PRICE CHECK! RX 7600 'Meets' the Competition
**The AMD Radeon RX 7600 Review: A Deep Dive into Performance, Value, and Competitiveness**
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### Introduction: The Launch of the Radeon 7600 and Pulse 7600
Today marks an exciting day in the world of gaming hardware as AMD introduces the Radeon RX 7600, alongside Sapphire's Pulse 7600. Priced at $269 MSRP, the Radeon 7600 is a significant entry into the mid-tier GPU market, offering impressive value and performance. This price point is notably lower than the suggested end-user pricing for AMD’s previous generation RX 6600 when it launched. The surprise isn’t just about AMD’s ability to deliver at this price point but also how Sapphire can offer their Pulse version competitively.
With the Radeon 7600 and Pulse 7600 hitting the market, we’re diving deep into what makes these GPUs stand out. From performance metrics to thermal efficiency and competitive comparisons, there's a lot to unpack. Let’s get started.
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### Design and Features: What Sets the Radeon 7600 Apart
The Radeon RX 7600 is designed with small form factor (SFF) builds in mind, making it an ideal choice for compact PCs like the ASRock DeskMini. The GPU boasts a sleek dual-fan design that occupies slightly less than two PCIe slots, ensuring compatibility with space-constrained cases. Notably, the card features three DisplayPort 2.1 outputs and one HDMI port, though some AIB partner models may offer only DisplayPort 1.4.
The power delivery is efficient, requiring a single eight-pin power connector. This design ensures minimal bulk while maintaining sufficient cooling and power delivery for demanding tasks. The card’s PCB is compact yet robust, fitting seamlessly into SFF systems without compromising performance or thermal stability.
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### Performance in Small Form Factor Builds
Testing the Radeon 7600 in an ASRock DeskMini proved to be both challenging and enlightening. Housing the GPU within this tiny system required careful installation, but the results were impressive. Paired with Intel’s reference cooler and a Core i5-12700 processor (non-K), the system managed to handle gaming workloads efficiently.
In our testing, the Radeon 7600 delivered exceptional performance across various AAA titles:
- **The Callisto Protocol**: Achieved 93 FPS at 1080p with ultra settings.
- **Tomb Raider**: Ran smoothly at 160 FPS with one percent lows hitting 120 FPS.
- **Borderlands 3**: Delivered 117 FPS on Ultra, with one percent lows of 96 FPS.
- **Horizon Zero Dawn**: Maintained an impressive 121 FPS.
These results highlight the GPU’s capability to handle modern gaming demands at 1080p, often exceeding expectations. Even when pushing the card to its limits in a high thermal environment, it held up relatively well, though temperatures did reach around 103°C during intense sessions.
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### Thermal and Power Efficiency
One of the standout features of the Radeon RX 7600 is its power efficiency. During gaming sessions, the GPU consumed approximately 156W (burst) and 130W (sustained), with total system power draw rarely exceeding 250W. This makes it an excellent choice for users in power-constrained environments or those looking to pair it with a modest PSU.
Thermally, the card performed admirably in the ASRock DeskMini. Exhaust temperatures peaked at 47°C, which is impressive given the compact enclosure. However, AMD’s reference design did result in higher GPU and memory hotspot temperatures compared to Sapphire’s Pulse version, which offers better cooling solutions and quieter operation.
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### Competitive Landscape: Where Does the RX 7600 Stand?
The Radeon RX 7600 enters a competitive market, with both NVIDIA and Intel vying for dominance. AMD’s offering compares favorably against NVIDIA’s 4060 Ti, which is priced similarly but struggles to match the RX 7600 in raw performance. The 4060 Ti’s reliance on DLSS 3 for perceived improvements further highlights the strengths of AMD’s hardware-based approach.
Intel’s DG2 cards, while offering similar pricing, fall short in terms of consistent performance across all titles. AMD, with its RDNA 3 architecture and efficient design, continues to outpace competitors in both value and raw GPU性能.
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### Linux Support: A Smooth Experience
Linux users have reason to celebrate with the RX 7600. The card offers excellent plug-and-play compatibility, with no need for exotic firmware or drivers. AMD’s commitment to Linux support shines through, making it a top choice for open-source enthusiasts.
