Inside the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT: Will strong specs and a US$299 price unsettle NVIDIA’s RTX 5060?

AMD has finally unveiled its next not-so-secret RDNA 4-powered Radeon RX 9000 series GPU at Computex 2025 – the Radeon RX 9060 XT. Positioned neatly to capture the hearts and wallets of gamers looking for potent mid-range graphics performance, the GPU is aimed squarely at challenging NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (remember, the RTX 5060 was only launched earlier this week). Yet, the true question is whether this new silicon and AMD’s pricing strategy is enough to sway the market, particularly in Singapore, where us gamers weigh value as carefully as outright performance.

One of the notable aspects of the Radeon RX 9060 XT is its underlying architecture. For the first time, AMD moves its mainstream GPU segment onto the Navi 44 silicon and a fully-fledged PCIe 5.0 x16 interface. Built on TSMC’s refined N4P 4nm FinFET process, Navi 44 is not just a scaled-down version of Navi 48. Instead, AMD has crafted a smaller, yet densely packed chip designed to optimise transistor count and power efficiency. Indeed, Navi 44 packs a staggering 29.7 billion transistors into a 199 mm² die, effectively doubling the transistor density over the previous generation’s Navi 33. This means that despite a modest 2% reduction in die size from Navi 33, AMD has managed to increase transistor count by 2.2 times.

On the specifications front, the Radeon RX 9060 XT, on the surface at least, closely mirror its predecessor, the Radeon RX 7600 XT – with both boasting 32 Compute Units (CUs) and 2,048 Stream Processors (SPs). But don't let the identical numbers fool you; AMD has made substantial improvements within each CU through its RDNA 4 architecture, which significantly boosts performance even without raw increases in core counts. The clock speeds alone showcase this advancement, with the RX 9060 XT pushing boost clocks to 3,130MHz – or 14% higher than the RX 7600 XT. According to AMD, This directly translates into a roughly 13% uplift in theoretical FP32 compute performance, which should considerably elevate real-world gaming capabilities.

AMD has also aggressively enhanced the GPU’s ray tracing and AI capabilities. With 32 third-generation Ray Tracing cores on board, AMD has boldly claimed twice the throughput compared to second-generation cores in the RX 7600 XT. This is key for modern GPUs as ray tracing – a once niche graphical luxury – is becoming increasingly commonplace, especially as game developers integrate more sophisticated visual effects into mainstream games. The RX 9060 XT’s performance is bolstered by 64 second-generation AI accelerators, providing up to 821 TOPS for AI rendering and FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).

Speaking of FSR, AMD’s GPU arrives just as Team Red gears up for the broader adoption of FidelityFX Super Resolution 4 (FSR 4), now expanding support to over 60 games by launch. The real highlight, however, is the upcoming FSR Redstone technology, which leverages machine learning to improve frame rates and graphical fidelity further. Features such as neural radiance caching and machine learning frame generation promise a significant jump in both visual fidelity and performance efficiency, and is AMD’s answer to NVIDIA’s DLSS 4 ray reconstruction, neural shaders and frame generation – potentially narrowing the gap with Team Green’s DLSS technology. FSR Redstone will, naturally, be available for the RX 9070 XT graphics cards too.

Performance benchmarks provided by AMD suggest the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB variant edges out NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 8GB by around 6% across 40 different games tested at 1440p Ultra settings. However, one must scrutinise AMD’s in-house benchmarks here – comparing a 16GB card against an 8GB variant from NVIDIA might skew results slightly, leaving us questioning how it truly stacks up against the 16GB variant of the RTX 5060 Ti because it’s really odd AMD didn’t compare apple-to-apple this time. We’ll find out once review embargo lifts on 4 June.

That said, AMD’s approach to memory offerings is commendable by providing both 8GB and 16GB configurations for the RX 9060 XT. Despite what many of us think (yours included), 8GB is still key for price-sensitive markets where 1080p is still the dominant resolution. But the 16GB variant is certainly very attractive from a value perspective, where its SRP of US$349 (about S$470) seems competitively priced, especially when pitted directly against NVIDIA’s 8GB RTX 5060 Ti at US$379 (approximately S$510). This not only positions the RX 9060 XT as the more enticing option but also just reinforces how aggressive AMD is with their pricing strategy this generation.

Power efficiency has also been a clear focus for AMD, with the Radeon RX 9060 XT’s Total Board Power (TBP) rating ranging between 150W and 182W, significantly improved from the 190W TBP of the RX 7600 XT. AMD has ensured that a single 8-pin PCIe connector suffices, making it an easy upgrade path for gamers with modest power supplies. The RX 9060 XT, like its faster RX  9070 XT sibling, comes with the newer DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b outputs.

With the Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU, AMD is not only tackling NVIDIA’s mid-range offerings but also setting a new benchmark for affordability and performance in the segment – and for what it’s worth, we have to get used to what it even means for a graphics card to be considered “affordable” these days. Whether the company can decisively win over gamers in a fiercely contested segment this generation remains to be seen (don’t forget Intel has a pretty good proposition too), but on paper at least, AMD has delivered a promising package worthy of serious consideration.

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU will launch on 5 June, 2025

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