060…the RX 7600 would be a solid upgrade all around. You’re getting DisplayPort 2.1 support, faster memory, more compute units, and AV1 hardware encoding. All for $269. Honestly, it’s hard to beat that. So, if your GPU is the bottleneck in your system, then this is a worthy upgrade for you and gets 5/5 stars from us.

Buy the AMD RX 7600 GPU

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AMD RX 7600 GPU Review: Is this the king of budget graphics cards? We say yes

Specs: