Finally, a powerful $350 GPU

Nvidia publishes a brand new video and AMD card followed with cheaper. This has essentially been the GPU industry cycle in the last decade, Nvidia usually leading the pack and AMD rushing to follow. But with the recent Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XTAMD finally found a winning formula with GPUs which were both cheaper than Nvidia and, in many more powerful cases. The new RX RX 9060 XT, which is supposed to take NVIDIA RTX 5060 In 1080p and 1440p games, this formula mainly repeats. From $ 350 with 16 GB of RAM (and $ 300 with a meager 8 GB), it is launched for much less than the RTX 5060 TI of $ 429 while offering a similar level of performance.

Again, the key for AMD offers a lot more RAM than Nvidia for much less money. Of course, AMD uses the slower GDDR6 RAM with 320 GB / s of memory bandwidth, compared to NvidiaS ‘448 GB / S GDDR7. But in practice, having in fact a greater memory pool is more useful when you are dealing with massive textures and 3D models in modern games. So, if you are looking for the best game for the male less than $ 400, the 16 GB Radeon RX 9060 XT is undoubtedly a winner.

What is the Radeon RX 9060 Ti?

The least powerful member of the Radeon RX 9000 family of AMD (so far), the RX 9060 XT is essentially the card you will get if you cannot spend more than $ 500 on a GPU. Remember that video cards tend to jump in cost once they have really hit stores, depending on the availability and whims of retailers. The RX 9060 XT Sports 32 DNA 4 Calculation Units, 32 RT accelerators and 64 IA accelerators. It can reach up to 3.1 GHz of speeds with its boost clock and consumes up to 180 W of power. In comparison, the PDSF RX 9070 of $ 549 has 56 calculation units, while the RX 9070 XT of $ 599 has eight others.

AMD launches this GPU to replace the RX 7600 XTwhich launched $ 329 last year. This card also had 16 GB of VRAM, but it had a slower 288 GB bandwriter. While the 7600 XT was more focused on entry -level games 1440p, the material improvements of the 9060 XT make it much more capable. AMD says it is 46% faster than the 7600 XT on more than 40 games, and in my tests, this figure checks.

For this review, I tested the GPA 9060 XT GPU of Gigabyte, which has three coolant fans pointed out on a typical copper heat sink. There is no fancy steam cooling room or extravagant materials on the map, but in this price range, I did not expect much.

What is good in the Radeon RX 9060 Ti?

Through games and references, the 9060 XT has timed about where I expected: significantly slower than the RX 9070, and is on the page or slightly slower than the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti. In the 3DMARK Steel Nomad reference, the 9060 XT scored 200 points more than this Nvidia card, and it was also 90 points at Timespy Extreme. But Nvidia had an advance of 1,000 points in the Speedway reference and it was more than 2,000 points in advance in the Luxmark HDR 4 test.

Despite these figures, I am always impressed that the 9060 XT can stay in the same league as RTX 5060 Ti of Nvidia while costing much less. The performance of the AMD rays tracing have also improved a little compared to its previous generations, marking 45% more quickly in the Royal 3Dmark Port reference. Nvidia always has her head in the layout of the rays in the games, especially with the one-two punch of the DLSS 4 AI scaling and the multi-trames generation. NVIDIA RTX 5000 cards can produce up to three interpolated frames for each frame rendered native, while AMD is still stuck with a single additional image with its FSR 3 and 4 (Fidelity Super Resolution 4).

The Radeon RX 9060 XT was able to run Cyberpunk 2077 In 1440p rays tracing from the “overdrive” mode to a respectable 80 IPS, while RTX 5060 TI of Nvidia reached 136 IPS thanks to the multi-trames generation. However, there is a lot of room for maneuver to launch more frames: to switch to 1080p made me 120 IPS, and I saw 90 IPS while using the “ultra” preset of the least demanding stripes in 1440p. In terms of raw performance, without any scaling fantasy, the 9060 XT hit 114 IPS in 1080p and 90 IPS in 1440p.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT did not work very hot during my tests, but it makes sense because it is purely focused on the games of 1080p and 1440p, during the Nomad stress test in 3dmark steel, which repeats the reference 20 times of succession, the card only exceeds 54 Celsius. I used to see video cards reaching more than 70 ° C under load, so the 9060 XT was a nice surprise. On the turn, it is at 42 Celsius. It is higher than cards with cooling of the steam room, but it is almost average for cards in this price range. I did not hear any boring fan noise under the load, because he barely broke.

What is bad in the Radeon RX 9060 XT?

There is not much to complain about the RADEON RX 9060 XT, as long as you do not expect a GPU for less than $ 400. However, it would be good to see the support of the new increase in AMD AI FSR 4 spanning more quickly. When the RX 9070 XT was launched, the functionality was only available in a handful of games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, And now it is supported more than 60 games. This still represents about half of the games that the DLSS 4 supports of Nvidia (which so far include more than 125 titles).

On the RX 9060 XT, the FSR 4 user experience is still not as simple as activating DLSS on Nvidia cards. I had to activate it manually in the AMD adrenaline software, then return it to Call of Duty: Warzone To activate it. On the right side, I saw an average of 254 IPS by playing a match in 1440p with extreme graphic parameters, FSR 4 and the generation of frame turned. With the generation of activated framework, but no FSR 4, the performance fell to 174 IPS. And if I removed these two features, it fell to 110 IPS. Obviously, FSR 4 and Frame Gen helps a little, I just want it to be in more games.

Should you buy the Radeon RX 9060 XT?

Assuming that retailers do not go wild by surprising the RX 9060 XT raft, it is a solid option if you are looking for an affordable GPU dedicated to the 1080p and 1440p gameplay. At $ 350, the 9060 XT is much lower than the retail price of $ 429 from the RTX 5060 TI, and certainly much cheaper than the models sold for more than $ 500.

To reach a price of $ 300, AMD also unveiled an RX 9060 Ti with 8 GB of RAM. But honestly, I would recommend to avoid this entirely unless you played old games in 1080p. It is worth spending a little more so that you can play more recent games with fewer headaches, and it is practically a requirement if you want to play in 1440p.

Conclude

The Radeon RX 9060 XT is a reminder of a world where we did not have to pay more than $ 400 to obtain a capable GPU. We already know that more than 80% of PC players play 1440p or lower resolutions, according to Steam data. So, for the vast majority of players – those who do not use monitors with high cooling rates and 4K + resolutions – that’s all you really need.