AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB Review: Not Good

[Steve]

AMD's Radeon 9060 XT offers solid performance with 16GB of VRAM (but not with half that amount), but a confusing dual-version launch – mirroring Nvidia's past missteps – raises serious concerns for gamers in 2025.

Read the full article here.

AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 8GB Review: Not Good

 

[Loadedaxe]

I really don’t think AMD is going to “push the industry ahead” no matter what they do. They’re not out here trying to force Nvidia to start putting 16GB of VRAM in their cards. Truth is, both companies have the same mindset. Let’s be real....Jensen and Lisa are family. You think they’re battling it out? More like planning the next fiscal year together over holiday dinner.

Currently, the only cards are available are 8GB, as of this morning, and they are $450+

It is all a shame, but as we always say, there is next gen, I guess we wait!

 

[Liranan]

40? Both the 5060 8GB and 9060 8GB Scam Editions deserve a score of -40, they're that bad. Anyone who wants an 8GB card should get an RX580 or 1080/5700, not these overpriced wastes of silicon.

 

[Puiu]

What? an 8GB GPU is not good in 2025? I'm shocked I tell you! SHOCKED!

 

[torvuswalds]

I am sure you did it, and have reasons not to include it in the review, but alot of gamers still play at 1080p, what were those results? You included them for the 5060 8GB and 5060Ti 8GB why not this one?
EDIT: Going back to the 5060 8GB review at 1440P There are some titles where this does better, but we wouldn't know if we didn't compare it to a previous article, where are the charts?

 

[Vanderlinde]

8GB with all sorts of mimics and knobs turned on is more for 1080p. Your testing at WQHD res and expecting that things go smooth. I suspect that these 8GB cards are only for E-sports / internet cafe's that don't need the highest amount of VRAM but simply push FPS with no visual extra's if that makes any sense.

As Techpowerup already tested, yes you can game with it. But it's at it's toes at this point if you turn features like RT, FSR and such on. On top of that maxing out the full 8GB will kind of diminish the effects of the infinity cache that is supposed to tackle a great amount of bandwidth issues knowing the small VRAM Bus it carries.

 

[torvuswalds]

8GB with all sorts of mimics and knobs turned on is more for 1080p. Your testing at WQHD res and expecting that things go smooth. I suspect that these 8GB cards are only for E-sports / internet cafe's that don't need the highest amount of VRAM but simply push FPS with no visual extra's if that makes any sense.

As Techpowerup already tested, yes you can game with it. But it's at it's toes at this point if you turn features like RT, FSR and such on. On top of that maxing out the full 8GB will kind of diminish the effects of the infinity cache that is supposed to tackle a great amount of bandwidth issues knowing the small VRAM Bus it carries.

I just have a horrible feeling about this review, I think they are about to catch ALOT of flak for not including other results AT ALL..

 

[Neatfeatguy]

I think what is worse is that you're taking Frank's quote out of context by not using the whole thing. Grow up and stop looking for reasons to back your review.

You wrote:

Making matters worse was AMD's misleading marketing ahead of the 9060 XT launch, claiming that "most gamers only need 8GB of VRAM." This is one of those misleading technicalities. Most games do "work" with 8GB of VRAM because most gamers have 8GB of VRAM.

Frank said:

Majority of gamers are still playing at 1080p and have no use for more than 8GB of memory. Most played games WW are mostly esports games. We wouldn't build it if there wasn't a market for it. If 8GB isn't right for you then there's 16GB. Same GPU, no compromise, just memory options.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1925651286998794443

Frank isn't wrong. Most games played WW are the esport games such as LOL, Counter Strike, DOTA 2 and so on. I don't see a single one of these games in your "review".

Now, there is nothing wrong with posting testing done on non-esport games to show what kind of performance one may expect from these 8GB cards, but when you can't even confirm nor deny Frank's claims about esport games, you have no foot to stand on with your slamming of these 8GB cards. Until then, you're review is half done. As Frank said, "If 8GB isn't right for you then there's 16GB."

I'd say if anyone is looking to play all sorts of types of game, 16GB model is the way to go. If you spend all your time playing LOL or Counter Strike and that's it, 8GB is stellar.

Perhaps in your future review of the 8GB models, you could actually review them for what they're designed for.

 

[torvuswalds]

I think what is worse is that you're taking Frank's quote out of context by not using the whole thing. Grow up and stop looking for reasons to back your review.

You wrote:


Frank said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1925651286998794443

Frank isn't wrong. Most games played WW are the esport games such as LOL, Counter Strike, DOTA 2 and so on. I don't see a single one of these games in your "review".