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### Conclusion: Value, Performance, and Future-Proofing
The Radeon RX 7600 is a stellar mid-tier GPU that delivers exceptional performance at an unbeatable price. Its ability to handle modern AAA titles at 1080p with ease makes it a strong contender for gamers on a budget. While its 8GB of VRAM may seem limiting, it’s sufficient for most gaming needs today and offers a solid foundation for future-proofing.
Sapphire’s Pulse 7600, while slightly more expensive, provides the added benefits of better cooling and quieter operation, making it an excellent alternative for those willing to invest a bit more for a premium experience.
AMD’s strategic pricing and advancements in RDNA 3 architecture position them well against competitors. With future updates and improvements on the horizon, AMD is poised to continue leading the GPU market with innovation and value.
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### Final Thoughts
The Radeon RX 7600 represents a significant step forward in gaming GPUs, offering a perfect balance of performance, efficiency, and affordability. Whether you’re building a compact SFF system or upgrading your existing setup, this card delivers exceptional value. For those seeking top-tier performance at an accessible price, the RX 7600 is undoubtedly worth considering.
Stay tuned for our full review of the Sapphire Pulse 7600, where we’ll dive deeper into its cooling capabilities and quiet operation. Until then, happy gaming!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday's the day Radeon 7600 is launching and also the pulse 7600 but it's coming in at 269 less than 300 this is less than the suggested end user pricing for the 6600 when it launched I thought runaway hyperinflation was going to kill us all how is AMD able to do this and more importantly how is sapphire able to do this with their version of the card it's launch day there's a lot to unpack here we have to dive in 269 that can't be right 269 suggested end-user pricing Street pricing probably gonna be a little bit more but hey this is the perfect card for a small form factor build let's Dive In all right so for this review we're going to be taking a look at the 7600 how does it perform what do we got going on it's already in A3 it's eight gigabytes of vram how fast is it does it work can you actually buy it for 300 is it worth buying for 300 What's the upgrade path how are you going to do this yes we will get to all of that so little okay aib partner versions aren't going to be little but look at this Packaging the amd.com packaging so nice it's a dual fan slightly less than two slots it's a little bit shorter than two slots you've got three display port outputs and one HDMI most but not all of the aib partner DisplayPort outputs are going to be 2.1 that's something to look at if you're looking for that some aib partner models they said are going to be DisplayPort 1.4 it just depends we got a single eight pin power connector while I'm going to cover the sapphire pulse version more fully in a separate video be on the lookout for that this is an ideal GPU for small form factor systems look at this I mean the PCB really is this big and it's tiny and a lot of fun when we think tiny and Powerhouse we think as rock desk meet you know the Bare Bones version of this is only like 250 dollars we're gonna put this in there to start now it turns out it's a little bit of a challenge to insert this in there we've got our GPU mounted in here tiny little computer I've even got the Intel reference cooler on this thing what more do you want now for our testing in the desk meet it's an i712 700. okay there's not even a k the desk me does let the CPU run a little bit outside power spec but that's fine and our other test system is based around the ryzen 7700x why don't we use the highest end CPUs available well because if you're buying this GPU you're probably not pairing it with a 500 CPU am I right yeah probably I'm also interesting to test it actually in the desk meet which I would consider to be real world power and thermals definitely thermals using this GPU for a pretty intense session of uh Callisto protocol actually in the desk mini revealed some interesting things first air flier footage as you can see the exhaust from this thing 47 degrees C it was pretty toasty our desk meet uh works pretty well to draw air in from the top and exhausts the hot air out the side that said you can hear the fans ramp on this I run info 64 reports up to 2300 RPM fans for this I usually don't bring up this kind of thing unless I can hear it it's audible you know desktop configuration it's important to remember the small form factor case makes it pretty easy to hear whatever you're working with in terms of graphics card or noise or fan or whatever because you can hear the CPU fan ramp when that's a problem you can hear the GPU fan ramp when that's a problem this wasn't annoyingly loud it's just you could hear it GPU power as reported by Hardware info 64 was 156 Watts burst 130 Watts sustained on air kilowatt meter for total power draw at the wall while gaming we were well under 250 Watts most of the time occasionally it would spike up to 300 watts give or take but