Review of the PowerColor RX 6600 xt Hellhound video card | Video Cards | Reviews

The Radeon RX 6600 XT is a new product from AMD. The company presented the video card on July 30, 2021, and the start of sales in DNS was scheduled for August 12, 2021. As many expected, all video cards were sold out in the first 5-10 minutes. I was also lucky to become the owner of this video card made by PowerColor with the name “Hellhound”, which means “Cerberus” in Russian. I got it for 45.999r. By the design of the box and the video card itself, it immediately becomes clear why it got its name. Immediately on the box, we are greeted by the aggressive logo of a white dog, a matter of taste, of course, but I like this design.

Then I was struck by an incomprehensible sticker on the back, on which it is written that the warranty is 24 months. But do not be alarmed, this is just a sticker, which is not an official document, unlike the check, which states in black and white that the warranty is 36 legal months.

After I opened the box, I was a little disappointed, the video card has the most budgetary equipment, which includes cardboard, a video card in a bag and a business card. Poorly, and after all, it is during the first unpacking of the goods that people get vivid emotions, but not in this case. But maybe it’s for the best that there is no overpayment for packaging, which will safely go to the shelf.

We take out the video card, we are also greeted by the logo of an aggressive dog, then you can see a seal, a backlight off slider and an 8-pin power connector. The size of the video card is quite average, it takes 2.5 slots, length is 220 mm, thickness is 45 mm. There are enough connectors for connecting monitors, 3 DisplayPort (1.4) and 1 HDMI (2.1). The fans are full 120 mm, which also have blue backlighting.

I installed the video card in the PC, played for two days and I can say the following … The video card copes with all the tasks with a bang. In my case, this is comfortable FullHd gaming at 165 Hz. I managed to play in such a short time in CyberPunk 2077, at maximum settings, it is stable 60+ fps, and in Apex Legends, where I also have 120+ fps at maximum graphics settings.
Let’s move on to the advantages and disadvantages of this video card.

Advantages:
1. Nice design
2.Low power consumption, the recommended power supply for this video card is only 500 watts.
3.The card is incredibly cold, which is immediately felt after the RX 570 8gb.
4. Quiet operation of fans. (In my case Deepcool MATREXX 55 MESH, with a full set of case coolers, the fans on the video card work at 40%, and the temperature of the video card is ~ 65 degrees)
5.Power for FullHD gaming.
6. The ability to turn off the backlight for the fans.

Disadvantages:
1. Poor implementation of beams from AMD.
2. The budget of the delivery set.
3. There is no analogue of DLSS.

In addition to the advantages and disadvantages, I want to introduce a third point, which will be called “controversial points.”

So, the controversial points:
1.Price. The price of 45.999r is a controversial point, for some it is a plus, for some it is a minus. Judging by the prices for the summer-autumn of 2020, this is certainly a lot of money, but we live in the present, in real reality, where there is a deficit, mining, covid, a low ruble against the dollar. And I want to play right now, and not in a month, half a year, a year, when prices will fall there, and no one can say 100% when this will happen.
2. The width of the bus is 128 bits.
3.Version of the graphics card connection interface is PCI Express 4.0, while most motherboards are equipped with PCI Express 3.0 interface.

I attributed these points to controversial ones, since on the one hand they look like flaws, but on the other hand, an ordinary user will absolutely not feel the difference, even more he will hardly know what kind of bus width and PCI version there is. This is a mid-range video card, where it seems to me that people are looking at only one thing – how many fps is in their favorite game. And this very difference between PCI 3.0 and 4.0 is ~ 5% in favor of 4.0. The only exception is the only one game DOOM Eternal, where the difference is already significantly more than 5%.
The closest competitor from NVIDIA is the RTX 3060 graphics card. The cheapest option, which cost 55.999r with one fan and 58.999r with two fans. As you can see from these figures, the video card from the red is significantly cheaper, but does this mean that it is worse? In my opinion, absolutely not. The 3060 has 12 gb of video memory, beam technology performs much better than AMD graphics cards, and also has its own DLSS 2.0 technology. It sounds nice, but in practice 12 GB of video memory for games in FullHd is clearly unnecessary, ray technology is implemented in a small number of games, and yet, in my opinion, the performance of the RTX 3060 is still not enough for full use of rays. But in terms of dry performance in FullHd, the RX 6600 XT is noticeably better and produces more fps. And here everyone’s business, if technology is important to you, then it is worth overpaying for the RTX 3060, if you are interested in dry performance, then you can consider buying an RX 6600 XT.
I was pleased with my purchase and can recommend the PowerColor RX 6600 xt Hellhound video card for purchase.