AMD's RX 9060 XT Challenges NVIDIA's Dominance in Mainstream GPU Market

AMD's RX 9060 XT just became the best mainstream GPU

It's been the better part of a decade since AMD had a true Nvidia competitor on its hands, but the RX 9060 XT is exactly that. Sure, the RX 6900 XT matched the RTX 3090, and the RX 7800 XT was highly competitive with the RTX 4070. But those aren't the battlefields where Nvidia shows overwhelming force. It's in 60-class offerings, GPUs that arrive at or around $300, where Nvidia shows how dominant it is in the GPU market. You don't need to look further than the monthly Steam hardware survey to see that. The RX 5600 XT was stuck without ray tracing support, the RX 6600 and its XT model were sullied by the pandemic and following GPU shortage. And the most recent RX 7600 was hamstrung by VRAM and a lack of DLSS, and even its bargain bin pricing couldn't make up that gap. The RX 9060 XT is something different. It's not the show-stopping GPU we saw with the release of the RX 9070 XT, punching far above what its price would suggest. The RX 9060 XT's strength is how it nestles into Nvidia's current-gen offerings. For the first time in a long time, AMD's mainstream GPU truly feels like the better option. ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger 16GB OC 8 / 10 Memory Clock Speed 2518MHz Architecture RDNA 4 Process TSMC N4P Shader Units 2048 AMD's RX 9060 XT doesn't pull any punches, and with its smart placement in the current-gen GPU market, it doesn't need to. Pros & Cons Very attractive MSRP FSR 4 looks incredible 16GB model has enough grunt for 1440p Prices are likely to climb FSR 4 support still not as broad as DLSS Expand Collapse AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT (16GB) pricing and availability Close A lot of the RX 9060 XT's value is predicated on its pricing, and it's impossible to say where prices will end up in a few months' time. There's a cat-and-mouse game of tariffs to contend with, AMD isn't releasing a first-party design, and most board partners have been hedging their bets on pricing -- and probably making out with a healthy profit as a result. That's before talking about retailers raising prices to capitalize on demand and scalpers. All of this is to say that the $300 MSRP for the 8GB model and $350 for the 16GB model are optimistic. Prices will likely climb higher, but the RX 9060 XT certainly has some wiggle room before it becomes a bad deal. AMD compares the RX 9060 XT to the RTX 5060 Ti, undercutting Nvidia on both price and performance. I think that's a poor point of comparison. The RTX 5060 Ti is clearly faster in a like-for-like comparison with VRAM capacity, and it only shows weakness when you pit the 16GB RX 9060 XT against the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti. That may make sense from a pricing standpoint, but it's not exactly fair. The far more interesting comparison is to the RTX 5060. This is Nvidia's continuation of a long lineage of mainstream graphics cards dominating the rigs of PC gamers, and the RX 9060 XT shows clear advantages over Nvidia's latest offering. The RTX 5060 has held steady at its price of $300, and hopefully the RX 9060 XT will hold at $350, too. $300 and $350 are the prices set by AMD, but I wouldn't recommend the 8GB model for most gamers. AMD justifies its existence by claiming that other markets -- internet cafés and the like -- want 8GB graphics cards for a lower price. It's for gamers who don't want to play the latest and greatest, instead moving through the games most highly played on Steam like Counter-Strike 2, Apex Legends, and Rust. I'll make the same claim here that I did my RTX 5060 review. Gamers that are playing these titles probably don't need an RX 9060 XT in the first place, regardless of VRAM capacity. So, for most people, this is a $350 graphics card. Setting that boundary here is important because the RTX 5060 remains a critical point of comparison for the RX 9060 XT, and with 16GB of VRAM, it's $50 more expensive. The RTX 5060 has held steady at its price of $300, and hopefully the RX 9060 XT will hold at $350, too. If it does, the RX 9060 XT is undoubtedly an Nvidia killer. You're getting better performance, comparable ray tracing, FSR 4, and 16GB of VRAM for $50 more. Assuming prices go up, I wouldn't spend more than $400 on the RX 9060 XT. That's a price where even the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti is more expensive, so it makes sense to go with the RX 9060 XT. If prices go above that point, AMD is stepping on the toes of the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti, and Nvidia cleanly wins that battle. AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT (16GB) Shader Units 2048 Ray Accelerators/Cores 32 AI Accelerators/Cores 128 Base Clock Speed 2220MHz Boost Clock Speed 3130MHz Memory Clock Speed 2518MHz Memory Capacity 16GB GDDR6 Memory Bus 128-bit Memory Bandwidth 322.3GB/s Power Draw 160W Architecture RDNA 4 Process TSMC N4P Expand Collapse No reference design, but plenty of options And a familiar dual-fan configuration from ASRock Close AMD has done away with its Made by AMD (MBA) designs, so you'll only be able to find the RX 9060 XT from board partners. The model I looked at comes from ASRock, and it's the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC model. As the name reveals, this is an overclocked model that offers an extra 160MHz over the maximum boost clock speed from the factory, as well as an extra 270MHz on the Game Clock. There's not a ton to gain from overclocking the actual GPU core these days, and some users have already demonstrated overclocking the RX 9060 XT easily to 3.5GHz. Even if you have a stock model, you shouldn't have any issues closing the gap with OC models. The Challenger design from ASRock is a dual-fan, dual-slot card, and it's powered by a single 8-pin cable. ASRock also has its triple-fan Steel Legend model available in white, which we saw in action in our RX 9070 review. There are dozens of designs available from other board partners, including models from Asus, Gigabyte, Acer, Sapphire, Yeston, and XFX. Related I change these two simple settings on my GPU to unlock better performance Squeeze a bit more juice out of your GPU with two easy changes. Posts 17 Blistering 1080p gaming, usable 1440p specs There aren't a ton of surprises on the performance front Close AMD's RX 9070 XT drew pretty clear comparisons to Nvidia's RTX 5070 Ti, but the RX 9060 XT doesn't have a clean Nvidia analogue. It's not as fast as the RTX 5060 Ti in a like-for-like VRAM comparison, but it's also significantly faster than the RTX 5060, even down at 1080p. That's the real battlefield for AMD with the RX 9060 XT. With the RTX 5060 Ti pushing prices upwards of $500 for the 16GB model, the RX 9060 XT at its MSRP of $350 is extremely attractive. It has a 6% lead over the RTX 5060 at 1080p, a larger jump of 10% at 1440p, and it comes with 16GB of VRAM. That's worth an extra $50 assuming you can find the RX 9060 XT at list price. Before digging into all the results, here's a look at the test bench I used: CPU AMD Ryzen 9 9950X Motherboard Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master Cooler MSI MEG CoreLiquid S360 Memory 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 Storage 2TB Samsung 990 Pro PSU 1,200W Gigabyte Aorus P1200 The closest point of comparison for the RX 9060 XT is last-gen's RX 7700 XT. The RX 9060 XT ends up just a touch faster across resolutions, which is largely a result of the ray tracing improvements in RDNA 4. I'll dig into the ray tracing results in the next section, but the scores you can see in my chart of 3D Mark Port Royal above paint a pretty clear picture of how the RX 9060 XT improves AMD's ray tracing story. Down at 1080p, it's hard to justify anything other than the RTX 9060 XT, short of the RTX 5060 Ti. It maintains a solid lead of 12% on average, and even the 8GB model shouldn't be significantly slower. That completely changes at 1440p, however. The 16GB RTX 5060 Ti maintains a 12% lead at 1440p, but the 8GB model would almost certainly fall short. You can see that in action with the other GPUs on this list, most notably the RTX 4060 Ti and RTX 5060, both with 8GB of VRAM. That bottleneck only becomes more extreme at 4K. RX 9060 XT (16GB) RTX 5060 RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) RX 7700 XT Assassin's Creed Mirage (Ultra High) FHD: 120 fps QHD: 92 fps UHD: 56 fps FHD: 107 fps QHD: 80 fps UHD: 50 fps FHD: 121 fps QHD: 94 fps UHD: 61 fps FHD: 120 fps QHD: 92 fps UHD: 56 fps Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra) FHD: 114.4 fps QHD: 72.6 fps UHD: 31.5 fps FHD: 105.7 fps QHD: 65.5 fps UHD: 27.9 fps FHD: 124.7 fps QHD: 78.1 fps UHD: 34.8 fps FHD: 120.5 fps QHD: 77.6 fps UHD: 32.6 fps Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic/DLSS@68%) FHD: 46 fps QHD: 38 fps UHD: 26 fps FHD: 46 fps QHD: 38 fps UHD: 26 fps FHD: 57 fps QHD: 48 fps UHD: 32 fps FHD: 45 fps QHD: 38 fps UHD: 26 fps Dying Light 2 (High Quality) FHD: 132.6 fps QHD: 94.5 fps UHD: 49.8 fps FHD: 132.6 fps QHD: 94.5 fps UHD: 49.8 fps FHD: 143.3 fps QHD: 107.1 fps UHD: 59.2 fps FHD: 127.3 fps QHD: 92.7 fps UHD: 48 fps Returnal (Epic) FHD: 101 fps QHD: 74 fps UHD: 42 fps FHD: 101 fps QHD: 74 fps UHD: 42 fps FHD: 111 fps QHD: 83 fps UHD: 47 fps FHD: 115 fps QHD: 87 fps UHD: 50 fps Forza Motorsport (Ultra) FHD: 97 fps QHD: 81 fps UHD: 56 fps FHD: 83 fps QHD: 65 fps UHD: 20 fps FHD: 106 fps QHD: 90 fps UHD: 63 fps FHD: 87 fps QHD: 75 fps UHD: 55 fps Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (Very High) FHD: 126 fps QHD: 95 fps UHD: 55 fps FHD: 91 fps QHD: 64 fps UHD: 35 fps FHD: 124 fps QHD: 91 fps UHD: 53 fps FHD: 109 fps QHD: 87 fps UHD: 49 fps Obviously, VRAM limitations also apply to the 8GB model of the RX 9060 XT, but it's hard not to spring for the 16GB model when it's only $50 more. In a lot of ways, the 16GB model is very similar to the Arc B580. Based on raw GPU power alone, you're mostly limited to 1080p. Once you throw the excellent upscaling of FSR 4 into the mix, and maybe a little frame generation, you're looking at very competent 1440p experience that's only enabled with higher VRAM capacities. Like the Arc B580, it's a budget-conscious card that still has enough legs to grow alongside your rig, at least if you pick up the 16GB model. Related AMD almost nailed Linux support with the Radeon RX 90 series -- excluding FSR 4 I've had no issues playing games with the RX 9070 XT on Linux. Posts 1 Ray tracing and FSR 4 get a massive boost After years of trial and error, it's finally coming together One of the biggest upgrades we've seen with RDNA 4 is ray tracing performance, and the RX 9060 XT puts that on full display. In rasterized performance, the RX 9060 XT and last-gen's RX 7700 XT trade blows, but when you flick on ray tracing, the RX 9060 XT comes out clearly ahead. AMD is offering almost identical ray tracing performance to the RTX 5060 at 1080p, with AMD taking the lead at higher resolutions as Nvidia's GPU becomes constrained by VRAM. With RDNA 3, AMD's ray tracing efforts were pretty good. You could run less demanding ray tracing implementations with ease, but Nvidia showed a clear lead in more demanding ray tracing scenarios. That's not the case here. RX 9060 XT (16GB) RTX 5060 RTX 5060 Ti (16GB) RX 7700 XT Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra RT) FHD: 47.3 fps QHD: 29.1 fps UHD: 13.6 fps FHD: 46.5 fps QHD: 24.3 fps UHD: 4.3 fps FHD: 54.7 fps QHD: 33.1 fps UHD: 15.8 fps FHD: 39.9 fps QHD: 24.8 fps UHD: 10.7 fps Dying Light 2 (High Quality RT) FHD: 66.2 fps QHD: 42.5 fps UHD: 21 fps FHD: 66.8 fps QHD: 42.6 fps UHD: 21.1 fps FHD: 77.6 fps QHD: 49.8 fps UHD: 25.1 fps FHD: 59 fps QHD: 38.6 fps UHD: 19.6 fps Returnal (Epic RT) FHD: 74 fps QHD: 56 fps UHD: 31 fps FHD: 82 fps QHD: 57 fps UHD: 23 fps FHD: 94 fps QHD: 65 fps UHD: 35 fps FHD: 78 fps QHD: 57 fps UHD: 27 fps Across games, the RX 9060 XT is in lockstep with the RTX 5060, and it often outclasses last-gen's RTX 4060 Ti. The most impressive showing for ray tracing doesn't come from this batch of games, however. It comes from Black Myth: Wukong, which has ray tracing baked into some elements of the game. This is a historically taxing benchmark for AMD and Intel, but the RX 9060 XT is able to keep pace with the Nvidia competition without breaking a sweat. Given that the RX 9060 XT is faster than the RTX 5060 in rasterized performance, and is on-par in ray tracing performance, Nvidia still technically holds the ray tracing crown. That technicality is becoming very difficult to acknowledge, however. Another thing that's becoming difficult to acknowledge is that DLSS is strictly better than FSR. Yes, DLSS 4 and its new transformer model show slightly better quality, and Nvidia's latest GPUs have access to Multi-Frame Generation (MFG). FSR 4 is extremely close, though. Looking at the 4K comparisons you can see above and below, where FSR 4 was set to Performance mode, it's difficult to find any differences between it and native resolution. This is at least as good as the old CNN model that Nvidia used in DLSS for years, and maybe even a little better. I won't go as far as to say that FSR 4 looks as good as DLSS 4. That's not true. I will say that you'd never notice the difference between them during real gameplay. There's always been an asterisk with FSR. Although previous versions have their draw, I'd never recommend pushing down below the Balanced preset, at least for the best image quality. FSR 4 gives you the full range. No, you're not getting MFG, but AMD's promised FSR Redstone update later this year looks like it'll match Nvidia point-for-point otherwise. And right now, the foundation of FSR 4 is already giving DLSS a run for its money. 1440p Native 1440p FSR 4 FSR 4 Settings Oblivion Remastered (Ultra/Hardware RT) 49 fps 131 fps Performance + Frame Gen Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered (Very High) 95 fps 176 fps Balanced + Frame Gen Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 (Ultra) 48.5 fps 129.2 fps Balanced + Frame Gen Spider-Man 2 (Ultra RT) 31.3 fps 105.2 fps Performance + Frame Gen Unsurprisingly, performance is great with FSR 4, just as it is with any upscaling and frame generation technology. What really stands out is the resolution, however. The results above are at 1440p, while the RX 9060 XT is mainly targeting 1080p gamers. With a healthy dose of upscaling and frame generation, you can get an excellent 1440p experience out of this GPU. That's really only enabled by the 16GB model, however. As I saw with a card like the RTX 5060, an 8GB frame buffer struggles to scale up to higher resolutions, even when you throw these performance-boosting features into the mix and especially with frame generation. Should you buy the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT? You should buy the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT if: You can find the 16GB model below $400. You have or plan to upgrade to a 1440p monitor. You're willing to wait on the FSR Redstone update. You should NOT buy the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT if: You already have an RX 7700 XT or RTX 4060 Ti (16GB), or better. Prices rise above $400 for the 16GB model. You need broader support for upscaling and/or frame generation. The RX 9060 XT is the Nvidia killer AMD has been wanting to build for years. It's not as impressive as the RX 9070 XT, but the superpower of this GPU is how well it's positioned in the current market. It's an obvious choice over the RTX 5060, and jumping up to the RTX 5060 Ti, especially for the 16GB model, represents somewhere around a $150 increase in price for a much smaller gain in performance. AMD has released some impressive GPUs over the past few years, no doubt, but this is the first time in the better part of a decade that it's really nailed the mainstream offering. Nvidia still holds some advantages on paper, between the souped-up transformer model of DLSS 4 and MFG on its latest cards. Those advantages are much more marginal than they used to be, however. FSR 4 can go toe-to-toe with DLSS without breaking a sweat, and features like AFMF have delivered broad frame generation support on AMD cards. And with FSR Redstone, that gap gets even smaller. Obviously, one GPU won't completely change the positions that AMD and Nvidia hold in the market. But the RX 9060 XT certainly feels like a tide shift. ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger 16GB OC 8 / 10 Memory Clock Speed 2518MHz Architecture RDNA 4 Process TSMC N4P Shader Units 2048 AMD's RX 9060 XT doesn't pull any punches, and with its smart placement in the current-gen GPU market, it doesn't need to. Expand Collapse

