AMD Radeon R9 M265X vs AMD Radeon RX 6600S Comparison

The AMD Radeon RX 6600S and the AMD Radeon R9 M265X are separated by roughly eight years of GPU architecture, and the recorded data reflects that gulf in every measurable category. The RX 6600S, built on TSMC's 7 nm process with the Navi 23 chip and RDNA 2.0 architecture, posts a Geekbench OpenCL score of 66435 against 8851 for the R9 M265X, a difference of 650.6 percent. Both parts are now end-of-life mobile products, but they represent entirely different eras of AMD's graphics design philosophy, from the 28 nm GCN 1.0 Venus chip to a modern RDNA 2.0 design with dedicated ray tracing hardware.

Head-to-Head Benchmarks

Only one benchmark appears in the database for both cards, but it is decisive. In Geekbench OpenCL compute, the RX 6600S scores 66435 while the R9 M265X manages 8851, a 650.6 percent gap in favor of the newer card. To put that in perspective, the R9 M265X's score of 8851 sits nearly in line with the AMD Radeon Pro WX 5100 at 8863, just below the AMD Radeon 550X at 8918, and slightly ahead of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 A Mobile at 8746 and the GeForce GTX 460 v2 at 8743. Those are the peers it clusters with in the database.

The RX 6600S occupies a different neighborhood entirely. Its average benchmark score of 10629 places it at the 49th percentile of all GPUs in the database, against the 44th percentile for the R9 M265X with an average of 8851. Despite the enormous raw compute gap, both cards land in the middle of the historical pack because the database spans many generations of hardware. The RX 6600S's closest rivals include the AMD Radeon R9 M275X at 10582 average, within 0.4 percent, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti at 10690 within 0.6 percent, the NVIDIA Quadro K2200 at 10761 within 1.2 percent, and the AMD Radeon RX 550X at 10481 within 1.4 percent.

The RX 6600S also carries additional recorded results that flesh out its profile: a PassMark G3D score of 12649, GPU compute score of 4879, G2D score of 647, and DirectX subsystem scores of 176 for DirectX 9, 81 for DirectX 10, 105 for DirectX 11, and 56 for DirectX 12. The R9 M265X has no corresponding entries in those tests, so the OpenCL result stands as the only direct comparison point. That single data point is nonetheless overwhelming: the RX 6600S delivers more than seven times the measured compute throughput of the older card.

FAQ

Q: How much faster is the RX 6600S than the R9 M265X in the shared benchmark?

A: In Geekbench OpenCL, the RX 6600S scores 66435 versus 8851, a 650.6 percent advantage. This is the only test recorded for both cards in the database.

Q: Which card ranks higher against all GPUs in the database?

A: The RX 6600S sits at the 49th percentile with an average benchmark score of 10629, while the R9 M265X sits at the 44th percentile with an average of 8851. The percentile gap is modest, but the absolute score gap is large.

Q: How much more memory does the RX 6600S have, and what type?

A: The RX 6600S has 4 GB of GDDR6 on a 128 bit bus with 224.0 GB/s of bandwidth. The R9 M265X has 2 GB of GDDR5 on the same 128 bit bus width but with only 64.00 GB/s of bandwidth, so the newer card delivers 3.5 times the memory bandwidth.

Q: Do both cards support ray tracing?

A: Only the RX 6600S has ray tracing hardware, with 28 RT cores. The R9 M265X, based on GCN 1.0, lists no RT cores.

Q: What DirectX level does each card support?

A: The RX 6600S supports DirectX 12 Ultimate (feature level 12_2), while the R9 M265X supports DirectX 12 with feature level 11_1. The newer card therefore has full access to modern feature sets the older one cannot expose.

Q: When were these cards released?

A: The R9 M265X was released in March 2014, and the RX 6600S in January 2022. Both are listed as end-of-life.

Architecture Differences

The architectural distance between these two parts explains the benchmark results. The RX 6600S uses the Navi 23 chip on the RDNA 2.0 architecture, fabricated at TSMC on a 7 nm process. It packs 11,060 million transistors into a 237 mm² die, yielding a density of 46.7M transistors per mm². The R9 M265X uses the Venus chip on GCN 1.0, fabricated at TSMC on a 28 nm process, with 1,500 million transistors on a 123 mm² die and a density of 12.2M per mm². That is roughly 7.4 times the transistor count and close to four times the density for the newer part, despite a die that is less than twice as large.

