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Title: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: Finally, a powerful $350 GPU

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:00:37 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/amd-radeon...

NVIDIA releases a brand new video card and AMD follows up with a cheaper one.
That's basically been the cycle of the GPU industry for the last decade, with
NVIDIA typically leading the pack and AMD rushing to keep up. But with the
recent Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, AMD finally found a winning formula with
GPUs that were both cheaper than NVIDIA's and, in many cases, more powerful.
The new Radeon RX 9060 XT, which is meant to take on NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti in
1080p and 1440p gaming, mostly repeats that formula. Starting at $350 with
16GB of RAM (and $300 with a paltry 8GB), it's launching for much less than
the $429 RTX 5060 Ti while delivering a similar level of performance.

Once again, the key for AMD is offering much more RAM than NVIDIA for far
less money. Sure, AMD is using slower GDDR6 RAM with 320 GB/s of memory
bandwidth, compared to NVIDIAs' 448 GB/s GDDR7. But in practice, actually
having a larger memory pool is more useful when you're dealing with massive
textures and 3D models in modern games. So if you're looking for the best
gaming bang for the buck under $400, the 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT is
undoubtedly a winner.

What is the Radeon RX 9060 Ti?

The least powerful member of AMD's Radeon RX 9000 family (so far), the RX
9060 XT is basically the card you'd get if you can't stomach spending more
than $500 on a GPU. Just remember that video cards tend to jump up in cost
once they actually hit stores, depending on availability and the whims of
retailers. The RX 9060 XT sports 32 RDNA 4 compute units, 32 RT accelerators
and 64 AI accelerators. It can reach up to 3.1GHz speeds with its boost clock
and consumes up to 180W of power. In comparison, the $549 MSRP RX 9070 has 56
compute units, while the $599 RX 9070 XT has eight more.

AMD is pitching this GPU as a replacement for the RX 7600 XT, which launched
at $329 last year. That card also had 16GB of VRAM, but it had a slower 288
GB/s bandwidth. While the 7600 XT was more focused on entry-level 1440p
gaming, the 9060 XT's hardware improvements make it far more capable. AMD
claims it's 46 percent faster than the 7600 XT across more than 40 games, and
in my testing that figure checks out.

For this review, I tested Gigabyte's RX 9060 XT GPU, which has three cooling
fans pointed at a typical copper heatsink. There's no fancy vapor cooling
chamber or any extravagant materials on the card, but at this price range I
didn't expect much.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget What's good about the Radeon RX 9060 Ti?

Across games and benchmarks, the 9060 XT clocked in just about where I
expected: noticeably slower than the RX 9070, and either on-par or slightly
slower than the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti. In 3DMark's Steel Nomad benchmark, the
9060 XT scored 200 more points than that NVIDIA card, and it was also 90
points ahead in Timespy Extreme. But NVIDIA had a 1,000 point lead in the
Speedway benchmark and it was more than 2,000 points ahead in the Luxmark HDR
4 test.

Despite those figures, I'm still impressed that the 9060 XT can stay in the
same league as NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti while costing a lot less. AMD's ray
tracing performance has also improved quite a bit from its previous
generations, scoring 45 percent faster in the 3DMark Port Royal benchmark.
NVIDIA still has the lead in ray tracing in games though, especially with the
one-two punch of DLSS 4 AI upscaling and multi-frame generation. NVIDIA's RTX
5000-series cards can produce up to three interpolate frames for every
natively rendered frame, while AMD is still stuck with generating a single
extra frame with its FSR 3 and 4 (Fidelity Super Resolution 4) upscaling.

None

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Geekbench 6 GPU

Cyberpunk (1440p RT Overdrive DLSS/FSR 3)

Blender

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT

8,192

91,617

80fps

1,560

NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti (16GB)

8,100

139,756

136 fps (4X frame gen)

4,220

AMD Radeon RX 9070

10,997

113,012

117 fps

N/A

AMD Radeon RX 7600

5,526

N/A

20 fps

1,013

The Radeon RX 9060 XT was able to run Cyberpunk 2077 in 1440p ray tracing
"overdrive" mode at a respectable 80 fps, whereas NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti hit
136 fps thanks to multi-frame generation. Still, there's plenty of wiggle
room to crank out more frames: Stepping down to 1080p got me 120 fps, and I
saw 90 fps while using the less demanding ray tracing "ultra" preset in
1440p. In terms of raw performance, without any upscaling fanciness, the 9060
XT hit 114 fps in 1080p and 90 fps in 1440p.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT didn't run very hot during my testing, but that makes
sense since it's purely focused on 1080p and 1440p gaming, During 3DMark's
Steel Nomad stress test, which repeats the benchmark 20 times in succession,
the card only topped out at 54 Celsius. I'm used to seeing video cards
reaching upwards of 70C under load, so the 9060 XT was a nice surprise. While
idling, it sits at 42 Celsius. That's higher than cards with vapor chamber
cooling, but it's about average for cards in this price range. I didn't hear
any annoying fan noise under load either, since it barely broke a sweat.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget What's bad about the Radeon RX 9060 XT?

There isn't really much to complain about with the Radeon RX 9060 XT, so long
as you're not expecting too much from a sub-$400 GPU. Still, it would be nice
to see support for AMD's new FSR 4 AI upscaling spread out more quickly. When
the RX 9070 XT launched, the feature was only available in a handful of games
like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and now it's supported over 60 games. That's
still about half of the games that NVIDIAΓÇÖs DLSS 4 supports (which so far
includes over 125 titles).

On the RX 9060 XT, the FSR 4 user experience still isn't as simple as
activating DLSS on NVIDIA cards. I had to enable it manually in AMD's
Adrenaline software, then flip it on in Call of Duty: Warzone to activate it.
On the bright side, I saw an average of 254 fps while playing a match in
1440p with extreme graphics settings, FSR 4 and frame generation flipped on.
With frame gen enabled, but no FSR 4, performance dipped to 174fps. And if I
removed both of those features, it fell to 110 fps. Clearly, FSR 4 and frame
gen helps quite a bit, I just wish it were in more games.

Should you buy the Radeon RX 9060 XT?

Assuming retailers don't go wild by overpricing the Radeon RX 9060 XT, it's a
solid option if you're looking for an affordable GPU that's dedicated to
1080p and 1440p gameplay. At $350, the 9060 XT is well below the RTX 5060
Ti's $429 retail price, and certainly much cheaper than models being sold for
more than $500.

To reach a lower $300 price point, AMD also unveiled an RX 9060 Ti with 8GB
of RAM. But honestly, I'd recommend avoiding that entirely unless you only
play ancient games in 1080p. It's worth spending a bit more so you can play
newer games with less headaches, and it's practically a requirement if you
want to play in 1440p.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget Wrap-up

The Radeon RX 9060 XT is a reminder of a world where we didnΓÇÖt have to pay
more than $400 to get a capable GPU. We already know more than 80 percent of
PC gamers play at 1440p or lower resolutions, according to SteamΓÇÖs data. So
for the vast majority of players out there ΓÇö the ones who arenΓÇÖt using
monitors with crazy high refresh rates or 4K+ resolutions ΓÇö itΓÇÖs all the
GPU you really need.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/amd-radeon...
a-powerful-350-gpu-130037952.html?src=rss

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