Nvidia's RTX 5060 is embarrassing against the RX 9060 XT

For the first time in several generations, AMD has a true mainstream contender in the form of the RX 9060 XT. It's not a perfect GPU, and it doesn't reach the heights of the faster, more expensive RX 9070 XT. But it's the first time in a long time that AMD has what feels like a truly better option against the Nvidia competition. A big part of that was the disappointing reception of the RTX 5060, not only due to its limited frame buffer, but also its underwhelming generational leap. I put both GPUs on the test bench to put them head-to-head, and one clearly came out ahead. ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger 16GB OC Memory Clock Speed 2518MHz Architecture RDNA 4 Process TSMC N4P Shader Units 2048 Ray Accelerators/Cores 32 AI Accelerators/Cores 128 Pros & Cons Available with up to 16GB of VRAM FSR 4 looks excellent Enough performance for 1080p Prices are likely to rise FSR support isn't as broad as DLSS $320 at Newegg Expand Collapse Asus GeForce RTX 5060 8GB Memory Clock Speed 1750MHz Architecture Blackwell Process TSMC 4N Shader Units 3840 Ray Accelerators/Cores 30 AI Accelerators/Cores 120 Pros & Cons MFG enables visuals that otherwise wouldn't be possible Widely available at or around MSRP Only requires a single 8-pin cable Runs into serious issues above 1080p MFG can't overcome VRAM limitations Stiff competiton around the same price from AMD and Intel $300 at Newegg Expand Collapse RTX 5060 vs RX 9060 XT: Specs make all the difference AMD offers a cheaper entry for more frame buffer Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Shader Units 3840 Ray Accelerators/Cores 30 AI Accelerators/Cores 120 Base Clock Speed 2280MHz Boost Clock Speed 2497MHz Memory Clock Speed 1750MHz Memory Capacity 8GB GDDR7 Memory Bus 128-bit Memory Bandwidth 448GB/s Power Draw 145W Architecture Blackwell Process TSMC 4N Expand Collapse AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Shader Units 2048 Ray Accelerators/Cores 32 AI Accelerators/Cores 128 Base Clock Speed 2220MHz Boost Clock Speed 3130MHz Memory Clock Speed 2518MHz Memory Capacity 16GB GDDR6 Memory Bus 128-bit Memory Bandwidth 322.3GB/s Power Draw 160W Architecture RDNA 4 Process TSMC N4P Expand Collapse There are two specs that are important for the RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT -- VRAM capacity and power draw. Power draw is the easier of the two. Nvidia took a massive lead in efficiency with its Ada Lovelace GPUs in the previous generation, but the latest Blackwell cards stall out on the efficiency gains. The RX 9060 XT and RTX 5060 are in lockstep when it comes to power draw, which is surprising given their dynamic over the past few years. It's even more surprising considering the RX 9060 XT, despite its issues, is clearly faster than the RTX 5060. The spec most people care about, however, is VRAM capacity. The RTX 5060 is locked to 8GB of VRAM. The RX 9060 XT, on the other hand, is available in both 8GB and 16GB varieties. Nvidia has its RTX 5060 Ti, which is also available in 8GB and 16GB varieties, but it's significantly more expensive -- you'll spend over $500 on the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti. I'm not a fan of AMD splitting up VRAM like this with the same silicon, but it's undeniable that AMD offers a cheaper entry point to 16GB of VRAM than Nvidia does. That extra capacity is important, too. Although 8GB is enough capacity in the majority of games at 1080p, my testing reveals that it becomes a limiting factor even at 1440p, and in games that aren't specifically known for stressing VRAM. The RX 9060 XT may be available in two capacities, but for most people, the 16GB version is the only option. Related GPUs with 8GB VRAM shouldn't exist in 2025, but Nvidia didn't get the memo Nvidia stays adamant while the industry moves on from 8GB VRAM GPUs Posts 4 Nvidia has lower pricing and better availability AMD's RX 9060 XT is caught in the middle Close Both the RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT target mainstream gamers who play at 1080p, and they both arrive at an MSRP of $300. There's a little more to the story than the list price, though. Thankfully, both AMD and Nvidia have cards in stock for list price. At the time of writing, I was able to find the RX 9060 XT and RTX 5060, both for $300 -- no tariffs or scalper taxes to contend with. That's great news, but AMD has a more complicated lineup for the RX 9060 XT. As mentioned, AMD is offering this card with either 8GB or 16GB of VRAM, and although the 8GB model is available at list price, the 16GB version isn't. The cheapest I've found the 16GB version is $390, while it should cost $350. It's easy to justify an extra $50 for the RX 9060 XT over the RTX 5060, given AMD's better performance and larger frame buffer. At $390, however, we're talking about somewhere around a 30% increase in price for around a 10% boost in performance, plus extra VRAM for higher resolutions. The 16GB RX 9060 XT is undoubtedly the better buy over the 8GB model, but it's lost in limbo. It's clearly more expensive than the RTX 5060, but it's not as expensive as even the cheapest 8GB models of the RTX 5060 Ti. If you have a strict budget of $300, you'll have better luck with the RTX 5060. Although AMD has models available at list price, the fact that the inventory is split between 16GB and 8GB versions means that the cheapest models at MSRP will sell out first. The RTX 5060 has been out for a few weeks at the time of writing, and prices are still holding at MSRP. Hopefully the RX 9060 XT will hold at MSRP for the 8GB model, but I don't suspect the 16GB model will. Related Modders are breathing new life into the Nvidia GTX 970 with an 8GB upgrade It almost doubled its benchmark scores, too. Posts 17 AMD is a clear performance leader And that 16GB of VRAM will come in handy The RX 9060 XT is faster than the RTX 5060, and it better be, considering that it's more expensive. Looking strictly at 1080p, the RX 9060 XT comes out ahead with a 6% lead. That includes all the games you can see above, including titles with ray tracing. AMD vastly improved ray tracing with its RDNA 4 architecture, but the RX 9060 XT can still only match the RTX 5060. That weighs down its average performance. If you take ray tracing out of the equation -- hard to do with always-on ray tracing titles like Doom: The Dark Ages now available -- AMD shows a more commanding lead. At 1080p, the extra frame buffer from the RX 9060 XT 16GB isn't much of a factor. There are rare exceptions in games like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle where an 8GB frame buffer struggles, even at 1080p. However, the performance you see above shouldn't be vastly different on the 8GB version of the RX 9060 XT. At $300, AMD wins out with somewhere around a 5% to 10% lead over the RTX 5060, depending on the game. You can see proof of that when looking at 1440p performance. Suddenly, the RX 9060 XT jumps to a 10% average lead, and in games like Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered and Forza Motorsport, the gap between the RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT widens. It's one of the clearest examples you can see of how 8GB graphics cards can't hold up to a resolution above 1080p. The RTX 5060 doesn't run into the extreme VRAM bottlenecks you see with 8GB graphics cards at 4K, but the averages don't lie; the RTX 5060 is giving up some performance at higher resolutions simply because it doesn't have enough VRAM. The performance advantages of the RX 9060 XT aren't enough to justify spending extra over the RTX 5060 alone, even if AMD wins out when both GPUs arrive at $300. The main reason to spring for the 16GB model of the RX 9060 XT is that Nvidia doesn't have a 16GB version of the RTX 5060. You'll need to upgrade to the RTX 5060 Ti, with the 16GB version of that GPU going for around $500. Spending an extra $50 to $90 on the 16GB RX 9060 XT over the RTX 5060 may be steep, but it's really your best option right now. Even if you aren't constrained by VRAM at 1080p, the RX 9060 XT is better equipped to handle the demands of modern games with a 16GB frame buffer. That extra capacity allows it to scale up to 1440p, and it makes it easier to enable features like frame generation. The RTX 5060 may have an edge with DLSS 4 and its Multi-Frame Generation (MFG) capabilities, but MFG comes at the cost of more VRAM, which is difficult to allocate when 8GB cards are already starved for capacity. Related AMD's mysterious FSR 'Redstone' might make DLSS obsolete AMD is already cooking up the next version of FSR. Posts 3 Which one should you buy? Close It's hard to justify the RTX 5060 over the RX 9060 XT. That's true when looking at both the 8GB and 16GB models. For the 8GB models, both the RTX 5060 and RX 9060 XT come in at the same MSRP of $300, they're both available for that price, and the RX 9060 XT is faster. Pure and simple. Sure, the RTX 5060 has access to MFG, but that's a much less useful feature on an 8GB graphics card that already struggles to scale up to higher resolutions and graphics settings. ASRock AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT Challenger 16GB OC 8 / 10 Shader Units 2048 Ray Accelerators/Cores 32 AI Accelerators/Cores 128 Base Clock Speed 2220MHz Boost Clock Speed 3130MHz Memory Clock Speed 2518MHz $320 at Newegg Expand Collapse For the 16GB model, it's a bit more tricky. The RX 9060 XT with 16GB is faster, and it comes with more VRAM runway to scale up to higher resolutions and fully leverage frame generation. But it's also around 30% more expensive. If you can find the RX 9060 XT at $350, you should buy it. Once that prices pass $400, though, it's time to start looking at alternatives. Asus GeForce RTX 5060 8GB 6 / 10 Shader Units 3840 Ray Accelerators/Cores 30 AI Accelerators/Cores 120 Base Clock Speed 2280MHz Boost Clock Speed 2497MHz Memory Clock Speed 1750MHz $300 at Newegg Expand Collapse

