The RX 6600 XT and RX 7600 XT get cross-shopped constantly on the used market, and the direct answer is this: pay the extra money for the RX 7600 XT unless the budget is genuinely tight. The value trade favors the newer card clearly enough that the vague "it depends" answer most comparisons give here undersells how one-sided this actually is.

The spec gap, side by side

On ChipFlip's tracked listings, that's roughly a 43% premium for the RX 7600 XT over the RX 6600 XT used. Here's what it buys: double the VRAM, at 16GB versus 8GB, a jump from RDNA 2 to RDNA 3, and a real, not marginal, performance gain. PC Guide's comparison calls the jump a genuinely worthwhile boost in most real use cases, not just a paper spec win. We'd go further: for a used purchase specifically, the VRAM gap matters more than the raw performance number does.

Why the VRAM gap matters more on the used market than a spec sheet suggests

An 8GB card bought today is closer to the end of its useful life than a 16GB one, full stop. Games keep pushing texture budgets up, not down, and 8GB is already showing real strain at 1080p in demanding titles, let alone 1440p. That has a direct resale consequence: an 8GB card has less room left to hold its value, because the list of games it can't run properly only grows from here. A 16GB card ages more slowly, which means it holds resale value more slowly too, whether the plan is to keep it or flip it later.

Where the 6600 XT still makes sense

None of this means the 6600 XT is a bad buy outright. If the budget is genuinely tight, 1080p is the target, and there's no plan to push into 1440p or heavier modding, 8GB is still enough right now. Just don't expect that card to hold its resale value as well two years from now, and don't buy it assuming it'll comfortably handle 1440p later. It won't.

The takeaway

Pay the roughly $105 premium for the RX 7600 XT if it's at all in budget. It's not just faster, it's a card with real years left in it, on both the "still runs new games" side and the "still worth something used" side. The 6600 XT is fine for a strictly 1080p, strictly tight-budget build, but go in knowing it's the card with less runway left, not the value pick it looks like on price alone.