The shader counts follow the same pattern. The RX 6600S has 1792 shading units, 112 texture mapping units, and 64 render output units. The R9 M265X has 640 shading units, 40 TMUs, and 16 ROPs. The throughput figures make the consequence concrete: 128.0 GPixel/s and 224.0 GTexel/s for the RX 6600S versus 10.00 GPixel/s and 25.00 GTexel/s for the R9 M265X. In raw compute, the RX 6600S reaches 7.168 TFLOPS FP32 and 14.34 TFLOPS FP16 in a 2:1 configuration, while the R9 M265X tops out at 800.0 GFLOPS FP32, with no FP16 figure recorded.

Feature support also diverges sharply. The RX 6600S includes 28 RT cores for hardware ray tracing, reports Vulkan 1.4 compatibility, and connects over PCIe 4.0 x8. The R9 M265X has no ray tracing hardware, supports Vulkan 1.2.170, and uses a PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its DirectX support stops at feature level 11_1, whereas the RX 6600S carries the full DirectX 12 Ultimate (12_2) tier. Both parts share OpenGL 4.6 support in the database records.

The generational lineage is worth noting: the R9 M265X belongs to the Gem System (R9 M200) generation with the Solar System as its predecessor and Polaris Mobile as its successor. The RX 6600S belongs to the Navi Mobile (RX 6000M) generation, with Polaris Mobile as its own predecessor, meaning the two cards effectively sit on the same evolutionary path, separated by several intermediate families.

The Verdict

The data supports only one conclusion for anyone choosing between these two on performance grounds. The RX 6600S wins the only shared benchmark by 650.6 percent, offers double the memory capacity, 3.5 times the memory bandwidth, roughly nine times the FP32 compute, more than twelve times the pixel fill rate, and hardware ray tracing that the older card lacks entirely. Its higher percentile placement, 49 versus 44, confirms its stronger standing across the full database.

There is no workload category in the recorded data where the R9 M265X comes out ahead. Its relevance is historical: it represents the GCN 1.0 era and sits among cards like the Radeon Pro WX 5100 and the GeForce GTX 460 v2 in aggregate score. For any compute or graphics task measured by this database, the RX 6600S is the decisively stronger part. Buyers or system evaluators encountering the R9 M265X today should treat it strictly as legacy hardware, while the RX 6600S, though also end-of-life, remains a mid-pack performer by database standards.

Specification Differences

• Architecture: RX 6600S uses RDNA 2.0, R9 M265X uses GCN 1.0
• Chip: Navi 23 versus Venus
• Process node: 7 nm versus 28 nm, both from TSMC
• Transistors: 11,060 million versus 1,500 million
• Die size: 237 mm² versus 123 mm²
• Transistor density: 46.7M/mm² versus 12.2M/mm²
• Base clock: 1700 MHz versus 575 MHz
• Boost clock: 2000 MHz versus 625 MHz
• Game clock: 1881 MHz recorded for the RX 6600S only
• Memory: 4 GB GDDR6 at 1750 MHz (14 Gbps effective) versus 2 GB GDDR5 at 1000 MHz (4 Gbps effective)
• Memory bandwidth: 224.0 GB/s versus 64.00 GB/s
• Shading units: 1792 versus 640
• TMUs: 112 versus 40
• ROPs: 64 versus 16
• RT cores: 28 versus none
• Pixel rate: 128.0 GPixel/s versus 10.00 GPixel/s
• Texture rate: 224.0 GTexel/s versus 25.00 GTexel/s
• FP32 compute: 7.168 TFLOPS versus 800.0 GFLOPS
• FP16 compute: 14.34 TFLOPS (2:1) versus not recorded
• TDP: 80 W for the RX 6600S, not recorded for the R9 M265X
• Bus interface: PCIe 4.0 x8 versus PCIe 3.0 x16
• DirectX: 12 Ultimate (12_2) versus 12 (11_1)
• Vulkan: 1.4 versus 1.2.170
• Release date: January 2022 versus March 2014
• Display outputs: Portable Device Dependent for the RX 6600S, not recorded for the R9 M265X
• Power connectors and slot width: None/IGP recorded for the RX 6600S, not recorded for the R9 M265X