Now, there is nothing wrong with posting testing done on non-esport games to show what kind of performance one may expect from these 8GB cards, but when you can't even confirm nor deny Frank's claims about esport games, you have no foot to stand on with your slamming of these 8GB cards. Until then, you're review is half done. As Frank said, "If 8GB isn't right for you then there's 16GB."

I'd say if anyone is looking to play all sorts of types of game, 16GB model is the way to go. If you spend all your time playing LOL or Counter Strike and that's it, 8GB is stellar.

Perhaps in your future review of the 8GB models, you could actually review them for what they're designed for.

I am detecting another AMD hit piece.

 

[CapNemo72]

Just PLEASE stop with this "8Gb VRAM bad" BS.

Overwhelming number of 1080p screens and GPUs with 8Gb or less are prove people are OK to play with this kind of VRAM sizes. No one ever said" Ohh gee, I can not run this game at 4K and ultra settings with my card like Steve(s) did, even though I like it, so I will just not play it. that is why there are graphic settings in game in the first place. Not everyone is spoiled, people will adapt to their situation. And enjoy the games they love.

Also, you took card not intended for 1440p and Ultra high settings and showed:
Look, its not working well at those settings!

Duh...

THE ONLY problem is pricing. This should be 200-250USD MSRP and not 300USD.
But from what I see people are buying it in droves.
Free market decides in the end, not someone feelings (including mine).
If it sells well, they got it right, if not, they failed. And guess what they will do?
It is VERY hard question.
They will drop the prices.

Market decides in the end, that is reason I got 5090 below MSRP price.

 

[Loadedaxe]

I still play StarCraft II and WoW Classic (don’t browbeat me....I’m getting older, less time to play and set in my ways). I don’t care about ultra settings or fancy shadows that make it harder to see what’s going on. I stick to medium/high at 1440p and enjoy having framerates well above my monitor’s refresh rate.

If......and that’s a big if, I ever needed a new GPU (which I don’t), I’d probably pick up something like an RX 9060 8GB if it were around $250. That’d be more than enough for what I actually play and care about.......and I know I’m not alone.

There’s a whole chunk of the market like this, people who aren’t chasing ray tracing or 4K benchmarks and play esports games that do not require high end gpus with a lot of vram. That’s why these more affordable 8GB models exist. If there weren’t demand, AMD and Nvidia wouldn’t bother making them. Believe it or not, they do base their decisions on data.

The only issue is price, I did check again and did see both models on NE for MSRP, but they were all sold out or long delivery dates.

Amazon, all marked up with long delivery dates.

 

[CapNemo72]

I really don’t think AMD is going to “push the industry ahead” no matter what they do. They’re not out here trying to force Nvidia to start putting 16GB of VRAM in their cards. Truth is, both companies have the same mindset. Let’s be real....Jensen and Lisa are family. You think they’re battling it out? More like planning the next fiscal year together over holiday dinner.

Currently, the only cards are available are 8GB, as of this morning, and they are $450+

It is all a shame, but as we always say, there is next gen, I guess we wait!

Where I live (Switzerland) they have both versions announced (delivery within a week) and around or even a bit below MSRP. I guess Swiss Franc now being stronger than USD helps.

What is funny is that Asus Prime 9060 XT 8Gb is 341CHF and there is Sapphire Pulse 9060 XT 16Gb for 331CHF.
Cheapest offer goes for 280CHF ( Sapphire Pulse 9060 XT 8Gb and most expensive one is at 407CHF for Asus Prime 9060 XT 1Gb OC version).


https://www.toppreise.ch/browse/Com...onRX9000?sfh=oi~ongff417x14:sv116727+s~pa+a~3

 

[madboyv1]

40? Both the 5060 8GB and 9060 8GB Scam Editions deserve a score of -40, they're that bad. Anyone who wants an 8GB card should get an RX580 or 1080/5700, not these overpriced wastes of silicon.

I used to think even bad products sometimes got higher ratings than they deserve on Techspot, but then I take a step back and considered the fact that at the end of the day, the 5060 8GB/9060 8GB still work as a gaming graphics card. The way these cards are tested highlight the card's severe bottlenecks and limitations when compared to a different configuration of the same card which is an important thing to know (and a distinction besides; comparisons usually come in the form of previous gen equivalents or rival board equivalents). When you adjust your workloads to work with those hardware limitations (either reducing fidelity or resolution or both if need be) then the card works probably exactly how AMD/Nvidia intended and does provide an "acceptable gaming experience".