again keep in mind that's total system power and that power draw is well below a rated power supply in the desk meet so this is a pretty impressive result overall the most negative aspect of course is The Thermals this little box is sitting on your heat generating 200 300 watts of heat while you're gaming I mean that's pretty good considering gaming PCs and some higher tier gpus will use even more power than that so if you're in a power constrained situation you've got a cabinet in the Woods running off solar this is actually pretty efficient considering that it's only 300 watts but it's also a little concerning that our memory hotspot and our GPU hot spots are in the 100 to 103 C temperature range now reached out to AMD and I said hey this is normal and they said nah yeah basically if that bugs you don't forget about Sapphire it's a bigger card this card won't physically fit in a case like the desk meet but our Sapphire RX 7600 is not only cooler it's also significantly quieter so be sure to check that out although spoiler alert the performance is roughly the same although it reports that it can use a few more watts than our reference model but hey who's counting 65 FPS at 1440p enable fsr2 you don't have to spend a lot of money to enjoy 1440p on some titles yeah this is not the card for 1440p strictly speaking but you can still get a lot of mileage out of it I was surprised it worked as well as it did without fsr2 1440p in brand new AAA titles like the Callisto protocol and I bring up close to protocol first because it was the hardest one on the GPU in the Quick Test Suite that we did other games maybe not as much of a challenge 93 FPS average in the Callisto protocol pretty darn good for 1080p now that is at 1080p resolution but all of our other games could manage over a hundred FPS shattered the Tomb Raider at 160 FPS with 120 FPS one percent lows Borderlands 3 on Ultra 117 FPS with 96 FPS for our one percent lows even Horizon zero Dawn 121 FPS goodness me that's just Madness this GPU did so well at 1080p we decided to try 1440p because maybe you've got a phantom gaming monitor like this one you're moving up from 1080p gaming to 2560 by 1440p Gaming let me tell you that is really nice to be able to do that and enjoy 1440p 2560 by 1440p Gaming or maybe you want to you know do a wide 1080p monitor those are out there they're still kind of a thing well it does pretty good with 1440p as well generally stays above 60 FPS 90 FPS in some titles so your AAA titles if you're willing to live with medium or medium-high settings you can probably stay well above 60 FPS for those 1440p titles of course High refresh rate monitors are becoming all the rage 60 90 144 FPS for the actual panel refresh especially if you're rocking something even higher end like OLED although if you're buying OLED you're probably buying a more expensive graphics card it's nice to be able to run all of those things at 90 Hertz and Beyond so really the 7600 is your 1080p gaming card for that but if you've got an eye towards something even higher end know that you can also do some 1440p gaming in terms of the competitive landscape here it's it's pretty weird we did the comparison with the 3060 which of course the 7600 uh trounces I mean it's no contest you shouldn't the 30 60 no no 7600 is a better deal pretty much across the board so what's the verdict well the 7600 reference Edition can do things that pretty much no other 7600 can do albeit at a little bit of a temperature penalty the pulse 7600 performs a little better and has better Cooling and the hot spots are nowhere near as hot okay cool but what about the landscape of gpus this GPU got a pricing update just before launch 269 or 269 is the suggested end user pricing now the sapphire pulse is going to cost a little more than that that's no problem because you see it's better cooling physically bigger card so far has added some of their special sauce to it and that is worth something that is sapphires built their brand and their reputation on quality construction and everything else the problem here is the larger landscape Nvidia just launched the 4060 TI and we know from nvidia's own benchmarks that the 4060 TI is going to slot in at roughly where the 3070 was in in most benchmarks the memory geometry is going to be a little bit of a penalty for the uh 30 or for the 4060 TI versus the 30 70 when we're talking about like 1440p resolutions but the 4060 TI could pull ahead the problem is that those cards are basically neck and neck in the 30s 70s a two-year-old card at this point and the pricing hasn't really changed 40 60 TI is coming in at the same price for basically the same performance let's call it the same performance the these cards aren't that 269 is actually cheaper than the when the 6600 launched uh quite a bit cheaper and also the dollar is worth less now than it was so it's even cheaper to pull out the win with a 7600 AMD also had you know it's already in A3 there's all those improvements that sort of thing but it seems like that wasn't enough of an improvement for AMD they also increased the total board power a little bit with the 7600 and that's probably to do with the junction temperatures and you know it's probably related to that and it's