Radeon RX 7600 XT with 16GB of VRAM announced, $329 and launching January 24

AMD has announced its new RDNA 3 GPU at CES 2024 as the Radeon RX 7600 XT 16G. Yes, this is another mainstream GPU from Team Red, but this time with 16GB of VRAM for $329 USD.

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AMD announced the new Radeon RX 7600 XT at CES 2024, launching on January 24, 2024, image credit: AMD.

Available January 24, 2024, with models from Acer, ASRock, ASUS, GIGABYTE, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX, it's set to fill the sizable performance gap between the Radeon RX 7600 and the Radeon RX 7700 XT. At least, that was the expectation. Per AMD, in-game performance will be closer to the 7600 than the 7700 XT.

With 16GB of VRAM, AMD notes that this mainstream GPU is 'ready to take on 1440p' in games where VRAM capacity is a concern but is better suited for AI and content creation. Outside of the bump in VRAM and faster clock speeds, the specs are identical to the existing Radeon RX 7600 non-XT that launched in May 2023. What does this mean for performance? Let's dig into AMD's benchmarks and info.

The Radeon RX 7600 XT 16GB features the same number of Compute Units and Ray Accelerators (32), AI Accelerators (64), and Stream Processors (2048) as the baseline Radeon RX 7600. However, it doubles the VRAM capacity to 16GB of GDDR6 memory on a 128-bit bus while increasing the Game Clock speed from 2.25 GHz to 2.47 GHz and the Boost Clock speed from 2.67 GHz to 2.76 GHz

A 9.8% and 3.4% increase, respectively. And with that, the Total Board Power rating has increased to 190W. For its internal 1080p benchmarks, AMD includes the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (the reasoning given is that 50% of PC gamers, according to the latest Steam Hardware Survey, are using an RTX 2060 or slower GPU for their gaming).

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Radeon RX 7600 XT benchmarks, image credit: AMD.

Across recent releases like Avatar Frontiers of Pandora, Starfield, The Last of Up Part I, Forza Horizon 5, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, the new Radeon RX 7600 XT is 85.6% faster than the GeForce RTX 2060 and 16.6% faster than the baseline Radeon RX 7600.

For its 1440p benchmarks, AMD pits the Radeon RX 7600 XT against the Radeon RX 7600. Across Starfield, Shadow of the Tom Raider, Watch Dogs Legion, Assassin's Creed Mirage, and Forza Horizon 5, the performance bump increases to 19.6% - which you can attribute to the additional VRAM. AMD clarified that the performance increase will vary from title to title, but the higher clocks ensure that the Radeon RX 7600 XT is always ahead of the Radeon RX 7600.

Regarding raw performance, our guess puts the Radeon RX 7600 XT slightly above the GeForce RTX 4060 but lower than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti - but we'd have to wait until full reviews get a clearer picture.

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Radeon RX 7600 XT benchmarks, image credit: AMD.

As part of the announcement, AMD did compare the Radeon RX 7600 XT to the GeForce RTX 4060 - albeit to showcase the new driver-based frame generation Fluid Motion Frames technology that is now officially a part of AMD HYPR-RX and no longer in preview.

The tech can dramatically increase perceived performance in games without needing game-specific support. This 1080p chart shows raw performance and DLSS 2/FSR 2 equivalent performance being close, with the 7600 XT coming out ahead when Fluid Motion Frames are enabled.

There's good news for content creation and the video side of Radeon with the new 7600 XT. Radeon and RDNA 3 are getting improved video encoding and even new driver-based video upscaling like NVIDIA's RTX Video Super Resolution. Using FSR tech, AMD's video upscaling is also coming to popular video player VLC.

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Radeon RX 7600 XT AI capabilities, image credit: AMD.

Last but certainly not least, the bump to 16GB of VRAM in the Radeon RX 7600 XT makes it a far more appealing product for affordable generative AI, with the ability to run more demanding generative AI models - not to mention more demanding content creation apps. So even though in-game performance is closer to the Radeon RX 7600 than not - this could be the reason to pick up a 7600 XT when it launches later this month.

• Read more: Desktop Ryzen 8000G CPUs are here and can run Cyberpunk 2077 at Full HD 60fps without a GPU
• Read more: AMD Fluid Motion Frames leaves beta, joins HYPR-RX for all RDNA 2 and RDNA 3 owners
• Read more: AMD's new Ryzen 7 5700X3D CPU launches at the end of January, and for $249 it's a budget winner
• Read more: AMD announces Radeon FSR upscaling for video playback in YouTube and VLC