RX 9060 XT Roundup: ASRock, PowerColor and Sapphire Tested!

1. Introduction2. ASRock RX 9060 XT Steel Legend3. PowerColor RX 9060 XT Hellhound4. Sapphire RX 9060 XT Nitro+5. Testing Methodology6. Game Benchmarks7. Clock Speed8. GPU Temperatures9. Acoustics10. Noise-Normalised Temperatures11. Power Draw and Efficiency12. Overclocking13. Closing Thoughts14. View All Pages

Driver Notes

• All AMD GPUs (except RX 9060 XT) were benchmarked with the 25.3.1 driver.
• All Intel GPUs were benchmarked with the 101.6651 driver.
• All Nvidia GPUs (except for RTX 5060 Ti 8/16GB) were benchmarked with the 572.70 driver.
• RTX 5060 Ti 8/16GB were benchmarked with the 575.94 driver supplied to press.
• RX 9060 XT was benchmarked with the 25.10.09.01 driver supplied to press.

Results are only directly comparable where this exact configuration has been used.

Test System:

We test using a custom built system powered by MSI, based on AMD's Zen 5 platform. You can view the Powered by MSI store on AWD-IT's website HERE.

CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
Motherboard	MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
Memory	64GB (2x32GB) Kingston Fury Beast DDR5 6000MT/s CL30
Graphics Card	Varies
SSD	4TB Kingston NV3 Gen 4 PCIe NVMe
Chassis	MSI MPG Gungnir 300R Airflow
CPU Cooler	MSI MAG CoreLiquid i360
Power Supply	MSI MEG Ai1300P
Operating System	Windows 11 23H2
Monitor	MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED
Resizable BAR	Enabled for all supported GPUs

Comparison Graphics Cards List

• ASRock RX 9070 XT Taichi 16GB
• Sapphire RX 9070 Pulse 16GB
• ASUS RX 9060 XT Prime 16GB
• Sapphire RX 7900 GRE Nitro+ 16GB
• AMD RX 7800 XT 16GB
• Sapphire RX 7700 XT Pulse 12GB
• Sapphire RX 7600 XT Pulse 16GB
• AMD RX 7600 8GB
• AMD RX 6700 XT 12GB
• Intel Arc A770 LE 16GB
• Intel Arc B580 LE 12GB
• MSI RTX 5070 Ti Ventus 3X 16GB
• Nvidia RTX 5070 FE 12GB
• Palit RTX 5060 Ti Infinity 3 16GB
• Palit RTX 5060 Ti Dual 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 4070 Super FE 12GB
• Nvidia RTX 4070 FE 12GB
• MSI RTX 4060 Ti Gaming 16GB
• Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti FE 8GB
• MSI RTX 4060 Ventus 2X 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 3070 FE 8GB
• Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti FE 8GB
• Palit RTX 3060 StormX 12GB

All cards were tested at reference specifications. For factory overclocked cards, this means we manually ‘undo' the overclock via MSI Afterburner or AMD/Intel's built-in tuning tools. Or, for cards like the Sapphire RX 7900 GRE Nitro+, we enable the reference-clocked BIOS instead of the default OC BIOS.

Software and Games List

• Alan Wake II (DX12)
• Black Myth: Wukong (DX12)
• Cyberpunk 2077 (DX12)
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard (DX12)
• Final Fantasy XVI (DX12)
• Ghost of Tsushima (DX12)
• Horizon Forbidden West (DX12)
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (Vulkan)
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II (DX12)
• A Plague Tale: Requiem (DX12)
• Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart (DX12)
• Returnal (DX12)
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 (DX12)
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
• Starfield (DX12)
• Star Wars Outlaws (DX12)

We run each benchmark/game three times, and present mean averages in our graphs. We use FrameView to measure average frame rates as well as 1% low values (99th percentile) across our three runs.

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