On Friday, VideoCardz shared a batch of AMD Radeon RX 6600 non-XT graphics cards images from its sources. The images are crisp and detailed, and the GPU centric leaks site has a nice comparison slider showing easy to spot differences between the PCB layout and heatsink - from top-down views of the respective add-in-cards.
The exact tech specs of the Radeon RX 6600 are not yet known, or firmed up by any substantial leak. However, rumours are that compared to the RX 6600XT it will have 1792 cores, vs 2048 cores. Other than that, most of the specs look like they will be the same, apart from the power saving from running fewer GPU cores. The cutbacks are likely to mean that the competitive position against the Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 is weakened enough for it to lose out to the rival on average.
AMD Radeon RX 6600 pricing and availability
On Saturday, a pair of PC hardware retailers in Australia published online listings with pricing for this new Gigabyte Eagle (GV-R66EAGLE-8GD). The prices given were AUD$805, and $910. The first listing might not include Australia's Goods and Service Tax (GST). Converting AUD$900 to GBP today would get you about GBP£480 before any fees. One of the Australian retailers also stocks the Gigabyte Radeon RX 6600 XT Eagle, for which it is asking AUD$300 more (inc tax).
The nature of the above leaks suggests that the official launch of the AMD Radeon RX 6600 can't be that far away. According to Coreteks in July, the XT-less RX 6600 is going to become available in October. The established leaker recently added that he expects the non-XT variant to be available in much smaller quantities than the XT, as "AMD is getting great yields with [TSMC] N7, so it doesn't make sense to sell non-XTs when people will buy XTs if they're out there".
First fruits of the Samsung / AMD mobile processor collab
On Sunday, news of the first collaborative efforts to be realized by the Samsung and AMD partnership was shared on a tech forum in Korea. The story goes that Samsung has prepared a number of SoCs to address its mid-range, high-end, and flagship devices.
Samsung is going to debut the first Exynos / mRDNA SoCs in its midrange-premium Galaxy A-series smartphones, says the source. Some Chinese smartphone firms are also on board with launching devices based on this SoC.
Looking at rumoured configurations, the SoC is going to mix Arm Cortex-A78 big cores with various amounts of AMD mRDNA CUs, depending on the market segment. Some Galaxy A-series mobiles will get SoCs with two or four mRDNA CUs, and there will be an SoC for Galaxy S devices with six CUs, says the source. GPU clocks in testing are currently running at up to 1GHz. For some perspective, the Valve Steam Deck uses eight RDNA2 CUs running at 1-1.6GHz.
The above news nuggets are interesting, but require a pinch of salt or two, as always. Even if true at the time of writing, configurations can change.