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

It's a reminder of a bygone era of PC gaming. And it's also a great 1080p and 1440p graphics card. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 NVIDIA's 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. 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. The Radeon RX 9060 XT is a reminder of a world where we didn't 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 Steam's data. So for the vast majority of players out there -- the ones who aren't using monitors with crazy high refresh rates or 4K+ resolutions -- it's all the GPU you really need.

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB review (XFX Swift)

PC Gamer's got your back Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT is, I think it's fair to say, one of the most anticipated graphics cards of this generation. Gamers on a tight budget have had a tough time of it in recent years, and AMD's new entry-level card feels aggressively designed (and priced, no less) to hit Nvidia where it hurts. At $299 for the 8 GB version and $349 for the 16 GB variant, the latter I have in front of me here, the little AMD card is not just looking to knock the $299 RTX 5060 off its precarious perch, but even aims to take a swing at the $429 RTX 5060 Ti. Everyone loves an underdog story, but in a GPU market plagued by inflated prices and less-than-impressive generational performance gains, the RX 9060 XT has its work cut out from the start. So, what you're likely wondering is, does it give Nvidia's budget offerings a comprehensive floor-wiping? Not quite. But what AMD has come up with here is a cool, calm, and collected 1080p and 1440p performer for a very reasonable sum, and right now that feels like a cool breeze on a hot summer's day. I've had the XFX Swift version of the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT sitting in one of our benchmarking rigs for the past week, and it's rather impressive. While it's not quite been able to beat out our RTX 5060 Ti sample overall (AMD's claims that it's 6% faster than the RTX 5060 Ti at 1440p haven't proved out in my testing), it often comes perilously close at both 1080p and 1440p resolutions for a full $80 less -- and that's just the sort of thing that might cause Nvidia to drop the Ti's price down in response. Competition is a good thing, y'see, and the RX 9060 XT provides just that. And as for the $299 RTX 5060? Fuggedaboutit. While the Nvidia card is $50 less, the extra performance you receive from the 16 GB RX 9060 XT is more than worth the money, in my opinion. The RX 9060 XT might not quite have the goods to outright beat the RTX 5060 Ti in many of our benchmarks, but it's so close to it it makes the non-Ti card look poorly-equipped by comparison. Not to mention, the 8 GB RX 9060 XT is the same cash as the RTX 5060 at MSRP. That being said, I'll be very interested to see if the RX 9060 XT's MSRP proves out in practice. This generation of GPUs has been marred by low availability, ludicrous retailer mark ups, and a host of factors that have made it hard to recommend any card -- given what it'll likely end up costing you when you plug your details in at the checkout. Ultimately, though, I have to review the GPU in front of me, and I can say that it's a good 'un. It's also been remarkably stable, only finally sullying its 100% reliability record once I pushed those GDDR6 memory chips past their stated speeds. My particular XFX sample isn't much of an overclocker compared to the Palit RTX 5060 Ti, for sure, but I'd wager that even in 2025, most people are more concerned with the apples to apples performance you get from either card fresh from the box. And in the RX 9060 XT's case? I'd say it's got enough grunt to make the RTX 5060 Ti worry. Time will tell if that pricing holds out, but should you be able to find one for MSRP, it's the new budget GPU I'd plump for if I was looking to save a penny or two. Money makes all the difference at this end of the market, and an $80 saving goes a long way towards some shiny new games, a slightly better CPU, or even just a good night out. Great entry-level GPUs have been far too expensive for far too long, if you ask me. The RX 9060 XT, though? It might just be the turning of the tide. Fingers crossed, ey? When it comes to the specs, the little RX 9060 XT looks a lot like an RX 9070 XT, only halved. It's a Navi 44 variant built on TSMC's N4P process with 32 RDNA 4 Compute Units, 32 Ray Tracing Accelerators and 64 AI Accelerators, all of which matches with that basic equation -- although with a stated 3.1 GHz boost frequency as standard, it certainly comes with a hefty dose of clock speed straight out of the box. Those improved RDNA 4 CUs are key to AMD's recent catch up to Nvidia-like performance, in tandem with third generation RT Accelerators that mean the red team is no longer on the back foot when it comes to the increasingly-important ray tracing performance figures. We're starting to see games like Doom: The Dark Ages require ray tracing capable (and ideally, performant) graphics hardware these days, and it looks like a trend that's likely to accelerate in years to come. Memory-wise, both the 8 GB and 16 GB variants make use of GDDR6 connected to a 128-bit bus, with a total effective memory bandwidth of 320 GB/s. That's around 28% less memory bandwidth than you'll get from the RTX 5060 Ti with its speedy GDDR7 chips on board, albeit with the same bus size. For the 16 GB cards that's probably going to be just about fine, but it might spell trouble for the 8 GB variant of the RX 9060 XT. The Nvidia GPUs with a paucity of VRAM may have a little more to give than the competing 8 GB AMD chip, but as we've yet to manage to get hold of the lower spec version that's all speculation for now. Mention should also be made of those second generation AI accelerators, which allow the RX 9060 XT to take advantage of the latest, machine learning-enhanced iteration of AMD's upscaling tech, FSR 4. DLSS has long ranged ahead of FSR for sheer image quality thanks to its reliance on local, AI-capable hardware, and the RX 9000-series now has an equivalent of its own. Multi Frame Generation has oft been touted as a reason to pick up an Nvidia card over the competition, but we've found it doesn't scale so well further down the stack due to increased latency. You can artificially boost the frame rate to gain some impressive figures, but the lower-end RTX 50-series cards show the limits of the tech when it comes to real world gaming experience. AMD doesn't yet have an exact MFG equivalent, instead primarily relying on 2x Frame Gen as part of FSR 4 -- although major AI enhancements are said to be coming to AMD's tech in the Redstone update later this year. Regardless, at least when it comes to the bottom end of both company's current lineups, the AI frame rate-enhancing doohickeys look fairly evenly matched on paper. All that being said, comparing AMD's efforts to Nvidia's with a specs sheet showdown doesn't reveal the performance differences between the two, nor what it's like to use one for real world gaming. The architectures are distinctly different, so it's in the benchmarks where we'll find whether the budget AMD card has the potential to give the significantly more expensive RTX 5060 Ti some serious trouble. For now, we've only received a 16 GB sample for review, so I can't tell you how the 8 GB variant performs. I have, however, primarily pitted the XFX card against the Palit RTX 5060 Ti Infinity 3 16 GB, with our MSI RTX 5060 8 GB sample thrown in for reference, alongside the RX 7700 XT from the previous generation. I've also dropped in the numbers from the XFX Swift Radeon RX 9070 OC, to give you an idea of what $200 extra (technically) gets you in the world of AMD GPUs right now. To war, then. AMD's chief architect of gaming solutions, Frank Azor, has been keen to point out that the "majority of gamers are still playing at 1080p", and the RX 9060 XT is aiming for great 1080p and good 1440p performance. And, while the 16 GB variant I have on hand here seems designed to allay concerns of a lack of VRAM, it would be unrealistic to expect smooth 4K frame rates from such a budget offering, and that is certainly reflected in the benchmarks here. At 1080p, however, the little XFX card puts on an impressive turn of speed. A mere two frames difference between the RX 9060 XT and the RTX 5060 Ti in both the Black Myth Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077 average results is pleasing to see, especially when you factor in the price difference between the two, and the proclivity for ray tracing in CDPR's game. In F1 24 the AMD card pulls five frames ahead on average, although the 1% minimum is a full 10 frames behind. Total War: Warhammer 3 delivers the best overall result for the XT when taking into account both the average and minimum frames, which is something of a surprise given it's traditionally a more CPU-focussed benchmark, especially at 1080p. I had a play around outside of the benchmarking tool to see what it was like in actual gameplay, and the little AMD provided a reliably high minimum result when paired with the mighty Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Overall, though, the AMD card is slightly behind on average. Claims that the RX 9060 XT is 6% faster than the RTX 5060 Ti haven't quite proven out in my particular testing, but it's close enough across most benchmarks to show the performance is very much comparable. 1440p is a similar story: Close, but not quite the full cigar when it comes to beating the RTX 5060 Ti overall. Still, F1 24 seems to be the AMD card's jam, as it once again ranges ahead of the Nvidia GPU by a reasonable margin. And then there's 4K where... yep, you guessed it, the AMD card is ever so slightly behind on average once more. Not that smooth 4K performance was ever on the table for either GPU -- but should you be a fan of crunchy gaming, the RTX 5060 Ti delivers slightly more frames. A close run thing, though, no doubt. It's the real world performance chart where the value of the AMD card becomes apparent, though. With upscaling enabled at 1440p (and frame gen, where applicable) the budget RX 9060 XT delivers figures that would have been decidedly mid-range for the previous generation. Take note of the Cyberpunk 2077 result, for example. Six frames ahead of the significantly-more-expensive RTX 5060 Ti is nothing to be sniffed at, and is comparable to the figures I recorded with the RX 7800 XT when I played through the game last year with similar settings, minus some of the ray tracing goodies. That particular card is still what I'd consider a great 1440p GPU in 2025, so the fact that the new budget AMD offering can match it is mighty impressive. And as for the ray tracing performance? It's much better than its older, bigger brother. As gen-on-gen comparisons go, that's the sort of major improvement I can get behind. And so, up and down we go. The RX 9060 XT is eight frames slower than the RTX 5060 Ti in Black Myth, a full 20 fps quicker in The Talos Principle 2, and eight frames slower on average in Homeworld 3. Pretty much the definition of trading blows, this particular chart, but still a good result for the AMD card when price is taken into consideration. The real kicker, however, comes when you compare the $349 RX 9060 XT 16 GB to the $299 RTX 5060 8 GB. The AMD tiddler is roughly 14% faster on average at both 1080p and 1440p Native, and a whopping 23% faster in the real world upscaling and frame generation benchmarks. I'll admit, that last percentage is significantly skewed by a staggering 190 fps 1440p result for the RX 9060 XT in F1 24 with the upscaling and frame generating goodies turned on. We saw similarly astonishing numbers in that particular game in our testing of the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. Whatever FSR is providing, this particular F1 racing game seems to love it. DRS, perhaps? Anyway, while it might seem unfair to pit the 8 GB RTX 5060 against a $50 more expensive 16 GB competitor (although that VRAM difference is likely to only come into play for 4K gaming, which neither card is particularly good at), it's still pretty impressive what you get in terms of extra performance for the cash. Where the RX 9060 XT truly lags behind, however, is in productivity performance. Not that I think that particularly matters in a budget gaming GPU, but should AI image generation be your thing, you'd be far better off with the Nvidia card. The Blender result is also fairly disappointing, although it's far from the first AMD card we've seen drop significantly behind the competition in this particular benchmark. Rendering games? Great. Rendering for work? You'll be wanting something else. While Nvidia's RTX 50-series GPUs are reliable overclockers, I'll admit to clenching my teeth when I push the AMD card above its usual speeds. With a 3.13 GHz boost clock speed as standard, it doesn't feel like there's a whole lot of headroom to play with -- and the card as a whole feels like it's pushed fairly close to its limits straight out of the box. However, I was able to achieve a 300 MHz overclock on both the chip and the memory with little effort using AMD Adrenaline's built-in tuning software, which works fairly well. Going much past this, however, results in some jarring hard locks, particularly when trying to eek a little more speed out of the memory. What's also held me back from pushing the AMD card into the stratosphere is the coil whine. The XFX card runs virtually silently at stock speeds, but boost the frequencies and it gets very chatty, very quickly. Call me a nervous nellie if you must, but when an overclocked component starts squealing under serious duress, I find it difficult to ignore. This is most evident in The Talos Principle 2, where the RX 9060 XT makes its displeasure audibly known at every opportunity when pushed beyond its specs sheet. Still, that could be a PSU-dependent thing, and is more of an observation of this particular setup than an outright critique. My testing shows a decent two to three fps improvement from this relatively mild OC in most of our games, with the odd outlier result. That's enough for me to say that if that slight fps discrepancy between the stock RX 9060 XT and the RTX 5070 Ti really does bug you, a little light overclocking can help to close the gap. However, I would point out that the overclocked Nvidia GPU is capable of going a fair bit further -- although your mileage will likely vary from card to card as to what stable clocks and performance you can eventually achieve. Our Dave found that the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT both benefit from a spot of undervolting, but it's no bueno on this particular card. Even the mildest -60 Mv undervolt causes insta-crashes in most tests, even with a 10% tickle of extra wattage to play with. I'm no expert overclocker, but I'd say the RX 9060 XT has had most of the juice tweaked out of it by AMD to begin with. Which makes sense. This card is a little late to the party, and I would wager that's because AMD was keen to see what the RTX 5060 Ti was capable of before it committed to final tuning. It feels like a card that's been gussied up to near its maximum in order to give Nvidia a headache right out of the box, so those looking for an overclocking wonder would be better off elsewhere. I've had my ear to the ground over the past few months, gauging the reaction of gamers to AMD's new GPU lineup, and I know expectations have been high. After all, the RX 9070 XT manages to give the RTX 5070 Ti a proper run for its money, and many have been hoping that the RX 9060 XT would do the same for the RTX 5060 Ti, too. And although the AMD card is slightly behind on average in many of our gaming benchmarks compared to the Ti, I still think it achieves its goals -- excellent 1080p performance, good 1440p figures, low power draw and cool temperatures, all for a significantly cheaper MSRP than its direct competition. Which brings me back to money once more. What's absolutely key here is pricing and availability, and that's a hard thing to judge at this point. While I want to believe that, as AMD claims, the RX 9060 XT will be widely available for its stated price come launch day, we've all been disappointed before. That being said, a look at our best graphics card deals page reveals multiple 8 GB RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti cards at MSRP or less, and a (relatively) small mark up on the 16 GB Ti variant. The 16 GB RX 9060 XT makes a whole lot of sense if it can maintain its $80 cheaper MSRP than the 16 GB Ti in particular, but should it prove popular (and I'm willing to bet it will) and retailers start to even out the price difference between the two, you're looking at a whole different recommendation. I've been told by an AMD representative that the XFX Swift 16 GB model I've reviewed here has a recommended price of £315 in the UK. That's an encouraging thought, but again, what it ends up listing for on retailer websites remains up for debate at the time of writing. As things stand, though, the AMD card seems destined to become the new budget darling of this generation. As someone who regularly recommends PC builds for this very website, I know how tough it can be to spec out a budget gaming rig in 2025, and how every penny counts when it comes to maximising the bang for your respective buck. And while I wouldn't call the RX 9060 XT an exciting card, what it is is something more tangible. It's a workhorse, a reliable, cheap, chuck-in GPU willing to do some serious work in the graphics mines for much less than its main competition. In short, it's exactly what we've been waiting for at the lower end of the market, and for that, it's deserving of some serious praise. It might not be the quickest card in its segment, but it gets darn close for significantly less.

