AMD RX 9060XT: Best Budget GPU for High-Performance Gaming

Unlike its bigger brother GPU, which is aimed at enthusiasts and 4K gaming, the RX 9060XT is a solid mid-ranger with excellent 1080p and strong 1440p performance. AMD offers the RX 9060XT in both 8 GB and 16 GB flavors, but given the high VRAM demands of the latest games like 'Avatar Frontiers of Pandora,' 'The Last of Us Part 1,' and various other titles, getting a 16GB version is the obvious choice. That is, unless you're running a 1080p setup and don't care for high-quality textures, ray tracing, or ultra settings.

The MSRP of GPUs is a sensitive topic, as in the recent past, they have been more like rough guidelines than actual maximum retail prices. That being said, at the time of writing, the RX 9060XT 16GB is available for purchase and can regularly be found around its MSRP of $350 for in-store pick-up at Micro Center, and $380-$390 on Amazon and Newegg.

With their 18-game average, Hardware Unboxed discovered that the 9060XT manages an impressive $5 per frame at 1440p at MSRP, the lowest of any card. Meanwhile, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 8GB, RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, and RTX 5060 Ti 16GB average $5.45, $6.13, and $6.06 per frame, respectively. Intel's ARC B580 is not included in this analysis, as it is unavailable at MSRP and faces compatibility issues in some games.

While AMD has traditionally trailed behind Nvidia significantly in ray tracing performance, the new RDNA 4 architecture marks a giant leap forward. The RX 9060XT comes with 32 second-gen ray accelerators and 64 AI accelerators. According to Tom's Hardware, in a four-game average at 1440p with RT enabled, the 9060 XT manages an impressive average of 46.7 fps — just shy of the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB's 51.5 fps. Even so, once MSRP is factored in, the AMD GPU comes out on top with a stronger $7.49 per ray-traced frame. Meanwhile, the 5060 Ti 16GB manages a $8.35 per frame, making it 11.5% more expensive than the Radeon graphics card.