Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU Review: AMD's RTX 5060 Rival Debuts
| AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT: 16GB MSRP $349, 8GB $299 AMD is expanding its line-up of RDNA 4 based GPUs with the affordably priced Radeon RX 9060 XT, which targets budget conscious, 1080p gamers.
|
|||
|
|
||
After unveiling the card at Computex a couple of weeks back, AMD is expanding its line-up of RDNA 4 based GPUs today, with the Radeon RX 9060 XT. At this moment in time, the Radeon RX 9060 XT, in its various flavors, will be the most affordable Radeon RX 9000 series graphics card in AMD’s line-up, though further scaled-down, lower-priced options are most assuredly incoming at some point in the future. Like the more powerful Radeon RX 9070-series cards which launched a few months back, the Radeon RX 9060 XT’s Navi 44 GPU packs the same features set and support for AMD’s latest software. We’ve got a 16GB variant on hand from Gigabyte for testing purposes and will detail its performance on the pages ahead. But first, let’s check out some specs and get some particulars out of the way...
Radeon RX 9060 XT Specifications
If you take a look at the spec table above, you’ll see that the Radeon RX 9060 XT’s GPU is manufactured on TSMC’s N4 process node, and that it is comprised of roughly 29.7B transistors, with a die size of 199mm2. It features 32 Compute Units, with a total of 2,048 Stream Processors, with 32 Ray Accelerators, and 64 AI Accelerators. There’s also 32MB of 3rd Gen Infinity Cache on board, along with 64 ROPs, and the GPU connects to GDDR6 memory operating at an effective 20Gbps over a 128-bit interface (320GB/s peak bandwidth). Total board power varies depending on the particular model, but ranges from 150-180 watts.
The Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU has essentially half of the resources of the Radeon RX 9070 XT. That said, AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT still supports all of the latest features inherent to the RDNA 4 architecture, like FSR 4 and an updated media engine. For a deep dive into what RDNA 4 is all about, you’ll want to check this article out.
There are multiple variants of the Radeon RX 9060 XT on the way. AMD won’t be selling a reference card, however, and is leaving this launch to its board partners. There will 16GB and 8GB flavors of the 9060 XT, and standard and hot-clocked versions. The card we’ll be testing here today is 16GB model that does offer higher clocks than AMD’s base specifications, but not quite as high as the XFX card shown in the table above. That means our Radeon RX 9060 XT benchmark scores may be a little higher than some other reviews featuring non-overclocked cards. We’ll show you exactly how high our card clocked a little later.
Gigabyte's Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC
The specific card we tested is the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC. As mentioned, it is a 16GB card and will likely fall somewhere in the upper third of Radeon RX 9060 XT cards about to hit store shelves. The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC features a triple fan, partial pass-through cooler and some RGB lighting, in a modest two-slot, relatively low-profile form factor.
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC measures 281mm x 118mm x 40mm – it’s barely taller than its case bracket and will not encroach on a third slot like wider “2.5 slot” graphics cards. Underneath its textured fan shroud, the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC is packing triple-fans and a dense heatsinks array with copper base plate, linked together via multiple copper heat pipes. Gigabyte also notes that the cooler uses a non-fluid, highly conductive thermal gel, for the GPU, memory and MOSFETs. We’re not sure exactly how this thermal interface material compares to more common thermal paste and pads, but this card certainly runs very cool, as you’ll see a little later. With such a large heatsink array and tiple fans, on a relatively low-power GPU, thermals will not be an issue.
The Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC also features a bit of RGB lighting on the top of the card. The Gigabyte logo on the top-edge is lit by a small LED strip that resides under logo. That piece of the shroud, however, can slide by about an inch to reveal the small light-strip on its own. The lighting itself can be controlled by Gigabyte’s Control Center software, but out of the box it will automatically cycle though the color wheel.
Outputs on the Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC consist of a pair of DisplayPort 2.1a ports and a single HDMI 2.1b port. Powering the card requires only a single, 8-pin PCI Express power connector, though some other Radeon RX 9060 XT cards may feature an additional connector as well.
And with all of that said, let's get to some benchmarks. AI and some creator workloads are up first...