XFX Radeon RX 9060 XT Swift OC review

Introduction The Radeon RX 9600 XT 16 GB fits into AMD's midrange lineup, striking a good balance between memory size and price. Priced around $349, it goes head-to-head with NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti in benchmark tests. When gaming at Full HD with DirectX 12, it keeps frame rates above 60 FPS in most modern games -- even when ray tracing is turned on. To keep power consumption near 160-180 watts, AMD simplifies the display engine compared to higher-end models, so the card only needs a single 8-pin PCIe power connector. Inside, it runs on the Navi 44 XT chip with 32 RDNA 4 compute units and 2,048 stream processors. Thanks to improved power management and more efficient shader cores, ray tracing performance roughly doubles compared to the previous generation. Under heavy load, temperatures stay in the 70 to 75 degrees Celsius range, while noise stays under 40 dBA. This makes the RX 9600 XT 16 GB a solid choice for smooth gaming and streaming without overheating or loud fans. XFX's Swift OC series builds on this with multiple Radeon RX 9060 XT models. You can pick between a standard black or a white shroud, and choose either 8 GB or 16 GB of GDDR6 memory. Each card uses the same cooling setup -- a dual- or triple-fan design with several heat pipes and an aluminum fin stack. All models run at a game clock of 2,780 MHz, boosting up to 3,320 MHz, so performance targets stay consistent regardless of memory size or color. In our tests, these Swift OC cards pull about 20 to 30 watts more than AMD's reference RX 9060 XT during benchmarks, pushing the Navi 44 XT chip close to its limits. Temperatures tend to run higher than the reference design under heavy load, especially if your PC case doesn't have great airflow. The Navi 44 XT GPU includes 32 RDNA 4 compute units and 2,048 stream processors. XFX tunes the PCB and voltage regulation to keep power delivery stable, but builders should make sure their power supply has an 8-pin connector and can reserve about 200 watts for the graphics card. When running DirectX 12 workloads, the RX 9060 XT's shader throughput and asynchronous compute deliver frame rates comparable to other cards in this price range. However, if you're aiming for high-refresh QHD (1440p) or 4K gaming, this card is better suited for 1080p and entry-level 1440p setups. On the memory front, both 8 GB and 16 GB configurations sit on a 128-bit bus, but the larger buffer is a smart pick if you mix gaming with creative work or want higher-res texture packs. The reference clocked GPU operates at a boost clock frequency of 3.1 GHz. This model employs the PCI Express 5.0 x16 interface, enabling a peak theoretical bandwidth of 128 GB/s per direction. Two memory configurations are offered: 8 GB or 16 GB of GDDR6. Both versions share identical core clocks, memory clocks, and thermal design power; the only variable is the amount of onboard graphics memory. According to AMD's internal benchmarks -- conducted across more than forty game titles -- the 16 GB variant of the RX 9060 XT delivers an average frame-rate improvement of approximately 6% over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, which has a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of USD 379. The RX 9060 XT 16 GB is positioned below this price point, offering greater memory capacity and marginally lower cost. AMD has not released its own benchmark figures for the 8 GB version of the RX 9060 XT. In NVIDIA's recent 8 GB GPU launches, limited VRAM has occasionally resulted in frame-rate drops in memory-intensive scenes. AMD states that the 8 GB option exists to accommodate budget-conscious buyers seeking a lower entry price, while the 16 GB configuration targets those requiring additional VRAM for high-resolution textures and future-proofing. Other news is support for FP8 data formats and structured sparsity -- features that accelerate AI tasks like upscaling, texture generation, and real-time effects. This makes the RX 9060 XT not just a gaming GPU but a capable partner for generative graphics and AI-assisted workflows. Whether you're a builder, a modder, or just someone who loves next-gen tech, this card delivers a solid mix of price, performance, and future-proof features.

ASUS Radeon RX 9060 XT TUF OC review

Introduction The Radeon RX 9600 XT 16GB lands right in that sweet spot for anyone who wants Proper Full HD and (Wide) Quad HD gaming without emptying their wallet. Clocking in with a generous 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, it's priced around USD 349, putting it toe-to-toe with NVIDIA's RTX 5060 (Ti) in real-world benchmarks. An 8GB version starting at $299 is available as well. In today's DirectX 12 blockbusters, it keeps pace even when you flip on ray tracing -- so you get eye-catching lighting and reflections without a big performance hit. AMD trims down some of the extras -- fewer display engines, just like the RX 6500 XT -- so power draw stays near 160 W, and you only need a single 8-pin PCIe connector. Inside, you've got Navi 44 silicon with 32 RDNA 4 compute units, which means 2,048 stream processors humming away at up to 3.3 GHz on boost. Improved power management and beefed-up shader cores let it push harder when you need it and sip energy when you don't. Compared to last generation, ray tracing performance has roughly doubled, so games that support it look sharper with richer shadows and more realistic reflections. All that extra horsepower doesn't translate into extra noise or heat -- it stays surprisingly cool and whisper-quiet, even under intense load. Whether you're diving into the latest AAA title or cranking up your stream setup, the RX 9600 XT 16GB delivers solid frame rates, efficient power use, and a smooth experience you can count on. On the memory front, both 8 GB and 16 GB configurations sit on a 128-bit bus, but the larger buffer is a smart pick if you mix gaming with creative work or want higher-res texture packs. The reference clocked GPU operates at a boost clock frequency of 3.1 GHz. This model employs the PCI Express 5.0 x16 interface, enabling a peak theoretical bandwidth of 128 GB/s per direction. Two memory configurations are offered: 8 GB or 16 GB of GDDR6. Both versions share identical core clocks, memory clocks, and thermal design power; the only variable is the amount of onboard graphics memory. According to AMD's internal benchmarks -- conducted across more than forty game titles -- the 16 GB variant of the RX 9060 XT delivers an average frame-rate improvement of approximately 6% over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, which has a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of USD 379. The RX 9060 XT 16 GB is positioned below this price point, offering greater memory capacity and marginally lower cost. AMD has not released its own benchmark figures for the 8 GB version of the RX 9060 XT. In NVIDIA's recent 8 GB GPU launches, limited VRAM has occasionally resulted in frame-rate drops in memory-intensive scenes. AMD states that the 8 GB option exists to accommodate budget-conscious buyers seeking a lower entry price, while the 16 GB configuration targets those requiring additional VRAM for high-resolution textures and future-proofing. Other news is support for FP8 data formats and structured sparsity -- features that accelerate AI tasks like upscaling, texture generation, and real-time effects. This makes the RX 9060 XT not just a gaming GPU but a capable partner for generative graphics and AI-assisted workflows. Whether you're a builder, a modder, or just someone who loves next-gen tech, this card delivers a solid mix of price, performance, and future-proof features. Radeon RX 9600 XT Detail AMD RDNA 4 Compute Units 32 HW RT Accelerators 32 HW AI Accelerators 64 Peak AI TOPS (INT4 Sparse) 821 TOPS Boost Clock 3.13 GHz Video Memory 8 GB | 16 GB GDDR6 Total Board Power 150 W - 182 W Connectivity PCIe 5.0 x16 Display Support DisplayPort 2.1a, HDMI 2.1b AMD isn't releasing any reference designs, so board partners can customize their cards however they want. This review focuses on the ASUS TUF OC model. In OC mode, which you activate through software, the boost clock reaches up to 3340 MHz. The card features a protective coating on the PCB that guards against moisture, dust, and debris, helping prevent short circuits and keeping the card safe. The design uses 2.5 slots and includes a large fin array optimized for airflow with three Axial-tech fans. Each fan has dual-ball bearings that last twice as long as standard ones. ASUS also adds GPU Guard, which reinforces the GPU die to reduce the chance of cracks during shipping or installation. The three fans spin in a new pattern: the two outer fans turn counterclockwise to reduce turbulence and improve air circulation. When the card's temperature stays below 55 °C, all fans stop completely for silent operation during light use. They automatically start spinning again above 60 °C, following a curve that balances cooling performance with quietness.

