Introduction

AMD today launched the Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics card, the third entry from their latest Radeon RX 9000-series cards powered by the RDNA 4 graphics architecture. We have with us the ASUS Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB Prime OC, a value oriented custom design rendition of this contender for the mainstream. As with the RTX 5060-series, the RX 9060 XT is being launched in two memory variants, 8 GB and 16 GB, both of which are available from tomorrow. The 8 GB variant starts at a MSRP of $300, with the 16 GB variant at $350. The RX 9060 XT is being served up to the sizable majority of gamers who still play at 1080p, but also offers some degree of future-proofing for 1440p, taking advantage of performance enhancing features such as the new FSR 4. With this generation, AMD has placed a big focus on improving the ray tracing and AI acceleration performance of its GPUs, given that ray tracing is now pervasive among AAA game titles, and AI acceleration not just enables new performance enhancements such improved image quality, but also paves the way for edge AI use-cases.



The Radeon RX 9060 XT debuts the new 4 nm Navi 44 silicon. This is the second chip based on the RDNA 4 architecture, and is built on the TSMC N4P foundry node. It logically succeeds the Navi 33 chip powering the Radeon RX 7600 from the previous generation, although AMD has made a conscious effort to make its mid-range 60-segment SKUs not just capable of maxed out 1080p pure raster performance, but also 1080p with ray tracing. The change in nomenclature with the RX 9000 series helps consumers more accurately compare the various SKUs to their NVIDIA competitors. The RX 9060 XT 8 GB at $300 would compete with the GeForce RTX 5060, while the RX 9060 XT 16 GB at $350 undercuts the RTX 5060 Ti 8 GB at $380, offering some future-proofing from its memory size.

The Navi 44 on paper is exactly half the chip when compared against the Navi 48 powering the RX 9070 series. It comes with 32 RDNA 4 compute units, which work out to 2,048 stream processors, 64 AI accelerators, 32 RT accelerators, 128 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. Its memory interface is 128-bit wide, driving 8 GB or 16 GB of 20 Gbps GDDR6 memory, for 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is backed by 32 MB of on-die Infinity Cache. AMD has fallen behind NVIDIA on memory technology, which implements 28 Gbps GDDR7 on even its $300 RTX 5060, but the company is unfazed, and claims that the various memory management improvements introduced with RDNA 4 should cover for the modest growth in memory bandwidth over the previous generation.

The RDNA 4 graphics architecture is purpose built for the most performance per mm² die-area. The company claims a significant increase in performance-per-CU over the previous RDNA 3 architecture. It also claims a 100% increase in ray tracing performance over RDNA 3, which should reduce the performance cost of ray tracing. There is a similar leap in AI acceleration throughput, now close to 800 AI TOPS, paving the way for FSR 4, the biggest upgrade to the FSR suite of performance enhancements. FSR 4 uses a new AI ML-based upscaler that offers superior image quality at every performance preset.

FSR 4 is perhaps the biggest upgrade to AMD's in-house performance enhancement suite since its conception. It introduces a new AI ML-based upscaler that takes advantage of the generationally increased AI acceleration performance of RDNA 4 GPUs. The AI ML-based upscaler is significantly more accurate than the shader-based model driving previous generations of FSR, improving image-quality at every performance preset of FSR. FSR 4 is as easy to implement as the original FSR, which should mean practically every FSR-enabled title should get the technology soon.

The ASUS Radeon RX 9060 XT Prime OC is designed by the company to be offered close to the AMD baseline price of $350 for the 16 GB RX 9060 XT. It comes with a fairly large dual-slot, triple-fan cooling solution. The card is longer than the PCB underneath, which is barely two-thirds its length. This allows for much of the airflow from the third fan to flow through the heatsink, and out the back from a cutout in the backplate. Visually, the card covers just the basics, with a neutral, no-frills design. The card offers factory-overclocked speeds of 2741 MHz Game Clock, compared to 2530 MHz reference. This card is targeted at those who want an RX 9060 XT to install and forget about. ASUS is pricing the card slightly above the AMD baseline price, at $360.