Finally, a powerful $350 GPU

NVIDIA released a brand new video card, and AMD was later cheaper. This has been basically a cycle for the GPU industry over the past decade, with NVIDIA generally leading the way and AMD eager to keep up. But with the recent Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, AMD has finally found a winning formula with the GPU, both cheaper than NVIDIA and more powerful in many cases. The new Radeon RX 9060 XT, designed to use NVIDIA’s RTX 5060 Ti in 1080p and 1440p games, mainly repeating the formula. Starting at $350 (and $300 for micro 8GB), it launches well below the $429 RTX 5060 Ti while offering a similar level of performance.

Again, AMD has much less key than NVIDIA provides. Of course, compared to NVIDIAS’s 448 GB/S GDDR7, the GDDR6 RAM used by AMD has 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth. But in reality, it’s more useful to actually have a larger memory pool when you’re dealing with a lot of textures and 3D models in modern games. So if you’re looking for the best gaming bang under $400, the 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT is undoubtedly the winner.

What is the Radeon RX 9060 Ti?

The RX 9060 XT is the lowest powerful member of the AMD Radeon RX 9000 family, and if you can’t spend more than $500 on your GPU, it’s basically the card you get. Remember that video cards actually actually cost more in stores, depending on the retailer’s chances. RX 9060 XT Sport 32 RDNA 4 Computing Unit, 32 RT Accelerator and 64 AI Accelerators. Its boost clock can reach 3.1GHz and consumes 180W of power. By comparison, the $549 MSRP RX 9070 has 56 compute units, while the $599 RX 9070 XT has 8 more.

AMD is selling this GPU as a replacement for the RX 7600 XT, which was launched last year for $329. The card also has 16GB of VRAM, but is slower with 288 GB/s bandwidth. While the 7600 XT is more focused on entry-level 1440p gaming, hardware improvements from the 9060 XT make it more capable. AMD claims that it’s 46% faster than the 7600 XT in over 40 games, and in my tests, that number checked.

In this review, I tested Gigabyte’s RX 9060 XT GPU, which has three cooling fans pointing to a typical copper hot link. There is no exquisite steam cooling room or any luxury materials on the card, but in this price range, what I expect is little to make.

What are the benefits of the Radeon RX 9060 Ti?

In gaming and benchmarks, the 9060 XT clocked in the position I expected: significantly slower than the RX 9070, and slower or slightly slower than the NVIDIA RTX 5060 TI. In 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Benchmark, the 9060 XT scored 200 points higher than the NVIDIA card and was also 90 points ahead in extreme cases of space and time. But NVIDIA leads 1,000 points in the track benchmark and 2,000 points in the Luxmark HDR 4 test.

Despite these numbers, I was still impressed that the 9060 XT could stay in the same league as Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti at much less cost. AMD’s ray tracing performance is considerably better than previous generations, scoring 45% faster in the 3DMark Port Royal Benchmark. NVIDIA still maintains a lead in the game, especially the DLSS 4 AI upgrade and a punch from a multi-frame generation. NVIDIA’s RTX 5000 series cards generate up to three interpolated frames for each original rendered frame, while AMD is still pasted on a single extra frame on its FSR 3 and 4 (Fidelity Super Super Jositution 4).

Radeon RX 9060 XT can run Cyberpunk 2077 The ray-tracing “Super Speed ​​Drive” mode at 1440p was hit by a considerable 80 fps, while the Nvidia’s RTX 5060 TI hit 136 fps, thanks to the generation of multiple frames. Still, there is plenty of room for swing to start more frames: the gradual drop to 1080p attracted me to 120 fps, I saw 90 fps while using the less-required ray tracing “Ultra” preset in 1440p. There is no fantasy in terms of raw performance, the 9060 XT hit 114 fps in 1080p and 90 fps in 1440p.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT wasn’t very hot during my tests, but it made sense that it was purely focused on 1080p and 1440p gaming in 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Stress Test, which was repeated 20 times in a row, and the card poured out at 54 degrees Celsius. I’ve seen videos stuck to 70 degrees Celsius under load, so the 9060 XT was a great surprise. When idle, it is located at 42 degrees Celsius. This is higher than a card with a steam chamber cooling, but the average card is about the average in this price range. I also didn’t hear any annoying fan noise as it had almost no sweat.

What are the disadvantages of the Radeon RX 9060 XT?

There’s nothing to complain about with the Radeon RX 9060 XT, as long as you expect too much from a GPU under $400. Still, it’s nice to see support for AMD’s new FSR 4 AI spread faster. This feature is only available in a few games when the RX 9070 XX is launched Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Now, it has been supported by over 60 games. NVIDIA’s DLSS 4 support (including over 125 championships so far) is still half the competition.

On the RX 9060 XT, the FSR 4 user experience is still not as simple as activate DLSS on an NVIDIA card. I have to enable it manually in AMD’s adrenaline software and flip it Call of Duty: War Zone Activate it. On the bright side, I saw an average of 254 fps in the 1440p game, with extreme graphics settings, FSR 4 and framework generation. Framework Gen enabled, but without FSR 4, performance dropped to 174fps. If I remove both features, it drops to 110 fps. Apparently, FSR 4 and Frame Gen helped a lot, and I just hope it’s in more games.

Should You Buy the Radeon RX 9060 XT?

Assuming retailers don’t overprice the Radeon RX 9060 XT, this is a solid choice if you’re looking for an affordable GPU dedicated to 1080p and 1440p gameplay. The 9060 XT is priced at $350, which is well below the retail price of the RTX 5060 TI and is certainly much cheaper than the model that sells for over $500.

To reach the lower $300 price, AMD also launched the RX 9060 Ti with 8GB of RAM. But honestly, unless you only play old games in 1080p, I recommend avoiding this entirely. It’s worth spending more so you can play less headache games, which is actually necessary if you want to play in 1440p.

wrap up

The Radeon RX 9060 XT reminds people that we don’t have to pay more than $400 to get a capable GPU. According to Steam, we already know that over 80% of PC gamers play games at 1440p or lower. So for the vast majority of players, those who don’t use crazy high refresh rate or 4K+ resolution monitors – that’s all the GPU you really need.