AMD have rocked up to this year’s Computex tech conference with a handful of new Ryzen Threadripper CPUs (not interested) and confirmation of a long-rumoured graphics card, the Radeon RX 9060 XT (cautiously interested). It’s a true mid-ranger in the RTX 5060 Ti vein, and like its Nvidia rival, will launch with both 8GB and 16GB versions – the latter of which will cost $349, the lowest MSRP of any current-gen 16GB gaming GPU, upon its release in June.
Whether or not that pricing holds remains to be seen; AMD’s higher-end RX 9070 GPUs have been famously difficult to find at their advertised starting price, and while the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB was supposed to launch from $379, in practice you’d be lucky to find one below $420. Although, if everyone’s GPUs are inflated, then the cheapest one should still remain the cheapest? In theory?
Either way, there are other encouraging signs for the 16GB RX 9060 XT, even if its $299 8GB edition sounds like a bit of a non-starter. It’s the first of AMD’s mid-range cards, for example, to support PCIe 5.0 x16 bandwidth, meaning it will take better advantage of modern motherboard slots than previous Radeons (like the dud RX 7600). Performance-wise, AMD say it’s 6% faster on average than the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti at 1440p, though in a bit of graphs-bodging that Nvidia themselves would be proud of… that’s only the 8GB RTX 5060 Ti. Presumably the 16GB model puts up a better fight.
You do get the same FSR 4 upscaling compatibility as the RX 9070 family, though, so Nvidia’s DLSS 4 advantage might not weigh so heavily. The RX 9060 XT also happens to be launching into what feels like a period of all-time-low goodwill towards the green team, who are currently mired in accusations of giving preferential access to friendly media and attempting to leverage undue pressure on independent review processes.
That won’t make the RX 9060 XT a better graphics card, obviously. But more VRAM, upgraded PCIe tech, and a lower price just might. We’ll find out next month, and I’ll update this story with UK pricing if I can get it.