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review

Introduction The Radeon RX 9600 XT 16GB hits a real sweet spot for gamers who want smooth Full HD or Quad HD gaming without breaking the bank. At around 349 dollars, it lines up directly against NVIDIA's RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti in actual gameplay. There's also a more affordable 8GB version starting at 299 dollars. Both models use fast GDDR6 memory, and even when you enable ray tracing in demanding DirectX 12 titles, the RX 9600 XT keeps pace with eye-catching visuals and minimal performance loss. AMD keeps the card efficient by trimming some features -- there are fewer display outputs, similar to what you see on the RX 6500 XT. This helps keep power draw at about 160 watts, so you only need a single 8-pin PCIe connector. Under the hood, the Navi 44 chip brings 32 RDNA 4 compute units and 2,048 stream processors, hitting boost speeds up to around 3.1 to 3.3 GHz. Improved power management and enhanced shader cores mean the card can push harder during intense gaming, but stays power-efficient when you're just browsing or watching videos. Compared to the last generation, ray tracing performance nearly doubles, giving games sharper lighting and more realistic shadows and reflections. Despite the extra power, the card stays cool and quiet, even when you push it with the latest AAA games or streaming setups. Memory is offered in both 8GB and 16GB versions, each running on a 128-bit bus. The 16GB model is ideal if you mix gaming with creative work or use high-res texture packs, but both share the same core and memory speeds. The card uses PCI Express 5.0 x16, giving up to 128 GB/s bandwidth each way. Thermal design and core specs remain the same for both models -- the only difference is how much graphics memory you get. AMD's own benchmarks, spanning over forty popular games, show the 16GB RX 9600 XT running about 6 percent faster on average than the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, even though NVIDIA's card retails for a bit more at 379 dollars. The extra VRAM on the RX 9600 XT 16GB can really help in memory-heavy games and creative tasks, while the 8GB version aims at those looking for the lowest price to get in. It's worth noting that recent 8GB NVIDIA cards have sometimes hit frame drops in demanding scenes due to limited VRAM, so having the larger buffer is good for future-proofing. New features like FP8 data formats and structured sparsity accelerate AI-powered tasks, such as upscaling, generative textures, and real-time effects, making the RX 9600 XT suitable not just for gaming, but also for creative and AI work. According to AMD's internal benchmarks -- conducted across more than forty game titles -- the 16 GB variant of the RX 9060 XT delivers an average frame-rate improvement of approximately 6% over the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB, which has a manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) of USD 379. The RX 9060 XT 16 GB is positioned below this price point, offering greater memory capacity and marginally lower cost. AMD has not released its own benchmark figures for the 8 GB version of the RX 9060 XT. In NVIDIA's recent 8 GB GPU launches, limited VRAM has occasionally resulted in frame-rate drops in memory-intensive scenes. AMD states that the 8 GB option exists to accommodate budget-conscious buyers seeking a lower entry price, while the 16 GB configuration targets those requiring additional VRAM for high-resolution textures and future-proofing. Other news is support for FP8 data formats and structured sparsity -- features that accelerate AI tasks like upscaling, texture generation, and real-time effects. This makes the RX 9060 XT not just a gaming GPU but a capable partner for generative graphics and AI-assisted workflows. Whether you're a builder, a modder, or just someone who loves next-gen tech, this card delivers a solid mix of price, performance, and future-proof features. Radeon RX 9600 XT Detail AMD RDNA 4 Compute Units 32 HW RT Accelerators 32 HW AI Accelerators 64 Peak AI TOPS (INT4 Sparse) 821 TOPS Boost Clock 3.13 GHz Video Memory 8 GB | 16 GB GDDR6 Total Board Power 150 W - 182 W Connectivity PCIe 5.0 x16 Display Support DisplayPort 2.1a, HDMI 2.1b AMD isn't offering its own reference models this time, so board partners can really customize their designs. This review focuses on an OC version from Gigabyte, showing what third-party vendors are bringing to the table. Whether you're building a new rig, upgrading for the latest games, or just want solid all-around performance with a good balance of price and features, the RX 9600 XT is a card worth considering.

MSI GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GAMING OC Review - Falls Short of Greatness

