AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review: the best value graphics card for $350
Almost as fast as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti for $80 less
🏆 Review score: 4.5 out of 5
🏅 Editor’s Choice Award
Pros
✅ 🏃🏻♂️ Performance almost equal to the more expensive $429 Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti
✅ 🎮 4K 30fps playable with FSR upscaling
✅ 🕹️ 4K 60fps capable with FSR and Frame Generation
✅ 👾 Fantastic 1440p 90-120fps performance
✅ 🪞 Ray Tracing lighting quality and reflections look great most of the time
Cons
❌ 📉 FSR 4 upscaling noticeably lowers fps from FSR 3
❌ 🪩 Nvidia RTX produces more convincing reflections overall
❌ ⚠️ Early review sample issues, updates coming soon
The Shortcut Review
The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT is the best value graphics card you can buy for $349 ~ if you can find it at that price. This GPU might appear to be only a half-AMD Radeon RX 9070 based on its on-paper specs, but, in our tests, the RX 9060 XT delivers high-performance graphics for its entry-level price. That means fantastic 1440p ultra gameplay at 90-120fps. 4K ultra gaming is also playable at 30-45fps with just FSR enabled, and I can simply switch on Frame Generation to squeeze out 4K 60fps.
The $349 AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT also impressively serves up benchmark numbers just behind the $429 Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti. Just make sure to buy the 16GB version of the RX 9060 XT, even if the 8GB variant seems tempting for $50 cheaper at $299. Now the ultimate question is whether you can find this GPU for $349 after the string of price increases on the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 – not to mention all of Nvidia’s RTX 50-series graphics cards.
Full Review
📋 Look past the specs. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT might look like half an AMD RX 9070 on paper, but it delivers high performance for a mid-range price. For $349, this GPU easily gives you 90- 120fps performance if you’re playing on a 1440p or QHD display with a range of titles like Helldivers 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Doom: The Dark Ages, and GTA V Enhanced. Playing these same games at 4K nets you a playable experience, averaging between 30 - 45fps with FSR 3/4 upscaling graphics to a balanced level. Sprinkling just a bit of frame generation will get you right up to 4K 60fps gaming or just below that frame rate.
📊 Middle of the Nvidia pack. That same $349 price puts the AMD RX 9060 XT right between the $429 Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti and $299 Nvidia RTX 5060, and that is precisely where its benchmark performance places it. The AMD RX 9060 XT keeps up surprisingly well with the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti, especially in Cyberpunk 2077. The AMD RX 960 XT falters quite a bit in Black Myth: Wukong, but it’s only 10fps behind in Forza Horizon 5.
🤔 16GB or 8GB? Just like the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti, there are two versions of the AMD RX 9060 XT: one with 16GB of VRAM and the other with 8GB of VRAM. Otherwise, both versions of this GPU are identical. Of course, the 8GB version is a little more affordable at $299 vs $349 for the 16GB version I’ve reviewed. In my testing, I found 8GB more than enough to play most games – even at 4K. But there are still exceptions like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which can’t run with a maximized texture pool with only 8GB of VRAM. Ultimately, get the AMD RX 9060 XT 16GB as it’ll ensure you can launch and play all your games.
🪞 Mostly great reflections. Make no mistake, AMD has made giant leaps in ray tracing performance this generation, but the RTX effects from an Nvidia GPU still look better. Reflections produced by the RTX 5060 Ti simply look more realistic, especially with wet roads. Comparatively, the AMD RX 9060 XT renders them to look like shiny splotches. The RX 9060 XT otherwise resolves realistically detailed reflections on glass, mirrors, and larger puddles of water.
🧠 Brain drain. Unfortunately, AI upscaling on this graphics card doesn’t nearly impress as much as the ray tracing quality. FSR 4’s new AI upscaling delivers noticeably lower frame rates than FSR 3. This is due to FSR 4 AI upscaling being a heavier lift task than FSR 3’s temporal anti-aliasing. The RX 9060 XT also only has 64 AI accelerators to power FSR 4’s new machine learning-based upscaling, which is half as many as the RX 9070’s 128 AI Accelerators, which already showed the limitations of FSR 4.
⚠️ Early review issues. It hasn’t been a completely smooth gaming experience with the AMD RX 9060 XT. My potentially faulty RX 9060 XT review sample caused Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Hogwarts Legacy to both crash on me. Hogwarts Legacy refused to start and instantly prompted an AMD’s Bug Report Tool warning message that the video driver timed out. COD: BO6 at least ran fine for me most of the time, and it only crashed once while running the built-in benchmark, which ran without issue on five other occasions.
✅ Proven numbers. Even with these issues, I was confident in publishing this scored review. AMD confirmed there were no anomalies in my benchmark numbers. So, I’m hoping this is an isolated issue due to very early drivers or a faulty sample. I’ll also update this review if my replacement review sample can resolve these issues.
Should you buy the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT?
Yes, if…
✅ You want a very capable mid-range graphics card for an entry-level $349 price
✅ You want playable 4K ultra games without frame generation
✅ You want 1440p ultra 90-120fps gaming
✅ You basically want an Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti for $349 instead of $429
No, if…
❌ You expect FSR 4 AI upscaling to deliver higher frame rates (get the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti instead)
❌ You want to see flawless reflections everywhere in your games (get the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti instead)
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.