AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB rasterization gaming performance – AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB review: plenty of performance with 16GB – Page 4

We divide gaming performance into two categories: traditional rasterization games and ray-tracing games. We benchmark each game using four different test settings: 1080p medium, 1080p ultra, 1440p ultra, and 4K ultra. For the RX 9060 XT 16GB, the most important results will be 1080p ultra and 1440p ultra — which also serve as proxies for 4K with performance mode and quality mode upscaling, respectively.

We’ll start with the rasterization suite of 14 games, as that’s arguably still the most useful measurement of gaming performance. Plenty of games that have ray tracing support end up running so poorly that it’s more of a feature checkbox than something useful. We’ll provide limited to no commentary on most of the individual game charts, letting the numbers speak for themselves. The geomean charts will be the main focus, since those provide the big picture overview of how the RX 9060 XT 16GB competes against the other GPUs.

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The RX 9060 XT 16GB lands in the upper-middle portion of our charts, but we have 17 GPUs in the charts, many of which cost significantly more than the 9060 XT. They’re there to provide context, showing what the “step up” cards can do if you’re willing to spend a bit more money. Let’s talk about some of the specific matchups in more detail. On a price basis, the closest competition for the RX 9060 XT 16GB perhaps comes from Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti 8GB — we say “perhaps” because the prices are still fluctuating a bit. Right now, AMD’s new GPU costs $389 while Nvidia’s 8GB card costs $379, so they’re basically tied on cost.

In terms of performance, Nvidia holds a very slight 0.9% lead at 1080p medium, and a 1.7% lead at ultra settings. That’s basically tied, though individual games can and do show a much wider spread. Bumping up to 1440p ultra, AMD’s GPU takes a 4.2% overall lead, which is still relatively close… and then we get to 4K ultra. The gap increases to 50.9% in favor of AMD at 4K, with a few massive failures on Nvidia’s part — like Stalker 2 running at 1.3 FPS compared to 25 FPS.

Naturally, AMD’s performance lead over the vanilla RTX 5060 looks quite a bit better, though the price difference warrants consideration. $90 extra means a 30% increase in the price of the GPU, and in general, you won’t get a corresponding improvement in performance. The 9060 XT 16GB leads by 13–14 percent at 1080p, but that jumps to a 28% lead at 1440p ultra, and finally a 70% lead at 4K ultra. Again, several games almost completely fail to run on Nvidia’s 8GB card. The RX 9060 XT 16GB also ends up looking like a direct replacement for the previous generation RX 7700 XT. It’s slightly faster at 1080p and slightly slower at 1440p and 4K. Considering the reduction in power use, the additional features, and the lower price, those are all steps in the right direction.

One final point of comparison is the Intel Arc B580. Ostensibly a $249 card, right now the lowest prices are still hovering in the $310–$380 range. As a $250 card, Intel would offer a lot of value and warrant consideration. As a $380 card, it’s a completely different story. AMD’s RX 9060 XT 16GB beats the Arc B580 senseless. There are games where the margins are closer, but overall AMD delivers 40–43% higher performance at 1080, 35% more performance at 1440p, and ‘only’ 28% better performance at 4K. The 14 individual rasterization game performance charts are below, with limited commentary.