probably because AMD is uh super focused on the competitive landscape here listen Nvidia is basically checked out check out our 4070 review we basically sum it up Nvidia is getting to a point where they're relying on frame generation Technologies like DLS S3 to convince you that their cards are the better value not that the card is actually doing the work and Hardware the software thing is something that will benefit everybody and sure maybe in some parallel universe that is a thing I mean vote with your wallet and all that kind of stuff but for the raw performance of the card in terms of what the card is able to do uh Nvidia is just not they're not electing to really compete the pricing is not good on the 4060 TI to put it bluntly it was not great on the 40 70. the 4070 is still probably the better value overall if you have to go Team Green and the 40 90 even with the insane pricing is you know the highest to your card whatever okay that's fine but I think also a lot of reviews are going to miss Intel Intel's gpus are coming in also around that 300 mark a little more like 330 340 somewhere through there for a 16 gigabyte card and that's really the threat here eight gigabytes of vram is getting to be not enough it's enough today but six months from now or a year from now eight gigabytes is going to be a little limiting it's gonna be like maybe the four gigabyte cards of yesteryear but the problem on the Intel side is you don't necessarily always get the raw performance or consistent performance across all titles don't worry Intel will catch up and I think AMD sort of knows that so the out the gate pricing with the 7600 these are priced to move and for a 1080p card for a system like this they're they're basically good to move for 1080p gaming this is a very competent card it is an excellent value I think at 269 279 something like that in this landscape of carts and also being rdna3 you know latest and greatest AAA titles are going to run great our own performance testing shows that it runs great everything is pretty awesome now check out our Linux review because our Linux review is really awesome with the pulse 7600 this is plug and play in Linux if I had to sum up that review in basically one word AMD still has the superior Linux experience and this card doesn't even require that you do anything exotic in terms of firmware this is an excellent excellent option but watch that review for for more more info macro economic conditions notwithstanding I'm sure that AMD would love to be able to charge more for their GPU but if they feel good charging the 270 to 300 ish dollar range then I think this is pretty good for gamers yes it would be nice to have more vram yes it would be nice to have something a little bit higher end but generational regeneration the improvements here are amd's doing better than Nvidia they're improving more Geno and Jen than Nvidia is which means that there will be a crossover point at some point in the not too distant future where amd's got the performance leadership because moving from the 4060 TI to the and I say that to be a little bit inflammatory because the 4060 TI really should be a 20 faster card the 40 70 should have been the 40 60. the 4060 TI should have been the 4050 TI 1050 TI remember that that card was okay ish I don't know that's enough rambling I'm a little this level one I'm signing out if I'm in the level one forms foreigntoday's the day Radeon 7600 is launching and also the pulse 7600 but it's coming in at 269 less than 300 this is less than the suggested end user pricing for the 6600 when it launched I thought runaway hyperinflation was going to kill us all how is AMD able to do this and more importantly how is sapphire able to do this with their version of the card it's launch day there's a lot to unpack here we have to dive in 269 that can't be right 269 suggested end-user pricing Street pricing probably gonna be a little bit more but hey this is the perfect card for a small form factor build let's Dive In all right so for this review we're going to be taking a look at the 7600 how does it perform what do we got going on it's already in A3 it's eight gigabytes of vram how fast is it does it work can you actually buy it for 300 is it worth buying for 300 What's the upgrade path how are you going to do this yes we will get to all of that so little okay aib partner versions aren't going to be little but look at this Packaging the amd.com packaging so nice it's a dual fan slightly less than two slots it's a little bit shorter than two slots you've got three display port outputs and one HDMI most but not all of the aib partner DisplayPort outputs are going to be 2.1 that's something to look at if you're looking for that some aib partner models they said are going to be DisplayPort 1.4 it just depends we got a single eight pin power connector while I'm going to cover the sapphire pulse version more fully in a separate video be on the lookout for that this is an ideal GPU for small form factor systems look at this I mean the PCB really is this big and it's tiny and a lot of fun when we think tiny and Powerhouse we think as rock desk meet you know the Bare Bones version of this is only like 250 dollars we're gonna put this in there to start