Radeon RX 9060: AMD castrates itself – 1792 shaders, 8 GB GDDR6 and 132 W TDP

The latest from AMD’s laboratory of small hopes goes by the name of Radeon RX 9060. It is, quite soberly, a slimmed-down RX 9060 XT, a GPU that wants one thing above all: to play in the lower mid-range segment with minimal effort. Whereby “play along” is to be taken literally – because with 1080p and Ultra settings, it should deliver over 100 FPS. Says AMD. Say benchmarks? Not yet.

1792 shaders – or: the art of lowering expectations

According to the official AMD website, the RX 9060 has 1792 stream processors – this corresponds to 28 compute units instead of the 32 of the XT version (2048 SP). This means that the new non-XT version should deliver around 12.5% less raw performance. Surprising? No. But it is significant that AMD’s board partners initially assumed 2048 SPs – internal communication glitches included. The GPU chip is based on Navi 44, which already differentiates it architecturally from the Navi-48-based 9060 XT. This means: fewer shaders, fewer ray and AI accelerators, less bandwidth – but also less power consumption. AMD specifies a TDP of 132 watts – that’s 33 watts less than its XT counterpart. Nevertheless, this is a plus point for Mini-ITX systems or small budget builds.

Memory: Slower, but the same amount

The VRAM remains at 8 GB GDDR6, but the memory speed drops to 18 Gbps – instead of 20 Gbps in the XT model. Together with the 128-bit bus, this results in a memory bandwidth of 288 GB/s – no drama, but a clear bottleneck for memory-heavy games in 1080p or higher. This GPU is not made for 1440p anyway – unless you like “low” presets.

Ray tracing and AI? Yes, but throttled please

As expected, the RX 9060 also offers less hardware for ray tracing and AI workloads – which means fewer ray accelerators, fewer AI cores and slower upscaling. Anyone experimenting with FSR 3.1 or similar technologies should adjust their expectations accordingly.

AMD’s performance promise: 100 FPS in triple-A titles

According to AMD, the RX 9060 allegedly achieves

• 108 FPS in Assassin’s Creed Mirage
• 188 FPS in F1 24
• 98 FPS in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• 153 FPS in Doom Eternal

All at “Native 1080p Ultra”, of course. With which system? Which CPU? Which BIOS? Not a word. Therefore: Be careful with the interpretation. Experience shows that testing is carried out with the Ryzen 9 9800X3D and very optimized settings. Or in other words: It works – if everything fits. But it’s not a card for guaranteed ultra-carefree gaming experiences.

Cooling, technology, drivers

AMD recommends a 450-watt power supply – which is reasonable, as custom models with factory OC could probably scratch closer to 150 W. Official cards will probably not be available – instead, partners such as Sapphire, PowerColor & Co. are likely to come up with their own dual-fan designs. Positive: AV1 encoding and decoding are on board, as are HDMI 2.1b and DisplayPort 2.1a. And with the latest Adrenalin 25.8.1, driver support is guaranteed right from the start.

Radeon RX 9060 – budget gaming with a sharp red pencil

The RX 9060 is a typical product for AMD’s 2025 strategy: more from less. If you want 1080p gaming, don’t need ray tracing and can live with 8 GB, you get solid performance – provided the GPU is offered at a price that is clearly below the XT variant. However, if AMD once again tries to charge almost the same price for the trimmed version as for the full version, the card is likely to quickly end up on the sidelines – between RX 7600 leftovers and RTX 4050 launch fever dreams.

Source: AMD