We tested all of the graphics cards used in this article on an MSI X870E Carbon WiFi motherboard, equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU and 32GB of G.SKILL DDR5 RAM clocked at 6,000MHz. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" defaults, then we disabled any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use and ensured that Resizable BAR support was enabled. We also dialed in the memory clock to its optimal settings using its EXPO profile, formatted the solid state drive and then installed and fully updated Windows 11 Professional. When the Windows installation was complete, we installed all of the drivers, applications and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.
Relevant Software: Windows 11 Pro 24H2 AMD Radeon v24.12.1 NVIDIA Drivers v575.94 / v576.52
Benchmarks Used:
MLPerf Client
Geekbench AI
Procyon AI Text Generation
Procyon AI Stable Diffusion XL
Blender v4.3
Blackmagic RAW Speed Test v4.3.1
V-Ray
UL 3DMark UL VRMark
Unigine Superposition
Games Tested:
Assassin's Creed Mirage
Black Myth Wukong
Homeworld 3
Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered
Cyberpunk 2077
The Talos Principle II
F1 24
MLPerf Client Benchmarks
The MLPerf Client benchmark was designed by MLCommons to evaluate machine learning inference tasks on PCs. It focuses on client form factors and aims to measure how well different hardware and software configurations handle four different AI workloads using a single model. It supports DirectML via ONNX Runtime for a wide range of hardware, but Intel also gets a specialized OpenVINO path for now. Participants in MLCommons are also able to optimize the models for their hardware, but must meet strict guidelines for accuracy.
The MLPerf Client benchmark shows the GeForce RTX 5060 offering a relatively snappy time to first token, but it drops down a few rungs in terms of throughput and ultimately lands right on top of the Radeon RX 9060 XT.
Geekbench AI Testing
Geekbench AI is a cross-platform benchmark tool designed to evaluate the performance of AI workloads on a wide range devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. It measures the performance of CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs (Neural Processing Units) across different operating systems like Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux with an array of machine learning tasks.
The GeForce RTX 5060 and Radeon RX 9060 XT trade blows in Geekbench AI. The GeForce offers slightly better half precision performance with Geekbench AI's workloads, but the Radeon pulls ahead in the full precision and quantized tests.
UL Procyon AI Text Generation Benchmarks
The Procyon AI Text Generation Benchmark is a tool developed by UL Solutions to evaluate the performance of large language models (LLMs) on Windows PCs. It features real-world use cases and uses seven prompts with both Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and non-RAG queries. It tests various AI models like Phi-3.5-mini, Mistral-7B, Llama-3.1-8B, and Llama-2-13B. These tests were run using ONNX with DirectML, not TensorRT, which is optimal for NVIDIA's RTX series discrete GPUs, but unavailable in this test at this time with this particular test.
The GeForce RTX 5060 performs relatively well in the Procyon AI text generation benchmark, besting the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti and mainstream Radeons, and landing about in the middle of the pack. We should point out, however, that we're not reporting a score in the Llama 2 portion of this benchmark because the NVIDIA cards with 8GB frame buffers fail the test and don't output a result.
UL Procyon Stable Diffusion XL AI Image Generation
The Procyon AI Image Generation Benchmark measures inference performance for image generation tasks. It includes several tests, with the Stable Diffusion XL (FP16) test we used here being the most demanding. The test is designed to evaluate a wide range of hardware from low power NPUs to high-end discrete GPUs and it can be configured to use different inference engines like NVIDIA TensorRT, Intel OpenVINO, and ONNX with DirectML. Unfortunately, the TensorRT engine hasn’t been updated for Blackwell just yet, but we tested it with ONNX to provide a point of reference versus the RTX 40 series cards.
The GeForce RTX 5060 doesn't quite catch the RTX 4060 Ti in Procyon's Stable Diffusion image generation benchmark, but it has no trouble dispatching the RTX 4060 and outruns the Radeon RX 9060 XT as well.
Blender v4.3 GPU Rendering Benchmarks
Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, and animation, through simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, and even video editing or game creation. The developers offer a standalone benchmark tool that will track performance while rendering a handful of models. We used all three of the default models for these tests...
The GeForce RTX 5060 lands about in the middle of the pack in the Blender benchmark too. Once again we see the card outrunning its previous-gen predecessor, and it crushes the Radeon RX 9060 XT, but it can't quite catch the GeForce RTX 4060 Ti here.
V-Ray Rendering
The V-Ray Benchmark is a free tool that measures rendering performance on CPUs, NVIDIA GPUs, or a combination of both. The GPU benchmark in particular features a complex scene designed to evaluate the capabilities of both the RTX and CUDA-based V-Ray 6 render engines.
The updated RT cores in the GeForce RTX 5060's Blackwell architecture give it a clear edge over the mainstream GeForce RTX 40 series cards in the V-Ray benchmark. It can't catch the RTX 4070 Ti, but easily leaves the RTX 4060 Ti and 4060 in its wake.
Blackmagic RAW Speed Test Results
The Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that determines the speed of decoding full-resolution Blackmagic RAW video frames. The tool can be used to evaluate performance at various resolutions and bitrates on the CPU or using OpenCL or CUDA on a GPU. We're reporting four results here, at 8K and 4K resolutions, but at differing bitrates and compression levels.
At both resolutions and compression levels, the GeForce RTX 5060 punches above its weight class. For budding creators looking to upgrade an existing build or put together a budget video editing rig, the newer, more capable media engine in Blackwell is a definite plus.
