MSI Radeon RX 7600 MECH 2X CLASSIC 8G OC Graphics Card

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The reception this generation of graphic cards has received among PC consumers has been mixed, to put it kindly. I’ve already reviewed a couple of NVIDA GPUs and found them to be impressive, if you ignore the price-to-performance ratio, an understandable argument compared to previous-gen models. This is the first time I look at AMD’s latest RDNA3 GPUs, specifically the Radeon RX 7600, their newest mainstream offering that promises to deliver 1080p gaming in a quiet and space-efficient package.

While far from the most impressive within the RDNA3 lineup, the MSI RX 7600 MECH 2X CLASSIC 8G OC offers decent gaming chops in a reasonably priced package. A small but respectable AIB unit.

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Styling and Specifications

Coming in at a length of 9.25in (235mm), 2.8in (71.1mm) width and a partly 1.4lbs (666g) this is small with the typical hard angular styling theme. Instead of metal and aluminum materials making up the outer body, there’s an extensive use of plastic for the front shroud and brushed surface backplate replicating that pseudo-industrial appearance.

Like other AIB brands, MSI provides the MECH 2X CLASSIC with their own uniquely branded suite of physical and software features. The Exterior is chock-full of things like a dual Torx Fan design where the plastic blade groves are unidirectional to accelerate heatsink airflow, and Zero Frozr response where the fans stop spinning and remain quiet when operating temperatures don’t require active cooling.

What you can’t see underneath are more ways to keep the GPU cool under pressure. with machined core piping engineered to better spread heat away from the GPU, and strategical placement of thermal on internal board components that only requires 165W to operate. For those who like some customization you can tool around with the MSI Center software where you can monitor, tweak and optimize settings in real-time with just a few clicks.

All variants of the Radeon RX 7600 share the same base specifications, so expect 32 computing units, 32 ray accelerators, 64 AI accelerators, and 2048 stream processors. VRAM is also appropriately decent with 8GB GDDR6 clocked at up to 18Gbps with a 128-bit interface, and a bandwidth of 288 GB/s with 32MB of AMD Infinity Cache. This specific technology operates as a bandwidth amplifier for added performance, in lieu of incorporating a physically larger costly memory bus typically used on higher-end GPUs. This originally debuted in prior RDNA2 cards and continues here as well.

Core clocks are at 2250MHz for game frequency and up to 2655MHz for boost. However, MSI takes things a tiny bit farther on their AIB with a base 2280MHz and 2695MHz respectively.

Connectivity is great with one HDMI 2.1a and three DisplayPort 2.1 ports with HDCP 2.3 (some non-AMD reference models may be equipped with DisplayPort 1.4a), which are theoretically capable of achieving VRR and maximum pixel resolutions of 4K@120Hz (4096 x 2160) and 8K@60Hz with DSC enabled (7860 x 4320) respectively.

Of course, other AMD enhancements such as AV1 encoding which brings direct streaming capabilities, FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 2.0/2.1), Radeon Anti-Lag, FreeSync and Radeon Super Resolution which grants universal and/or virtual FSR upscaling to any game that doesn’t support it natively. All these features are accessible through AMD’s Adrenalin software suite and allows for extensive customization, rivaling NVIDIA if you’re a content creator and need a streamlined way of recording material for YouTube, Twitch or Kick platforms.

Test Build

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X processor
• RAM: 32GB Kingston Fury Renegade 6400MHz DDR5 (16GBx2)
• Motherboard: GIGABYTE B650i AORUS ULTRA AM5 Mini-ITX
• PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 G+, 80Plus Gold 1000W
• HDD/SSD: 1TB Samsung 980 Pro MVne PCIe 4×4
• CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12A 120MM Cooler

*Example build is intended to match relevant PC configurations. Components may be independently sourced or provided by manufacturers for evaluation purposes.

Gaming Performance

I want to preface my experience by saying the Radeon RX 7600 is meant to achieve two things. First, this is the most affordable RDNA3 GPU in the 7000 Series lineup.  Secondly, AMD has positioned this card for maximum 1080p gaming to appeal to users most likely upgrading from GeForce GTX Pascal or Radeon 400 Polaris GPUs—essentially a quality-of-life jump even by budgeted standards.

Knowing this, I decided to focus my testing with FHD (1080p) and WQHD (1440p) resolutions in mind. Out of curiosity, I fooled around with 4K/UHD and Ray Tracing (RT) acceleration but found the results far too unstable and overwhelming for the RX 7600 to handle. No surprises, of course, but don’t hate me for trying.

1080p Gaming Performance

The RX 7600 plays fantastic for with bare minimum of 60fps in fighters like Street Fighter 6 and Tekken 7, while online multiplayer hits like Fortnite, Overwatch 2 and Rocket League can sometimes reach nearly 200fps on max settings and over 300fps on normal presets. These games are not necessarily resource-intensive, but you’re easily covered for non-exclusives without needing to resort to a PlayStation or Xbox.

For single-player games in 1080p, most of them played perfectly fine between 75-100fps between a mix from High to Ultra setting, except for Cyberpunk 2077 that often dipped below 60fps before enabling FSR. Unlike DLSS from NVIDIA which is driven by proprietary AI calculation, FSR employs a more straightforward method that renders at a lower resolution with open-source spatial upscaling algorithms, and then upscales at a lower resolution at a higher framerate.

Fortunately, rasterized performance is good enough and doesn’t make FSR an absolute requirement, with the latter being important because some titles may not natively support FSR 2.0 and may attempt VSR sampling instead.

1440p Gaming Performance with FSR

The Radeon RX 7600 performs well at 1440p, with the expectation that graphic settings must be turned down or assisted with FSR. Opinions differ on whether FSR – AMD’s branded Fidelity Super Resolution (or super-upscaling) – is mildly effective for lower-end GPUs, but it did help push the RX 7600 along for an additional 5-10% fps gain. However, you can still feel that limited VRAM and memory bus count chug occasionally, even with FSR enabled to compensate for high graphic presets.

In my opinion, the inherent benefits of enabling FSR upscaling outweigh the disadvantages when playing in 1440p/QWHD. As a reminder, supersampling, regardless what it’s called (i.e. NVIDIA DLSS or Intel XeSS), tends to work wonders for mainstream gaming and results are noticeably better, so getting 4K-like quality from a 1440p/QWHD image while obtaining those extra frames yield moderately good results.

On the flipside, if native resolution is within a lower 720p/1080p range, you’ll usually encounter miscellaneous details appearing more blurry, unnaturally blended, or far too jagged/aliased depending on what’s trying to be processed in-game, sometimes with little-to-no effect at all. As for ray tracing—again, the RX 7600 just isn’t powerful enough to deliver these effects properly, so I recommend just leaving it off.

Conclusion: The Cheap Spot

AMD’s Radeon RX 7600, or more specifically the MSI RX 7600 MECH 2X CLASSIC 8G OC, covers all the basics you’d want from a budget-friendly gaming GPU, with adequate performance in both 1980p and 1440p settings. I also appreciate that AMD packed in so many enhancements that are often exclusive for higher-end models, even if a few of them are brand padding at this level.

Lower VRAM capacity and smaller memory bus utilization can hamper performance when maxing out the most graphically demanding titles, which is something to consider in the future as some of the games that I tested quickly brought this GPU to its knees. For most users though, the RX 7600 will do just fine.