It should have shipped with more than 8GB of VRAMOC model, so there's a 20% price premium over MSRP As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Introduction With no less than five GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs released so far this year, the arrival of the GeForce RTX 5060 is one that many have been waiting for. It presents gamers with the most affordable RTX Blackwell desktop GPU so far, and completes the lineup. It offers one of the most significant gen-on-gen performance improvements for the entire GeForce RTX 50 Series lineup, making it a great upgrade option for GeForce RTX 3060 and even RTX 4060 owners, with the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC reviewed here delivering 51% faster 1080p gaming performance, on average, than the RTX 3060, and 28% faster 1080p gaming performance than the RTX 4060. 60-class graphics cards from NVIDIA are always the most popular, so it's great to see that the GeForce RTX 5060 delivers the generational uplift absent in other cards in the lineup. Yes, the GeForce RTX 5060 moves 60-class performance forward meaningfully, but it falls short of reaching its true potential as a compact and efficient 1080p and 1440p performer. If you've been following GPU news in the lead-up to the RTX 5060's launch, you'll probably recall that the RTX 5060 started making headlines for all the wrong reasons. In a strange move, NVIDIA didn't provide press or media with pre-release drivers, which explains why this review of the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC is late. That's not all. At Computex 2025, many popular YouTube tech channels came together to decry NVIDIA for offering gaming-focused media hands-on preview opportunities with the RTX 5060 (which came with drivers), with coverage focused squarely on DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation. A criticism that is neither here nor there, as previews are not reviews; however, the criticism that the GeForce RTX 5060 sticking with 8GB of fast GDDR7 memory instead of 12GB or 16GB being a mistake for its longevity is one that we agree with. However, it's manageable and not a deal breaker. As a 1080p gaming GPU, the GeForce RTX 5060 is NVIDIA's best 60-class card in a couple of generations - and this can be seen in the 10-12% performance difference between it and the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. For the past couple of generations, cards like the RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 4060 Ti were considered better overall options because they offered around 20-30% more performance than their baseline 60 counterparts. Even with 8GB of VRAM, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC offers excellent 1440p performance thanks to DLSS 4. When VRAM capacity becomes an issue, like with the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB GPU, you'll need to tinker with settings to compensate. RTX Blackwell - NVIDIA's Gaming Architecture for the AI Era Below is a summary of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX Blackwell architecture, applicable to all models. NVIDIA describes 'Neural Rendering,' which includes all previous versions of DLSS and the brand-new DLSS 4, as the 'next era for computer graphics.' They're not alone; the Lead System Architect for the PlayStation 5 Pro console, Mark Cerny, recently said that ray-tracing is the future of games and that AI will play an integral role in making that happen. DOOM: The Dark Ages developer id Software shared a similar sentiment, adding that the arrival of DLSS was an 'inflection point' for PC game visuals and performance, and on par with the arrival of dedicated GPUs and programmable shaders. With the arrival of the Blackwell generation and the GeForce RTX 50 Series, AI is now being used to accelerate programmable shaders with the brand-new RTX Neural Shaders. Yes, these are actual neural networks that use live game data, and the power of Tensor Cores to do everything from compress textures, render lifelike materials with a level of detail impossible to match using traditional rendering methods, and even use AI to partially trace rays and then infer "an infinite amount of rays and bounces for a more accurate representation of indirect lighting in the game scene." RTX Mega Geometry is incredible in its own right; it essentially increases a scene's geometry detail and complexity (triangles or polygons) by up to 100x. 100 times the detail, it's hard to wrap your head around - but the added benefit in a game like Alan Wake 2 is dramatically improving the performance of the game's Full Ray Tracing or Path Tracing mode. With DLSS 4 and RTX Neural Shaders, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 Series and RTX Blackwell architecture (which includes the same AI optimizations as data center Blackwell) can be viewed as the turning point for PC gaming - the moment when AI becomes integral to everything from designing a game to programming and then finally rendering it on a 4K display to play. DLSS 4 includes more goodies than NVIDIA's highly touted new Multi Frame Generation technology, but let's start there. DLSS 3's version of Frame Generation has evolved with DLSS 4, powered by Blackwell hardware and software, and an innovative use of AI to generate frames 40% faster while using 30% less VRAM. Switching to a new model also means that Frame Generation and Multi-Frame Generation could soon come to GeForce RTX 20, 30, and RTX 40 Series owners. DLSS 4 benefits all GeForce RTX gamers. With the 5th Generation of Tensor Cores in the GeForce RTX 50 Series delivering 2.5X more AI performance, NVIDIA's latest GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs can execute five complex AI models - covering Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and Multi Frame Generation in a couple of milliseconds. Part of the reason it happens so quickly is the addition of hardware Flip Metering, which shifts frame pacing to the Blackwell display engine. The result is frame rates of up to 4K at 240 FPS and higher, without stuttering issues. With up to 15 of every 16 pixels generated by AI, the result is up to 8X the performance when compared to native rendering or rasterized performance. DLSS Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction are also switching to a new 'Transformer' model, with over double the parameters and four times the compute requirement. This is one of the most exciting aspects of the GeForce RTX 50 Series, as it pushes DLSS into a new realm of image quality and performance. The best part is that it will work on all GeForce RTX GPUs; however, there will be a performance hit compared to running it on an RTX 50 Series GPU. Already available in games, DLSS 4's Transformer model is another DLSS 2.0-like moment for the technology, and the results speak for themselves. Even better, DLSS 4 is integrated into the NVIDIA App with a new 'DLSS Override' feature that allows users to experience the latest tech without waiting for a patch or game update. DLSS 4 is built to be backward compatible, with over 125 games and apps supported (so far). It doesn't stop there, as the new AI Management Processor (AMP) allows AI models to share the GPU with graphics workloads. As a result, expect to see digital humans in games alongside AI assistants like NVIDIA's Project G-Assist becoming more prevalent in the coming years. This filters down to the creator side, with AI assistants for streamers, who will also benefit from the GeForce RTX 50 Series' expanded creator features. RTX Blackwell introduces 4:2:2 chroma-sampled video encoding and decoding. The ninth-generation NVENC encoder also improves AV1 and HEVC quality. RTX Blackwell is a game changer for creators and editors, especially with the new low-voltage and cutting-edge GDDR7 memory that dramatically improves memory bandwidth and speed. Here's a look at the specs of the GeForce RTX 5060 compared to the previous generation's GeForce RTX 4060, GeForce RTX 3060, and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. The GeForce RTX 50 Series is the first RTX generation to arrive without a notable process shrink or change. RTX Blackwell uses a custom TSMC 4N process similar to the GeForce RTX 40 Series' Ada Lovelace architecture. Of course, several architectural improvements made with the GeForce RTX 50 Series separate RTX Blackwell from what has come before. From the latest generation of AI and RT hardware to new technology that helps pave the way for Neural Shaders, to the shift to faster GDDR7 memory that sees the GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GPU offer almost double the memory bandwidth as the GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GPU. However, the GeForce RTX 5060 specs clearly show that NVIDIA felt this GPU deserved a notable upgrade over its predecessor. Compared to the GeForce RTX 4060, the RTX 5060 features 25% more CUDA, Tensor, and Ray Tracing cores, and with 65% faster GDDR7 memory, it also happens to feature a power rating that is 25% higher than the RTX 4060. However, as this is still 145W delivered over a single 8-pin power connector, the GeForce RTX 5060, if nothing else, is hands-down the most efficient GPU providing this level of performance (outside of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti). The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC reviewed here is a premium overclocked model with an out-of-the-box Boost Clock speed of up to 2640 MHz, a +143 MHz increase over the 2497 MHz reference spec. Unlike the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, available in 8GB and 16GB variants, the GeForce RTX 5060 is only available with 8GB of GDDR7 memory. As seen in our testing, there are some titles where the 8GB capacity becomes an issue when gaming at 1440p. And with that, we can't help but feel that 12GB of VRAM would have been the right choice for the GeForce RTX 5060. The GeForce RTX 5060 also levels up its AI capabilities compared to the GeForce RTX 4060, thanks to FP4 support that delivers up to 614 TOPS of AI performance. Of course, with 8GB of VRAM, you are limited to working with less complex models - but it's still a big step forward compared to previous 8GB cards. And for creators, the RTX 5060 benefits from all the advancements seen across the entire RTX Blackwell lineup, including support for 4:2:2 chroma-sampled video encoding and decoding. MSI's redesigned and slimmer 'GAMING' GPU design for the GeForce RTX 50 Series has been one of our favorites. Across the entire lineup, you're getting excellent cooling in a more compact package that is one of MSI's best-looking graphics cards. However, in dual-fan MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC form, some of the more premium flourishes seen in the higher-tier GAMING TRIO cards we reviewed this year are missing. For one, the RGB lightning-style strips running across the middle of the GPU are now gone, as is the holographic MSI dragon on the back. In its place, a less impressive but still cool-looking chrome dragon. The build quality here is still excellent, with the metal backplate and shroud feeling as premium as expected. With 248 x 135 x 41mm dimensions, even as a premium OC model, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC is still a compact and lightweight dual-slot GPU. As the GeForce RTX 5060 is the most efficient GPU in the lineup, drawing less than 150W even when stressed, smaller options like this make a lot more sense than larger triple-fan beasts. Cooling-wise, you're still getting a premium experience thanks to the metal backplate, nickel-plated copper baseplate, MSI's square-shaped core pipes, and two of the company's new STORMFORCE fans. In our testing, we never saw the GPU temperature cross the 60 degrees Celsius mark, nor did we hear the fans when running a stress test. The Games and Tests PC gaming not only covers a wide range of genres and styles, from indie games with simple 2D graphics to massive 3D worlds lit by cutting-edge real-time ray tracing technology. With that, the needs and requirements of each gamer vary. High refresh rates and latency reduction become more important than flashy visuals or playing at the highest resolution possible for those who live and breathe fast-paced competitive games. For those who want to live in a cinematic world and become a key player in an expansive narrative, ray-tracing, and high-fidelity visuals are a stepping stone toward immersion. Our chosen benchmarks cover various games, engines, APIs, and technologies. For the GeForce RTX 5060, all tests are run at 1080p and 1440p and include results for performance-boosting Super Resolution technologies like NVIDIA DLSS 4 - including Frame Generation and the new Multi Frame Generation. In many ways, DLSS numbers are more important in 2025 than native rendering - a title with ray tracing isn't meant to be played without Super Resolution. Also, DLSS technologies like Ray Reconstruction and the new RTX Mega Geometry dramatically improve visual fidelity and detail compared to native rendering. However, our benchmark results are still sorted using 'raw performance' or native rendering. Here's the breakdown of games, settings, and what's being tested. According to the latest Steam Hardware Survey results, 1080p is the most popular resolution among PC gamers, and the most popular graphics cards are GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 4060. Although much of the RTX 5060 discourse has been centred around its 8GB of VRAM, NVIDIA positions the GPU as a 1080p gaming powerhouse and a viable upgrade path for RTX 3060 owners. On that note, even though the RTX 3060 features 12GB of VRAM, the GeForce RTX 5060 is, on average, 51% faster for 1080p gaming. It's also 27.7% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060, making it an impressive generational improvement. It's even 7% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, and within 10% and 12% of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB and 16GB GPUs for 1080p gaming. Although DLSS 4 numbers aren't included in the average results above, in our testing, we found that the new Transformer-model powered DLSS 4 Super Resolution delivered impressive image quality at 1080p when using the 'Quality' preset. For titles with heavy ray-tracing like Cyberpunk 2077, DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation can push the native 48 FPS into the 100+ FPS territory with better image quality and lower latency. With the RTX 5060 maintaining the $299 price point of the RTX 4060, the improved performance and the bonus of DLSS 4 are enough to make it one of the better choices for 1080p gaming in 2025. For the most part, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC's performance sits between the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB GPU, with the RTX 4060 Ti pulling ahead in a few titles like F1 24 and Marvel Rivals. However, as the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB GPU has a 27% higher MSRP than the RTX 5060, the latter's 1080p performance makes it the clear performance per dollar winner. Average Gaming Performance - 1440p Results With 8GB of VRAM, you might think that the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC is useless for 1440p gaming, which isn't the case. The results above show that the GPU is still 47% faster than the GeForce RTX 3060 and 28.6% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060 at this resolution. However, the 8GB capacity can become an issue at this resolution. Across our 14-game benchmark suite, some titles see a performance hit simply due to the VRAM capacity, namely Dragon Age: The Veilguard, F1 24, and Horizon Forbidden West. All three titles are modern AAA-style releases with cutting-edge visuals, which means that for some 1440p gaming on the RTX 5060, you will need to lower settings to compensate for the lack of 12GB or even 16GB of VRAM. However, as the RTX 5060 is the sort of GPU you'd tinker with settings to get the best performance, this isn't a deal breaker. Also, most games, including the most popular titles played today, run just fine on a GPU with 8GB of VRAM. At 1440p, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU pulls ahead of the RTX 5060, delivering around 20% faster performance on average when looking at raw performance. For those looking to play games with a lot of ray-tracing or details set to 'Ultra,' the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU is better suited for delivering that cinematic experience at 1440p. However, DLSS 4 is impressive on the GeForce RTX 5060 at 1440p. The 'Quality' and 'Balanced' presets deliver a sizeable boost to performance without sacrificing image quality, and the addition of Frame Generation can turn something playable into a smooth 100+ FPS experience. Benchmarks - 3DMark Synthetic Tests 3DMark offers a suite of synthetic benchmarks built to test GPUs in various scenarios. 3DMark Steel Nomad is a cutting-edge DirectX 12 benchmark with newer, modern rendering techniques designed to push GPUs to their limit. The 'Light' version tests at 1440p, while the main Steel Nomad benchmark tests pure native 4K rendering. Port Royal is a benchmark focusing exclusively on real-time ray tracing for lighting effects like reflections, shadows, and more. Steel Nomad is the latest DirectX 12-based synthetic benchmark from 3DMark, and the 1440p and 4K benchmark scores present a slightly inflated version of what we found with our in-game benchmark results. Here, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC's scores are 58% higher than the GeForce RTX 3060 and around 36% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060, with those figures being closer to 50% and 30% when looking at in-game averages. The Steel Nomad results point to RTX Blackwell GPUs like the GeForce RTX 5060 being better equipped for modern gaming technologies like Unreal Engine 5. The Port Royal score for the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC, a synthetic ray-tracing benchmark, is a whopping 42% higher than that of the GeForce RTX 4060. This result can be replicated in games with heavy ray-tracing like Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake 2, and others, where the RTX 5060 is around 35% faster. The score is also 7% higher than the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, which was widely considered the entry-level GPU for ray-tracing, with that honor now passing over to the RTX 5060. DLSS 4, Frame Generation, and the new Multi-Frame Generation DLSS 4 and Multi Frame Generation are impressive bits of technology, thanks mainly to the overall improvements to performance and latency on the Frame Generation side and the new 'Transformer' model for Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction. We used the DLSS 'Balanced' mode preset for these benchmarks, often delivering native-like image quality, to test the GeForce RTX 5060's capabilities as a 1440p gaming GPU. DLSS 4, which includes Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and Multi Frame Generation, is a key feature of the GeForce RTX 5060 - and when it all comes together, delivers the sort of gaming experience that would only be possible on a higher-end GPU that costs double or even triple. DLSS 4's new Super Resolution, which is powered by a new transformer AI model, is one of those features you should enable wherever it's available. For Cyberpunk 2077's hardware-intensive RT Ultra preset, 28 FPS becomes 57 FPS using the DLSS 'Balanced' preset, doubling performance. From there, Multi Frame Generation can boost performance further and increase motion clarity for high refresh rate displays. Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game where the RTX 5060's 8GB of VRAM limits performance, sees a 60% increase in performance when using DLSS 4 Super Resolution. In Marvel Rivals, a game without ray-tracing, DLSS 4 Super Resolution improves performance by 45% at 1440p on the RTX 5060 to deliver a smooth 93 FPS that can push into triple-digit territory with Multi Frame Generation. DLSS 4 is a game changer for performance, image fidelity, and latency; however, for Multi Frame Generation to deliver its best results, you need at least 50-60 FPS of DLSS Super Resolution Performance. Path Tracing Performance - 1080p Path Tracing, or Full Ray Tracing, arrived with the GeForce RTX 40 Series and DLSS 3 and is leveling up with the GeForce RTX 50 Series and DLSS 4. It's only possible thanks to AI technologies like DLSS Super Resolution, Ray Reconstruction, and RTX Neural Shader technology like RTX Mega Geometry. It's designed specifically for these technologies, and we're only including native or rasterized performance to highlight just how intensive it is on a GPU like the GeForce RTX 5060. In fact, outside of the massive increase in performance, these games also look notably worse without DLSS 4. The MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC is what you'd call an entry-level Path Tracing GPU, where it can offer a visually impressive and playable 1080 Full Ray Tracing experience, but one that also doesn't look or feel as remarkable as what's possible on a higher-end GPU like the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti or RTX 5080. Playing both Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 with Path Tracing enabled on the GeForce RTX 5060 is impressive, but there's no denying that the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti feels like the better option if Path Tracing is something you're looking for. Case in point, the incredibly demanding Half-Life 2 RTX is playable on the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC. However, it requires running the game at 1080p using the DLSS 4 'Quality' preset, 'Medium', ray-tracing settings, and Multi-Frame Generation set to at least 2X for a smooth and responsive experience. It looks fantastic, however, there is a big difference between how Half-Life 2 RTX looks running on the RTX 5060 in 1080p versus the demo running in 4K on the RTX 5080. Temperature and Power Efficiency With its premium build and cooling, the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC's GPU temperature only rose to 58 degrees Celsius during a stress test. And that's with the +150 MHz or so out-of-the-box overclock and a modest fan curve that remained just about silent. Besides the excellent cooling in MSI's custom design, the RTX 5060 is one of the most efficient GPUs in the RTX 50 Series lineup, drawing only 132W on average when gaming in 1080p. Final Thoughts And DLSS 4, one of the most impressive features of the GeForce RTX 50 Series debut, continues to impress here, even at 1080p. With exceptional image quality and Multi Frame Generation boosting performance in several titles, it's enough to make the RTX 5060 a decent 1440p GPU. And even though the MSI GeForce RTX 5060 GAMING OC features a robust and compact design with fantastic thermal performance, when looking at mainstream GPUs like the RTX 5060, the closer the price stays to $299, the more it makes sense. Do we wish the GeForce RTX 5060 shipped with 12GB or 16GB of VRAM? Yes, that would help alleviate any issues with 1440p gaming and better future-proof the card for AAA titles with ray-tracing and other cutting-edge features that would force you to lower in-game settings. However, sticking with 8GB is not a deal breaker for the RTX 5060, and in fact, it's one of the best GeForce RTX 50 Series releases so far, with 1080p and 1440p performance that is around 50% faster than the RTX 3060 and 28% faster than the RTX 4060. The RTX 5060 delivers one of the best gen-on-gen performance uplifts for the RTX Blackwell generation while maintaining the same $299 MSRP as the RTX 4060. As a 1080p GPU, the RTX 5060 is NVIDIA's best baseline 60-class GPU since the GeForce RTX 2060. It offers excellent performance at this resolution, powerful enough for 1440p gaming, and supports cutting-edge features like ray-tracing and DLSS 4.

SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE OC Review - AMD's Best Mainstream GPU in Years

Not much faster than the GeForce RTX 5060 and slower than the RTX 5060 Ti As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. TweakTown may also earn commissions from other affiliate partners at no extra cost to you. Introduction The arrival of the Radeon RX 9060 XT from AMD is a milestone release for the company, as it offers PC gamers the best mainstream Radeon GPU we've seen in years. Mainstream GPUs arrive with a more down-to-earth price point, efficient designs, and the promise of delivering fantastic all-around performance. They're the most popular among PC gamers because the $300 or $400 value proposition makes much more sense than spending upwards of $1,000 or more on a GPU. According to the latest Steam data, the two most popular graphics cards are the GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 4060, which will probably be joined by the GeForce RTX 5060 at some point in the future. And possibly, the Radeon RX 9060 XT. From what we've seen, AMD's previous-generation mainstream GPU combo, the Radeon RX 7600 and Radeon RX 7600 XT, failed to make a marketable impression because it only really excelled at one thing - rasterized or raw performance without ray-tracing or a viable alternative to the AI sorcery that is NVIDIA DLSS. As seen with the flagship RDNA 4 GPU released earlier this year, the Radeon RX 9070 XT, AMD's latest generation of GPUs, offers much more than a performance uplift over the previous generation. Dramatically improved ray-tracing performance means that Radeon can now compete with GeForce regarding fancy lighting effects, and the new AI-powered FSR 4 presents such a massive improvement over FSR 3 that the difference is night and day. Like DLSS 3 and DLSS 4, FSR 4 is now an upscaling technology that you should enable at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, because it often offers native-like or better-than-TAA image quality with a free boost to performance. It's these two advances that made us excited to check out the new Radeon RX 9060 XT, as even with cut-down specs compared to the Radeon RX 9070 XT (it has half the Compute Units), there's every chance that it would blow the RDNA 3's Radeon RX 7600 out of the water. Especially now, in 2025, where a third of the games in our benchmark suite include testing with ray-tracing effects enabled. And it does, with the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE coming in 51% faster for 1080p gaming, and a whopping 61% faster for 1440p gaming when compared to the Radeon RX 7600. Right off the bat, you might think that this sort of result makes the Radeon RX 9060 XT the clear mainstream winner and something of a GeForce RTX 5060 Series killer. However, the story is much more nuanced than that, with the more expensive GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU outperforming the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE by around 10% on average. The overall performance is also much closer to the GeForce RTX 5060 than you might think. Let's dig in. RDNA 4 - AMD Levels the Playing Field Below is a summary of AMD's new RDNA 4 architecture, applicable to all models. AMD's new RDNA 4 architecture presents a massive improvement over the chiplet design that we saw with RDNA 3. Returning to the monolithic design of RDNA and RDNA 2 might sound like a regression, especially when AMD CPUs have gone in the other direction, but this isn't the case. In a nutshell, RDNA 4 is built for 2025. This GPU architecture embraces ray-tracing performance as a key pillar, lays the groundwork for neural rendering, and supercharges AI performance for the new FSR 4 Super Resolution and complex AI workloads. Throw in a revamped media engine for creators and streamers, and support for next-gen DisplayPort 2.1a displays, and RDNA 4 presents a new and revitalized direction for Radeon graphics. RDNA 4's overhauled Compute Unit, which houses all of the raster, ray-tracing, and AI hardware, has seen several enhancements over RDNA 3 and is one of the reasons why the Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs deliver impressive performance gains. The RDNA 4 Compute Unit, or CU, features an enhanced memory subsystem, improved scalar units (for raw raster), dynamic register allocation to reduce latency and bottlenecks, and increased efficiency. The improvements also mean that Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs can ship with much higher clock speeds than their RDNA 3 counterparts, hitting close to 3 GHz in several 9070 XT models, with 9060 XT models pushing up to 3.3 GHz. The show's star, at least in terms of the massive improvement over what has come before, has to be the arrival of RDNA 4's 3rd Generation Ray-Tracing Accelerators. AMD is aware that game developers across PC and console are embracing ray-tracing, which presents a realistic depiction of lighting and related effects like shadows and reflections. The only problem is that real-time ray-tracing is complex, requiring the right blend of raw performance and innovative technologies to enhance efficiency and deliver a playable experience. One area RDNA 4's RT Accelerator delivers where RDNA 3's don't is the arrival of "Oriented Bounding Boxes," an innovative method of handling ray-tracing Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) data. Think of it as efficiently tracing rays through an environment and geometry with a lower memory cost and less hardware. RDNA 4's RT Accelerator also adds a second intersection engine to double the performance of specific raytracing workloads and calculations. The results can be seen in titles with heavy ray-tracing like Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, where the Radeon RX 9070 XT delivers a significant 30+% performance improvement over the previous gen flagship - the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. A card with 50% more RT Accelerators than the Radeon RX 9070 XT. The mainstream Radeon RX 9060 XT also delivers substantially faster ray-tracing performance than the Radeon RX 7600, to the point where mainstream RDNA 4 is now what you'd call RT-ready. RDNA 4 also fully embraces AI, with new AI accelerators that support FP8 while delivering double the FP16 and four times the INT8 performance compared to RDNA 3's AI accelerators. For gamers, this means the new AI-powered FSR 4 leverages AI to deliver a massive improvement in image quality over FSR 3. However, AMD's custom AI model, which was trained on powerful AMD Instinct hardware, is FP8-based, so it is exclusive to RDNA 4 hardware. AMD is also looking to introduce its answer to NVIDIA's DLSS Ray Reconstruction and Frame Generation for Path Tracing with Project Redstone's new AI-based Ray Regeneration and Frame Generation, alongside support for Neural Radiance Caching. FSR "Project Redstone" is currently in development and on track for release in the second half of 2025. With improved raw performance and a massive boost to ray-tracing and AI performance, RDNA 4 presents an enormous leap forward over RDNA 3. However, catching up to GeForce RTX in these areas and offering a viable DLSS alternative does mean that early adopters will need to wait for game support and AMD to deliver its Path Tracing solution. With 60+ FSR 4-ready titles available now, there's still a massive deficit compared to DLSS 3 and DLSS 4 as we head toward 2026. Falling behind for over five years in these areas means there's a lot of catching up to do, and this will take time. This brings us to RDNA 4's enhanced Media Engine, which offers creators and streamers a big improvement to H.264, HEVC, and AV1 encoding and decoding. NVIDIA's lead in this area has meant that few creators use Radeon hardware. With RDNA 4, AMD is looking to close the gap and offer a viable alternative, especially regarding image quality, when using popular settings in apps like OBS. Here's a comparison of the Radeon RX 9060 XT specs to those of the previous generation's Radeon RX 7600 XT and the Radeon RX 9070 Series. Like the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, the Radeon RX 9060 XT arrives in two variants: a model with 8GB of VRAM starting from $299 and one with 16GB of VRAM starting from $349. And like our review coverage of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, we've only been supplied the 16GB variant, so this review will not include any analysis or differences between the two variants. With that out of the way, looking at the Radeon RX 9060 XT specs, its overall configuration looks similar to the previous generation's Radeon RX 7600, albeit with a shift to a more advanced TSMC 4nm process. There's a lot more going on, with the Radeon RX 9060 XT's GPU comprising 29.7 billion transistors compared to the Radeon RX 7600's 13.3 billion. Compared to the flagship Radeon RX 970 XT, the cut-down RX 9060 XT features 32 Compute Units and Ray Accelerators versus 64. However, with a 160W power rating delivered over a single 8-pin PCIe power connector, it also uses around half the power, making RDNA 4's most efficient GPU by a long shot. The Radeon RX 9060 XT features a similar memory configuration as its predecessor, with GDDR6 on a 128-bit interface clocked slightly higher at around 20.1 Gbps. However, compared to the GeForce RTX 5060 Series, which uses faster GDDR7 memory on a similar 128-bit interface, the 9060 XT's overall memory bandwidth is notably slower. That said, the Radeon RX 9060 XT features one of the fastest Boost Clock speeds we've ever seen for a Radeon or GeForce graphics card, with the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE shipping with an impressive overclocked Boost Clock speed of 3290 MHz. Power-wise, the Radeon RX 9060 XT maintains a similar 160W rating as the RDNA 3 mainstream offering; however, when gaming, we found that the power draw was higher than the GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, which gives GeForce the efficiency edge. OC models like the one reviewed here can push the power to its limit or even higher, depending on the configuration. Still, with up to 61% faster performance using the same power, the Radeon RX 9060 XT is remarkably more efficient than the Radeon RX 7600. And with more advanced AI hardware, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB also doubles as an efficient performer for AI workloads. SAPPHIRE's PULSE line-up for the Radeon RX 9000 Series represents the company's affordable or reference-spec designs that forego things like RDB lighting for a simpler, compact design. That said, after testing a few different SAPPHIRE PULSE GPUs over the years, this revamped and improved version for RDNA 4 is easily the most impressive to date, especially when temperatures barely rise above 56 degrees Celsius with a modest fan speed. The SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE retains previous models' black and red look, albeit with some changes to the venting and adding a metal SAPPHIRE plate on the side, giving it a more premium feel. With a 2.3-slot thickness and a relatively lightweight build, the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE won't have any issue fitting in more minor cases of SFF builds. Even though it's compact, the design is still all about thermal performance with a metal backplate, an Integrated Cooling Module that offers direct contact with the GPU, memory, and VRMs, composite heatpipes tuned for optimal heat transfer, improved fans, a high-density 10-layer copper and high TB PCB, and Honeywell PTM7950 Thermal Interface Material (TIM) for key components. As they say, the proof is in the pudding with the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE running cool and quiet even during extended gaming sessions. Finally, and this is something for those who use multiple displays, the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE, like all Radeon RX 9060 XT GPUs, only features three display outputs, two HDMI ports, and one DisplayPort. Yeah, as a fan of DisplayPort over HDMI, it's not ideal. The Games and Tests PC gaming not only covers a wide range of genres and styles, from indie games with simple 2D graphics to massive 3D worlds lit by cutting-edge real-time ray tracing technology. With that, the needs and requirements of each gamer vary. High refresh rates and latency reduction become more important than flashy visuals or playing at the highest resolution possible for those who live and breathe fast-paced competitive games. For those who want to live in a cinematic world and become a key player in an expansive narrative, ray-tracing, and high-fidelity visuals are a stepping stone toward immersion. Our chosen benchmarks cover various games, engines, APIs, and technologies. For the Radeon RX 9060 XT, all tests are run at 1080p and 1440p and include results for performance-boosting Super Resolution technologies like AMD's new AI-powered FSR 4, alongside older FSR 3 and FSR 2 versions. However, our benchmark results are still sorted using 'raw performance' or native rendering. Here's the breakdown of games, settings, and what's being tested. As mentioned in the introduction, with RDNA 4's massive improvement to ray-tracing performance and other architectural optimizations compared to RDNA 3, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB is substantially faster for 1080p gaming than the Radeon RX 7600. It's a whopping 51% faster, which translates to it also being 60% faster than the GeForce RTX 3060, the most popular gaming GPU, according to Steam. For those with a GeForce RTX 3060 looking to upgrade, yes, the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE will be a game-changer no matter what game you're playing. Compared to the GeForce RTX 4060, it's 35% faster for 1080p gaming; however, with the recent launch of the GeForce RTX 5060, it's only 6% faster than NVIDIA's latest 1080p offering, on average. With the GeForce RTX 5060 starting from $299, the same price as the Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB variant, that 6% is probably not enough to sway someone away from NVIDIA's robust set of features like DLSS 4, NVENC for creators, and more. FSR 4 brings Radeon as close to feature parity with GeForce as we've ever seen. However, adoption is still insufficient to make it a key "buy it for this feature" like DLSS has been for a couple of years. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is 6% faster for 1080p gaming than the Radeon RX 9060 XT, with AMD's mainstream RDNA 4 GPU also being around 40% slower than the beefier Radeon RX 9070 16GB - the next model up. The average results don't quite tell the whole picture, as performance between the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB and the GeForce RTX 5060 Series varies from title to title. At 1080p, Black Myth: Wukong performance for the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB matches the baseline GeForce RTX 5060, while Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 punches well above its weight, matching the GeForce RTX 5070. Counter-Strike 2 performance, on the other hand, falls behind the RTX 5060 and the RTX 5060 Ti, while Cyberpunk 2077 and DOOM Eternal with ray-tracing pull slightly ahead of the GeForce RTX 5060. Check out the individual game benchmarks below for detailed results. Average Gaming Performance - 1440p Results With 16GB of VRAM, the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE is better equipped for 1440p gaming than the GeForce RTX 5060, and its overall performance matches that of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB GPU. The GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is, on average, 9% faster at this resolution, which is a relatively modest margin of victory. The SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE is a far better 1440p gaming GPU than the Radeon RX 7600 XT 16GB GPU, thanks to the arrival of FSR 4 and RDNA 4's improved ray-tracing performance. Using the FSR 4 'Quality' preset at 1440p delivers impressive image quality, and sees Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 hit 113 FPS using the Ultra quality graphics preset. Horizon Forbidden West is another great-looking example of FSR 4, which pushes the 72 FPS of native rendering to 83 FPS with the FSR 4 'Quality' preset. Space Marine 2, the final game where we paid close attention to FSR 4 jumps from 71 FPS to 90 FPS using the 'Quality' preset, which offers better image quality and stability than TAA. If AMD can ramp up FSR 4 adoption for new and older titles, it will be a mainstay in the years ahead. For those looking to upgrade, the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE (as long as it can be picked up for around $349) is an excellent option for those with older GeForce RTX 60-class GPUs. For 1440p gaming, it's 61% faster than the GeForce RTX 3060, 41% faster than the GeForce RTX 4060. However, like with the 1080p results, there is a significant performance gap between the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB GPU and the Radeon RX 9070, with the latter being 51% faster for 1440p gaming. That said, the Radeon RX 9070's MSRP is also 57% higher, which makes the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB better value. Benchmarks - 3DMark Synthetic Tests 3DMark offers a suite of synthetic benchmarks built to test GPUs in various scenarios. 3DMark Steel Nomad is a cutting-edge DirectX 12 benchmark with newer, modern rendering techniques designed to push GPUs to their limit. The 'Light' version tests at 1440p, while the main Steel Nomad benchmark tests pure native 4K rendering. Port Royal is a benchmark focusing exclusively on real-time ray tracing for lighting effects like reflections, shadows, and more. With the GeForce RTX 50 Series and the arrival of the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, we've found that the 1440p and 4K Steel Nomad Light and Steel Nomad synthetic benchmark results have offered a somewhat skewed representation of what you might find in-game. That said, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB's Steel Nomad score being 63% higher than the Radeon RX 7600 is essentially what you'll find when playing most games at 1440p. Depending on the test, the score is either higher than the RTX 5060 or lower, or falling short of sitting on par with the RTX 5060 Ti. Come to think of it, with the varied in-game results, this discrepancy reflects what you'd find in-game; it'll just depend on the game and the workload. The 3DMark Port Royal synthetic benchmark results are interesting because, for the first time, a mainstream Radeon GPU is outperforming a mainstream GeForce RTX GPU, with the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE's score sitting 10% higher than the GeForce RTX 5060. This is a result that reflects what you'll find in-game with light or even heavy ray-tracing, including Cyberpunk 2077 with the 'RT Ultra' preset, which sees the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE delivering 48 FPS at 1080p compared to 46 FPS for the RTX 5060. Granted, this is only a couple of frames, but it's an unprecedented result for Cyberpunk 2077 with ray-tracing. This mode has traditionally only run well on mainstream GeForce RTX GPUs. With the arrival of the Radeon RX 900 Series and the new Radeon RX 9070, AMD's new FSR 4 represents a massive improvement over FSR 3.1, FSR 3, and FSR 2. The shift to a custom and powerful AI model for upscaling shows that ML or AI is the definite way to maintain image quality that is on par or even superior to native rendering. As FSR 4 was explicitly designed for RDNA 4, and trained on powerful AMD hardware, it is exclusive to the Radeon RX 9000 Series due to the advanced AI hardware requirements. The good news is that games with FSR 3.1 are automatically upgraded to FSR 4 via AMD's Adrenalin Software, with a nice overlay showing a green FSR 4 tick when booting up a compatible game. After seeing what it can do at 4K, 1440p, and even 1080p, it's safe to say that FSR 4 is the real deal. Image quality might still come in second to NVIDIA's DLSS 4, but as an AI upscaling solution, it's a winner and something that will only improve with time. The only downside is that it's a fresh start for AMD, as it only works on RDNA 4 GPUs and requires at least FSR 3.1 for a driver-based override. With FSR 4 now available in 60 games, it's a good starting point, but it will take time to become a DLSS competitor. Likewise, while impressive, AMD's FSR Frame Generation isn't as responsive or impressive as NVIDIA's AI approach. The results are certainly playable, and the additional smoothness is excellent for those with high-refresh-rate displays. Still, it probably won't be until AMD's AI-powered Frame Generation arrives (which is slated for a 2025 debut) that we'll get the complete picture of what FSR 4 with Frame Generation looks like. As it stands, FSR 4 Super Resolution on the Radeon RX 9060 XT delivers excellent results, adding to its chops as a 1440p gaming GPU. Path Tracing Performance - 1080p Path Tracing takes real-time ray-tracing and applies the concept of ray-traced effects to anything and everything - global illumination, shadows, reflections, indirect lighting, and more. With multiple bounces, it's a hardware-intensive and cutting-edge look at the future of PC gaming that is only possible thanks to AI tools and technologies. With RDNA 4 dramatically improving ray-tracing performance compared to RDNA 3, GPUs like the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB are capable of rendering stunning Path Traced visuals; however, it's more proof of concept than something practical. Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are playable on the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE with Full Ray Tracing or Path Tracing, but it's not the same experience as playing these games on the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. Regarding performance and image quality, these games look much better when running on RTX hardware. This is due to FSR 4 adoption and AMD's FSR 4 Project Redstone being on track for a second-half of 2025 launch. Redstone will offer a DLSS Ray Reconstruction-like technology for RDNA 4, alongside introducing Neural Radiance Cache to improve performance and lighting quality. We'd love to see FSR 4 Project Redstone come to Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, as its Path Tracing mode with DLSS 4 enabled is like looking at the future of in-game graphics. As seen in the performance numbers above, this is a game where the SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE should be able to deliver playable entry-level Path Tracing - something that is currently limited to the GeForce RTX 5060 Series. Temperature and Power Efficiency The SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE's GPU temperature hit 56 degrees Celsius in our stress test, and even then, the fan speed was only at 25% and whisper quiet. SAPPHIRE's Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB GPU, even with its Boost Clock speed of 3290 MHz, also keeps its power draw to around 160W when gaming, which makes it the most efficient mainstream Radeon GPU since the RDNA 2 generation. The GeForce RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti are still more efficient, but the results show that RDNA 4 scales well, so we'd love to see the architecture make its way to mobile devices. Final Thoughts Mainstream RDNA 4 is here, and yes, it offers a massive improvement over the previous RDNA generations while also bringing the fight to the GeForce RTX 5060 Series. However, it's a far cry from a blowout. With SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE being a 16GB model with an MSRP of $349, compared to the $299 GeForce RTX 5060, it's only 6% faster for 1080p gaming and 10% faster for 1440p gaming, on average. Likewise, the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU is 6% faster than the 9060 XT for 1080p gaming and 9% faster for 1440p gaming, on average. For those expecting the Radeon RX 9060 XT to come in and make the RTX 5060 Series look like a joke, that's not the case. We've got a more competitive mainstream competitor from AMD, and the company's best mainstream Radeon GPU in a long, long time. To put that into perspective, with the improved ray-tracing performance and the shift to a more advanced and efficient process, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB in SAPPHIRE PULSE form is up to 61% faster than RDNA 3's mainstream Radeon RX 7600. This sort of generational improvement is nowhere to be seen when looking at the GeForce RTX 50 Series. When you add FSR 4 into the mix, and AMD's new AI-powered rendering technologies are coming soon, the modest gen-on-gen gains for the RTX 50 Series have allowed AMD to close the gap, both feature- and performance-wise. Is it enough to make it easy to choose the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB over the RTX 5060 or RTX 5060 Ti? Well, not really. NVIDIA's mature feature set and the widespread adoption of DLSS make it the sort of premium feature you'd pay a little extra for. However, several titles are already out there with FSR 4 support. If you're a competitive gamer who loves nothing more than jumping into rounds of Call of Duty, the Radeon RX 9060 XT is probably the way to go. Ultimately, mainstream RDNA 4 is a game-changer compared to mainstream RDNA 3. However, it's not quite that when going toe-to-toe with GeForce.