That is not to say that we should not recoil at the notion that AMD/Nvidia think such products are okay to produce and then name/classify/price them the way they do. If these cards must exist they really should be x050 TI/XT class cards when you consider how severe the bottleneck is when you do hit it. But like how others have said, they would not produce such hardware if there wasn't enough of a potential demand to justify it. We with expectations for the "higher end" of the performance spectrum are likely not that demographic for this specific configuration, but it is still important to note how stark of a difference such a hardware configuration makes for the same card.

Of course this is only just one of a myriad of issues I have with Intel, AMD and especially Nvidia as of late...I've been saying for years I want to build a new computer. Lord knows my GTX 1080 is tired and showing its age as is the rest of my 10 year old PC. However these past couple generations of products has really made it hard for me to justify giving them my hard-earned income for products that seem to get worse in some way generation over generation, all the while getting more and more expensive even after taking into account inflation.

 

[Lfppd72]

I am sure you did it, and have reasons not to include it in the review, but alot of gamers still play at 1080p, what were those results? You included them for the 5060 8GB and 5060Ti 8GB why not this one?
EDIT: Going back to the 5060 8GB review at 1440P There are some titles where this does better, but we wouldn't know if we didn't compare it to a previous article, where are the charts?

While I still see a lot of movies and series at 1080p but that does not mean I would buy a 1080p TV nowadays.

 

[CapNemo72]

While I still see a lot of movies and series at 1080p but that does not mean I would buy a 1080p TV nowadays.

This is very bad example.

For starters, it would be actually difficult to get 1080p Tv and you would probably need to pay more than what you would pay for cheap 4K TVs.

If anything, you can say Steven was suggesting everyone should buy 8K TVs because it is future proof and saying this standard, cheap 4K TV is bad, because it can not show 6K or 8K video.

More closer would be internet speed you should get, in order for to watch better quality video.
Like saying you should get 1Gbit or more, or else you will not enjoy a movie, while in reality, you are good even at 20Mbit and you will still enjoy it (that is if the movie is actually good).

People have different life situations and expectations. Stevens went way of what majority status or financial capability is.

Of course everyone would like 5090, in real life, 3060 is selling the most.

 

[demonicmaniac]

A card designed for esports only would be much cheaper because it would not need RT or FG or FSR as no esports competitive title will be played with anything that isn't pure rasterized no lag increasing feature. A card like this would be something like an rx480 - which steve also mentions. The issue is that this card ISN'T designed for esports - an esports card would cost 200 or less not 300+. Just because you can only play esports games with it doesn't mean it's an esports card. You can get a 6600xt for less than 200 which is more than enough for any popular esports title 1080p 144hz gaming. Steve also clearly mentions that the issue is 8gb cards should be 200 or less. It's pairing a too powerful gpu core with weak memory - where the memory maybe adds 20$ to the BOM if that - making a product that's too expensive for what they claim it is aimed at/meant to do.
Sadly I don't really have a solution for esports gaming cards though. I'd say the 8050S would make a decent esports card but a ryzen ai max is way too expensive overall and the cpu isn't needed for esports. Ideally they'd just make an rdna1/2 design die shrunk with 8gb gddr5 if they can get away with that being profitable at < 150 bucks

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

Would have been great if you include 8700K tests for stalker 2, or all ue5 games. Seems like former is a prime example of how NOT TO optimize the game, so CPUs, RAM and pcie lanes themselves could be the bottleneck

 

[CapNemo72]

A card designed for esports only would be much cheaper because it would not need RT or FG or FSR as no esports competitive title will be played with anything that isn't pure rasterized no lag increasing feature. A card like this would be something like an rx480 - which steve also mentions. The issue is that this card ISN'T designed for esports - an esports card would cost 200 or less not 300+. Just because you can only play esports games with it doesn't mean it's an esports card. You can get a 6600xt for less than 200 which is more than enough for any popular esports title 1080p 144hz gaming. Steve also clearly mentions that the issue is 8gb cards should be 200 or less. It's pairing a too powerful gpu core with weak memory - where the memory maybe adds 20$ to the BOM if that - making a product that's too expensive for what they claim it is aimed at/meant to do.
Sadly I don't really have a solution for esports gaming cards though. I'd say the 8050S would make a decent esports card but a ryzen ai max is way too expensive overall and the cpu isn't needed for esports. Ideally they'd just make an rdna1/2 design die shrunk with 8gb gddr5 if they can get away with that being profitable at < 150 bucks

It would be actually expensive to remove those features. Though resulting chip would end up much smaller.

