AMD RX 9060 XT 16GB Review ft. ASUS

1. Introduction2. Meet the ASUS RX 9060 XT Prime 16GB3. Testing Methodology4. Alan Wake II5. Black Myth: Wukong6. Cyberpunk 20777. Dragon Age: The Veilguard8. Final Fantasy XVI9. Ghost of Tsushima10. Horizon Forbidden West11. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II12. A Plague Tale: Requiem13. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart14. Senua's Saga: Hellblade 215. Starfield16. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)17. Cost Per Frame Analysis18. Ray Tracing: Alan Wake II19. Ray Tracing: Black Myth: Wukong20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle22. Ray Tracing: Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart23. Ray Tracing: Returnal24. Ray Tracing: Shadow of the Tomb Raider25. Ray Tracing: Star Wars Outlaws26. Ray Tracing Performance Summary27. AI & Productivity Benchmarks28. Clock Speed29. GPU Temperatures30. Memory Temperatures31. Acoustics32. Power Draw: 1080p33. Power Draw: 1440p34. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)35. Performance per Watt: 1080p36. Performance per Watt: 1440p37. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)38. Total System Power Draw39. Closing Thoughts40. View All Pages

Following on from the RX 9070 and 9070 XT that hit the market earlier this year, AMD's RDNA 4 architecture is now going mainstream with the release of the RX 9060 XT. Just like the RTX 5060 Ti, this GPU is available in both 8 and 16GB variants, but it is the latter we are focused on today. With an MSRP of £315/$349, it is the only current-gen GPU to offer more than 12GB VRAM for less than £400, while it's still cheaper than even Nvidia's 5060 Ti 8GB. Interested? Let's take a closer look…

Just like the RX 9070 and 9070 XT, there's no reference (or MBA) card for the RX 9060 XT 16GB, and instead AMD sampled us with the ASUS Prime model. This card does come factory overclocked, but as regular readers will know, we manually test all GPUs at reference specifications for these day one reviews, so we can ensure that all testing is ‘apples to apples.'

Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:48 9060 XT recap, specs
01:49 Test setup
02:46 Alan Wake 2
03:16 Black Myth: Wukong
03:43 Cyberpunk 2077
04:15 Dragon Age: The Veilguard
04:48 Final Fantasy XVI
05:10 Ghost of Tsushima
05:37 Horizon Forbidden West
06:12 Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
06:45 Plague Tale: Requiem
07:04 Ratchet and Clank
07:40 Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2
08:08 Starfield
08:49 Performance summary
10:31 Cost per frame analysis
11:36 Ray tracing benchmarks
14:38 FSR 4
16:02 Meet the ASUS Prime model
16:46 Clocks, thermals, acoustics
17:52 Power draw + efficiency
19:36 Closing thoughts

 

	RX 9070 XT	RX 9070	RX 9060 XT	RX 7600 XT	RX 7600
Architecture	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 4	RDNA 3	RDNA 3
Manufacturing Process	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	TSMC N4	6 nm	6 nm
Transistor Count	53.9 billion	53.9 billion	29.7 billion	13.3 billion	13.3 billion
Die Size	357 mm²	357 mm²	199 mm²	204 mm²	204 mm²
Compute Units	64	56	32	32	32
Ray Accelerators	64	56	32	32	32
Stream Processors	4096	3584	2048	2048	2048
Game GPU Clock	2400 MHz	2070 MHz	2530 MHz	2470 MHz	2250 MHz
Boost GPU Clock	Up to 2970 MHz	Up to 2520 MHz	Up to 3130 MHz	Up to 2755 MHz	Up to 2625 MHz
ROPs	128	128	64	64	64
AMD Infinity Cache	64MB	64MB	32MB	32MB	32MB
Memory	16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	8/16GB GDDR6	16GB GDDR6	8GB GDDR6
Memory Data Rate	20 Gbps	20 Gbps	20 Gbps	18Gbps	18Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	645 GB/s	645 GB/s	322 GB/s	288 GB/s	288 GB/s
Memory Interface	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit	128-bit
Board Power	304W	220W	160W	190W	165W

First, let's take a quick look at the specs. The RX 9060 XT is built on the new Navi 44 die, measuring just 199mm², and it's worth pointing out this is a monolithic chip, so AMD is not using a chiplet-based design as per RDNA 3. In total, Navi 44 silicon packs in 29.7 billion transistors.

As a full implementation of Navi 44, the RX 9060 XT packs in 32 Compute Units, and each CU houses 64 Stream Processors, for a total of 2048 shaders. There's also 32 Ray Accelerators – one per CU – and 64 ROPs.

As for clock speed, the RX 9060 XT has the highest speeds of any RDNA 4 GPU so far, given it sports a rated game clock of 2530MHz and a boost clock of up to 3130MHz.

The memory configuration offers either 8 or 16GB of GDDR6 memory clocked at 20Gbps, operating over a 128-bit memory interface, for total memory bandwidth of 322 GB/s. 32MB of Infinity Cache is also present.

Power draw for the RX 9060 XT is rated at 160W Total Board Power (TBP), but we are using our updated GPU power testing methodology in this review, so read on for our most detailed power and efficiency testing yet.

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