AMD's Radeon RX 6600 XT doesn't go on sale until August 11. However, a scalper (via VideoCardz) on Newegg has already put up the MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G for $1,099.99.
Powered by the Navi 23 silicon, the Radeon RX 6600 XT will go toe-to-toe with Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060 and will undoubtedly find a spot on our list of best graphics cards. According to the Newegg listing, a third-party merchant, which is based in China, is selling the MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G. The graphics card is way overpriced, even by scalper standards. You could easily find a Radeon RX 6700 XT for below $1,000. Furthemore, it'll take between 7 to 23 days for the Radeon RX 6600 XT to actually get to you so you're just better off waiting for the official launch day.
Coming back to the Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G, the graphics card features MSI's Twin Forzr 8 cooling system with precision-machined heat pipes to transfer heat to a bulky heatsink. A pair of semi-passive Torx 4.0 cooling fans help dissipate the heat. The Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G conforms to a dual-slot design with a length of 277mm. A bit of RGB lighting adds some flair to the the Twin Forzr 8 cooler, which is also complemented with a matching metal backplate.
The Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G wields the full Navi 23 die with 32 compute units (CUs) or 2,084 stream processors (SPs), but MSI hasn't reveal the clock speeds. Being the Gaming X variant, the SKU should have the highest clocks out of MSI's Radeon RX 6600 XT lineup.
The 8GB of GDDR6 memory operates at 16 Gbps across a 128-bit memory interface, providing a maximum memory bandwidth in the range of 256 GBps. Being a RDNA 2 product, the Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G has 32MB of Infinity Cache at its disposal as well.
Rated for 160W, the Radeon RX 6600 XT Gaming X 8G only requires a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. A power supply with a minimum capacity of 500W should suffice. As for the display output design, MSI opted for a single HDMI 2.1 port and up to three DisplayPort 1.4 outputs for connecting up to four displays.
Although the Radeon RX 6600 XT has a $379 MSRP, it would be naive to expect the graphics card to debut with that price tag, given the current market. Buyers will likely end up paying scalper prices for the Navi 23-powered graphics card, but surely not over $1,000.