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU Now Available In 8 GB & 16 GB Flavors, Starting at $299 To Rival NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Series

AMD has finally launched the Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics card, now available in 8 GB ($299), and 16 GB ($349) variants for mainstream gamers. AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU Is Now Available, Starting At $299 For 8 GB & $349 For 16 GB Models The AMD Radeon RX 9060 series was confirmed when the company first introduced its RDNA 4 architecture at CES 2025. The lineup was meant to be positioned below the RX 9070 GPUs, and was stated to tackle NVIDIA's 60-class products, such as the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060. Today, AMD is finally launching the first product within the RX 9060 series family, the Radeon RX 9060 XT. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT is designed to tackle the mainstream segment, where 80% of gaming audiences game at resolutions of 1440p or lower. The following are some links where you can purchase the new graphics card: Unlike the RX 9070 series, the lineup only features one SKU for now, but it will come in two memory configurations, as we will show in the detailed specs run-down below. Starting with the specifications, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT will feature the RDNA 4-based Navi 44 GPU. This is a smaller chip versus the Navi 48 used on the 9070 series and is designed to be cost-effective, providing mainstream gamers with a product that offers great gaming value. The chip itself features 32 Compute Units or 2048 cores, 32 RT accelerators, and 64 AI accelerators. With the Radeon RX 9060 XT, AMD is leveraging the TSMC 4nm process technology and dialing up the clock speeds to 11. The chip features a boost clock of up to 3.13 GHz, making it the first GPU to have such a high frequency out of the box. We can expect custom models to operate around 3.2-3.3 GHz. The GPU also features a TBP of 150 to 182W, which is respective to the VRAM featured on each SKU. That's also why we have to talk about the memory solution used by the RX 9060 XT. The graphics card will come in both 8 GB and 16 GB variants. The card will feature a 128-bit bus interface and a 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory solution. The card feels very similar to the RTX 5060 Ti regarding its memory configuration, but the competition is leveraging faster GDDR7 memory. Other specs include PCIe 5.0 x16 connection, DisplayPort 2.1a, and HDMI 2.1b display outputs, along with all the FSR 4 goodness that one can expect on RDNA 4. For performance, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB graphics card was compared to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and is 6% faster. This is 15% higher performance per dollar vs the same competition, which retails at $379 US for the 8 GB and $429 US for the 16 GB variant. Even the 8 GB model is said to offer very competitive gaming performance against the GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB, which is priced at the same MSRP of $299. The 8 GB model is poised to be 55% faster at 1080p against the RX 7600 across a list of 35+ games, and also ends up 9% faster than the 8 GB RTX 5060 across 40 games tested at 1080p. Then we have FSR 4 support, which is being extended to over 60 game titles today. With FSR 4's frame-generation, leveraging machine learning, AI upscaling, and frame-gen, the new tech will boost FSP in games by up to 3.4x. A lot of good things are being said about FSR 4, which has now come close to NVIDIA's DLSS 4 in terms of image quality. DLSS 4 still holds the upper hand with its MFG modes that enable up to 4x frame-gen, but the Red team has some cool tricks planned in the future FSR updates, such as the "Redstone" release which is expected in the second half of 2025 & will deliver various improvements including Neural Radiance Caching, ML Ray Regeneration for accurate and faster ray tracing, ML Super Resolution and ML Frame Generation. As for pricing, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB graphics cards will be available at an MSRP of $349, while the 8 GB variant will be launching at $299.