PowerColor Reaper AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB Review: 7% lower performance than RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB for $80 less

AMD brings Navi 44 to the forefront with the launch of the Radeon RX 9060 XT in 8 GB and 16 GB versions. The PowerColor Reaper Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB is one of those cards that will be priced closer to AMD's $349 SEP but expect a slight markup depending on the store and stocks.

The RX 9060 XT 16 GB does not exactly impress in synthetic benchmarks, but it manages to give the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB — its primary competitor — a run for its money in gaming, coming in at just 7% slower overall in cumulative 1080p and 1440p settings.

AMD continues to trail Nvidia in ray tracing, but the RX 9060 XT can show promise depending on the title. You can extract quite a bit of performance with somewhat lower settings at 4K with or without RT and with FSR 4 and AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) enabled.

PowerColor, on its part, has produced a solid GPU with the Reaper RX 9060 XT 16 GB. The card is built well and offers excellent, low-noise cooling that sustains peak performance without hiccups. Power draws are expectedly economical considering the 160 W TBP of the card, and the overall efficiency in gaming is very much comparable to that of the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB.

The PowerColor Reaper RX 9060 XT 16 GB is excellent value for money if you can purchase one closer to the $349 SEP. That being said, market dynamics dictates that it is practically impossible to get a 16 GB GPU for $350 these days, so expect at least a $40 markup in stores. 

Any higher pricing and the RX 9060 XT's value proposition relative to the $430 MSRP RTX 5060 Ti starts to diminish. We recommend carefully weighing available partner card options between the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and the RX 9060 XT 16 GB before deciding to part ways with your cash.

The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB is officially priced at $349 SEP. Pricing for the PowerColor Reaper 9060 XT 16 GB is yet to be known, but the 8 GB variant currently retails on Amazon US for $320.

Update 6/7: Review now complete.

AMD introduced the RDNA 4-based Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT in March to much fanfare and as viable value alternatives to Nvidia's RTX 50 Blackwell offerings.

Last month Nvidia introduced the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB for $429 MSRP in a bid to thwart AMD's moves and make it enticing for midrange gamers. Now, AMD is playing ball with the introduction of the new Radeon RX 9060 XT in 8 GB and 16 GB variants for $299 and $349 MSRP, respectively, undercutting Nvidia's proposition by a sizeable margin.

That being said, AMD's justification for still offering 8 GB cards in 2025, at a time when games are increasingly becoming VRAM-heavy, has drawn divided opinion. 

The Radeon RX 9060 XT brings key RDNA 4 features further into mainstream, including the new enhanced Media Engine, 2nd gen AI accelerators with support for FP8 inference, and 3rd gen ray tracing (RT) accelerators.

There is no Made by AMD (MBA) version of the RX 9060 XT, so you will have to turn to AMD's add-in board (AiB) partners if you want one. 

In this review, we take a look at the PowerColor Reaper AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB and see how it fares against Nvidia's RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and other GPUs.

Sporting dimensions of 20 cm x 10 cm x 3.9 cm and weighing about 530 g, the PowerColor Reaper RX 9060 XT is a compact 2-slot card that easily fits in small form factor builds. 

The Reaper RX 9060 XT has a subdued but functional design without any RGB bling that will appeal to minimalists.

Our test setup to evaluate the RX 9060 XT is comprised of the following components:

• Cooler Master MasterFrame 700 open test bench
• Intel Core i9-14900K with Intel Extreme profile set in the BIOS
• Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master motherboard
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen4 2 TB NVMe SSD and 2x Crucial MX500 1 TB SATA SSDs for OS, benchmarks, and games
• 2x 16 GB Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5-6400 RAM with timings 32-39-39-80 at 1.40 V
• Aorus FO32U2P 4K 240 Hz QD-OLED monitor
• Thermaltake TH420 V2 Ultra EX ARGB AiO cooler
• Cooler Master MVE Gold V2 1250 ATX 3.0 fully modular PSU

Windows 11 24H2 with the latest patches, together with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition version 25.10.09.01 issued to the press was used.

We would like to thank Cooler Master for supplying the test bench and PSU, Intel for the CPU, Gigabyte for the motherboard and QD-OLED monitor, Sabrent for the SSD, Thermaltake for the AiO cooler, Kingston for the DDR5 memory kit, and finally AMD for the RX 9060 XT.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB is 16% slower than the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB in cumulative 3DMark and Unigine tests, while offering 20% more performance than the XFX Speedster Radeon RX 7600 Black Edition.

Interestingly, the Inno3D RTX 4060 Ti Twin x2 8 GB is only 5% behind the RX 9060 XT in overall synthetic tests due to advantages in Unigine tests, particularly the Heaven and Valley benchmarks.

The RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB still shows a perceivable 13% and 25% gains in ComputeMark and MLPerf tests, respectively. 

AMD cards generally tend to perform better than their Nvidia counterparts in LuxMark, but the RX 9060 XT 16 GB trails behind even the RTX 4060 Ti 8 GB in this benchmark.

The delta between the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and the RX 9060 XT 16 GB narrows down considerably in gaming, with the RX 9060 XT trailing Nvidia's mainstream offering by just 7% in cumulative 1080p and QHD Ultra settings.

The RX 9060 XT 16 GB can easily achieve above 60 fps in QHD Ultra in slightly older titles. The 16 GB VRAM comes in quite handy in texture-heavy modern games like Black Myth: Wukong, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and Assassin's Creed Shadows.