now it turns out it's a little bit of a challenge to insert this in there we've got our GPU mounted in here tiny little computer I've even got the Intel reference cooler on this thing what more do you want now for our testing in the desk meet it's an i712 700. okay there's not even a k the desk me does let the CPU run a little bit outside power spec but that's fine and our other test system is based around the ryzen 7700x why don't we use the highest end CPUs available well because if you're buying this GPU you're probably not pairing it with a 500 CPU am I right yeah probably I'm also interesting to test it actually in the desk meet which I would consider to be real world power and thermals definitely thermals using this GPU for a pretty intense session of uh Callisto protocol actually in the desk mini revealed some interesting things first air flier footage as you can see the exhaust from this thing 47 degrees C it was pretty toasty our desk meet uh works pretty well to draw air in from the top and exhausts the hot air out the side that said you can hear the fans ramp on this I run info 64 reports up to 2300 RPM fans for this I usually don't bring up this kind of thing unless I can hear it it's audible you know desktop configuration it's important to remember the small form factor case makes it pretty easy to hear whatever you're working with in terms of graphics card or noise or fan or whatever because you can hear the CPU fan ramp when that's a problem you can hear the GPU fan ramp when that's a problem this wasn't annoyingly loud it's just you could hear it GPU power as reported by Hardware info 64 was 156 Watts burst 130 Watts sustained on air kilowatt meter for total power draw at the wall while gaming we were well under 250 Watts most of the time occasionally it would spike up to 300 watts give or take but again keep in mind that's total system power and that power draw is well below a rated power supply in the desk meet so this is a pretty impressive result overall the most negative aspect of course is The Thermals this little box is sitting on your heat generating 200 300 watts of heat while you're gaming I mean that's pretty good considering gaming PCs and some higher tier gpus will use even more power than that so if you're in a power constrained situation you've got a cabinet in the Woods running off solar this is actually pretty efficient considering that it's only 300 watts but it's also a little concerning that our memory hotspot and our GPU hot spots are in the 100 to 103 C temperature range now reached out to AMD and I said hey this is normal and they said nah yeah basically if that bugs you don't forget about Sapphire it's a bigger card this card won't physically fit in a case like the desk meet but our Sapphire RX 7600 is not only cooler it's also significantly quieter so be sure to check that out although spoiler alert the performance is roughly the same although it reports that it can use a few more watts than our reference model but hey who's counting 65 FPS at 1440p enable fsr2 you don't have to spend a lot of money to enjoy 1440p on some titles yeah this is not the card for 1440p strictly speaking but you can still get a lot of mileage out of it I was surprised it worked as well as it did without fsr2 1440p in brand new AAA titles like the Callisto protocol and I bring up close to protocol first because it was the hardest one on the GPU in the Quick Test Suite that we did other games maybe not as much of a challenge 93 FPS average in the Callisto protocol pretty darn good for 1080p now that is at 1080p resolution but all of our other games could manage over a hundred FPS shattered the Tomb Raider at 160 FPS with 120 FPS one percent lows Borderlands 3 on Ultra 117 FPS with 96 FPS for our one percent lows even Horizon zero Dawn 121 FPS goodness me that's just Madness this GPU did so well at 1080p we decided to try 1440p because maybe you've got a phantom gaming monitor like this one you're moving up from 1080p gaming to 2560 by 1440p Gaming let me tell you that is really nice to be able to do that and enjoy 1440p 2560 by 1440p Gaming or maybe you want to you know do a wide 1080p monitor those are out there they're still kind of a thing well it does pretty good with 1440p as well generally stays above 60 FPS 90 FPS in some titles so your AAA titles if you're willing to live with medium or medium-high settings you can probably stay well above 60 FPS for those 1440p titles of course High refresh rate monitors are becoming all the rage 60 90 144 FPS for the actual panel refresh especially if you're rocking something even higher end like OLED although if you're buying OLED you're probably buying a more expensive graphics card it's nice to be able to run all of those things at 90 Hertz and Beyond so really the 7600 is your 1080p gaming card for that but if you've got an eye towards something even higher end know that you can also do some 1440p gaming in terms of the competitive landscape here it's it's pretty weird we did the comparison with the 3060 which of course the 7600 uh trounces I mean it's no contest you shouldn't the 30 60 no no 7600 is a better deal pretty much across the board so what's the verdict well the 7600 reference Edition can do things