What I think will happen, AMD will get many chips with some damaged cores, create a 9060 non XT model, with 8Gb and a bit lower Mhz, and sell it for 200-250USD. It will make them at least some money.

I think 150USD gpu are gone. Everything went up in prices from chip designing, chip making, to chip packaging, to marketing and actually selling it. Literally, everything cost more. So 250 would be new "low" price I think.

 

[demonicmaniac]

It would be actually expensive to remove those features. Though resulting chip would end up much smaller.

What I think will happen, AMD will get many chips with some damaged cores, create a 9060 non XT model, with 8Gb and a bit lower Mhz, and sell it for 200-250USD. It will make them at least some money.

I think 150USD gpu are gone. Everything went up in prices from chip designing, chip making, to chip packaging, to marketing and actually selling it. Literally, everything cost more. So 250 would be new "low" price I think.

Agreed on removing features being too expensive, that's why I went with the shrinking older arch route to get more per wafer and have lower powerdraw. Like the 8050S/8040S are perfect for esports if they could slap them on a card with 128bit bus. The deeply integrated rt cores cannot be removed as it's not just a seperate block of tensor/rt stuff like in the early days which does add cost and die size and thus limits the lowest you can go. I wonder if they also could just leverage cheaper existing designs on 12/14nm and just pump out new rdna1/2 stock and on nvidia side new 3060 stock which might be considerably cheaper now as allocation for older nodes should be so much cheaper

 

[SRB]

I really don’t think AMD is going to “push the industry ahead” no matter what they do. They’re not out here trying to force Nvidia to start putting 16GB of VRAM in their cards. Truth is, both companies have the same mindset. Let’s be real....Jensen and Lisa are family. You think they’re battling it out? More like planning the next fiscal year together over holiday dinner.

Currently, the only cards are available are 8GB, as of this morning, and they are $450+

It is all a shame, but as we always say, there is next gen, I guess we wait!

As of right now, my local Microcenter has some 70 of the 16gb models at list price... O/C versions start about $50 higher.

 

[redgarl]

Didn't AMD stated it was a 1080p GPU?

Then why are you testing it at 1440p?

Even if you used Upscalling and FSR Q, it doesn't translate from Native as 1:1.

Just saying, at least, if you want them to catch them at their own words, then do it on the the table they have set like the whole 5070 == 4090...

 

[torvuswalds]

Didn't AMD stated it was a 1080p GPU?

Then why are you testing it at 1440p?

Even if you used Upscalling and FSR Q, it doesn't translate from Native as 1:1.

Just saying, at least, if you want them to catch them at their own words, then do it on the the table they have set like the whole 5070 == 4090...

I think that was Steves intention, its deliberately targeted at tests it's not meant for. He did not go this far for the 5060Ti 8GB or 5060..he even included the 1080p results and the charts for the benchmarks, as far as I can tell I don't take this man seriously anymore it's like he wrote a temper tantrum of a review.

 

[redgarl]

I would even argue that most of these games are games made by SONY using natively 16GB of VRAM for their consoles, so of course it doesn't translate well since those games never were intended for PC in the first place until Sony shifted their narrative on exclusives.

Matter of fact is this... 8GB doesn't matter at 1080p... data is obviously clear.

 

[redgarl]

While I still see a lot of movies and series at 1080p but that does not mean I would buy a 1080p TV nowadays.

I think that was Steves intention, its deliberately targeted at tests it's not meant for. He did not go this far for the 5060Ti 8GB or 5060..he even included the 1080p results and the charts for the benchmarks, as far as I can tell I don't take this man seriously anymore it's like he wrote a temper tantrum of a review.

What I like from Steve is his numbers, his opinions is literally as bad as any techinfluencer out there. I am an engineer, so I make my own opinion after seeing the numbers and the methodology.

That's the only thing I like from HardwareUnboxed. All the rest, especially with Tims bias, is absolutely unbearable. The guy literally give a pass for Nvidia for anything, but if AMD is doing something similar, he will go in crusade against them.

That 8GB drama is the perfect example. Where is all the backlash against Nvidia for releasing their 5060 TI and their 5060 in 8GB variants? Ah yeah, they didn't bother to go at the same extent even if the price of those GPU are more expensive for the same performances... and their drivers still broken... and didn't provided review drivers for the 5060 launch.

I would even argue that the 5060 NON-TI has the same MSRP than the 9060 XT 8GB...

 

[redgarl]

By the way Steve, that's not a review...

You only tested the 9060 XT 8GB with FSR and RT at 1440p in a couple of Sony games that are natively using 16GB of VRAM on their console.