XFX MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Review: 1080P Gaming Speedster

We spent some time overclocking the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 using the various performance and tuning tools built into AMD's Adrenaline Edition drivers. With the tuning options built into AMD's driver suite, users have multiple ways to tweak a card's performance. Users can manually alter frequencies, memory timings, voltages, fan speeds, and the max power target using percentages or finer-grained numerical sliders, or they can opt to use various preset modes or auto-tune a number of characteristics, including GPU and memory frequencies as well as GPU voltage.


The tuning options built into AMD's Radeon Software suite offer manual controls, along with automatic under-volting and automatic GPU and Memory overclocking. Finding the highest stable memory and GPU clocks, at the lowest voltage possible, while simultaneously increasing the max power target and keeping temperatures low, will yield the best overall overclocking results. The screenshot above shows the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308's typical hardware monitoring data, while running in its stock configuration -- no tuning was done here. At its stock settings, we saw the GPU clock typically hovering in the 2,600MHz - 2,680MHz range while gaming (give or take) with our particular sample.


With a little tweaking, however, we found that we could nearly max-out the memory clock on our card to 2,325MHz with fast memory timings enabled, and with an under-volt to 1,125mV, and +15% to the power target, we typically saw a wider-range of real-world game clocks, commonly in the 2,650MHz - 2,725MHz range, though it occasionally spiked higher. The junction temperature while overclocked peaked just under 80°C range with these settings.


With the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 overclocked, we saw some nice performance gains. Framerates increased across the board and we even crossed into the 60 FPS range at 1440p in Metro Exodus.

Total System Power Consumption

XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308: Summary And Verdict

There's not much more to say about the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 that we didn't cover in our initial Radeon RX 6600 XT launch article. Like the PowerColor cards we looked at earlier in the week, the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 is a strong, mid-range performer that drops in below the Radeon RX 6700 XT and roughly in-between the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3060.

Find XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT: Cards @ Amazon.com

If we forget about ray tracing for a moment, the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 ends up clearly outpacing the GeForce RTX 3060, at and MSRP $20 below the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. Factor in ray tracing though and NVIDIA's Ampere-based GeForces have a clear edge. With that said, if MSRPs were any indication of reality at this point in time, the additional $20 for a 3060 Ti is a no-brainer, but since you can't find a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti for anything close to MSRP right now, we're arguing semantics here.

In the overall scheme of things, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is a worthwhile offering for mainstream 1080p gaming and the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 is a solid example of the GPU. If you find one in-stock somewhere and its fits your budget, the XFX Radeon RX 6600 XT MERC 308 is a cool running, quiet, overclockable, power efficient mainstream GPU.

Good Performance Cool and Quiet Good Overclocker Attractive Design	Non-Addressable Lighting Big Performance Gains Stepping  Up To 3060 Ti or 6700 XT.