that pretty much no other 7600 can do albeit at a little bit of a temperature penalty the pulse 7600 performs a little better and has better Cooling and the hot spots are nowhere near as hot okay cool but what about the landscape of gpus this GPU got a pricing update just before launch 269 or 269 is the suggested end user pricing now the sapphire pulse is going to cost a little more than that that's no problem because you see it's better cooling physically bigger card so far has added some of their special sauce to it and that is worth something that is sapphires built their brand and their reputation on quality construction and everything else the problem here is the larger landscape Nvidia just launched the 4060 TI and we know from nvidia's own benchmarks that the 4060 TI is going to slot in at roughly where the 3070 was in in most benchmarks the memory geometry is going to be a little bit of a penalty for the uh 30 or for the 4060 TI versus the 30 70 when we're talking about like 1440p resolutions but the 4060 TI could pull ahead the problem is that those cards are basically neck and neck in the 30s 70s a two-year-old card at this point and the pricing hasn't really changed 40 60 TI is coming in at the same price for basically the same performance let's call it the same performance the these cards aren't that 269 is actually cheaper than the when the 6600 launched uh quite a bit cheaper and also the dollar is worth less now than it was so it's even cheaper to pull out the win with a 7600 AMD also had you know it's already in A3 there's all those improvements that sort of thing but it seems like that wasn't enough of an improvement for AMD they also increased the total board power a little bit with the 7600 and that's probably to do with the junction temperatures and you know it's probably related to that and it's probably because AMD is uh super focused on the competitive landscape here listen Nvidia is basically checked out check out our 4070 review we basically sum it up Nvidia is getting to a point where they're relying on frame generation Technologies like DLS S3 to convince you that their cards are the better value not that the card is actually doing the work and Hardware the software thing is something that will benefit everybody and sure maybe in some parallel universe that is a thing I mean vote with your wallet and all that kind of stuff but for the raw performance of the card in terms of what the card is able to do uh Nvidia is just not they're not electing to really compete the pricing is not good on the 4060 TI to put it bluntly it was not great on the 40 70. the 4070 is still probably the better value overall if you have to go Team Green and the 40 90 even with the insane pricing is you know the highest to your card whatever okay that's fine but I think also a lot of reviews are going to miss Intel Intel's gpus are coming in also around that 300 mark a little more like 330 340 somewhere through there for a 16 gigabyte card and that's really the threat here eight gigabytes of vram is getting to be not enough it's enough today but six months from now or a year from now eight gigabytes is going to be a little limiting it's gonna be like maybe the four gigabyte cards of yesteryear but the problem on the Intel side is you don't necessarily always get the raw performance or consistent performance across all titles don't worry Intel will catch up and I think AMD sort of knows that so the out the gate pricing with the 7600 these are priced to move and for a 1080p card for a system like this they're they're basically good to move for 1080p gaming this is a very competent card it is an excellent value I think at 269 279 something like that in this landscape of carts and also being rdna3 you know latest and greatest AAA titles are going to run great our own performance testing shows that it runs great everything is pretty awesome now check out our Linux review because our Linux review is really awesome with the pulse 7600 this is plug and play in Linux if I had to sum up that review in basically one word AMD still has the superior Linux experience and this card doesn't even require that you do anything exotic in terms of firmware this is an excellent excellent option but watch that review for for more more info macro economic conditions notwithstanding I'm sure that AMD would love to be able to charge more for their GPU but if they feel good charging the 270 to 300 ish dollar range then I think this is pretty good for gamers yes it would be nice to have more vram yes it would be nice to have something a little bit higher end but generational regeneration the improvements here are amd's doing better than Nvidia they're improving more Geno and Jen than Nvidia is which means that there will be a crossover point at some point in the not too distant future where amd's got the performance leadership because moving from the 4060 TI to the and I say that to be a little bit inflammatory because the 4060 TI really should be a 20 faster card the 40 70 should have been the 40 60. the 4060 TI should have been the 4050 TI 1050 TI remember that that card was okay ish I don't know that's enough rambling I'm a little this level one I'm signing out if I'm in the level one forms foreign\n"