- A new leak claims to detail the specs and pricing of AMD's upcoming Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU
- The price could be as low as $269 in the US for the 8GB model
- Performance is claimed to sit between the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti and AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT
We might finally have a proper idea of what AMD's long-awaited Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU is going to be capable of - and it's looking like it could be worthy of induction into the best graphics card hall of fame.
Thanks to leaked information shared by Moore's Law Is Dead (MLID) on YouTube, we now know that the RX 9060 XT could be shipping with 32 compute units, a 128-bit memory bus with both 8GB and 16GB VRAM models available, and a TDP between 150W and 200W.
Now, that's not a whole lot to go off at this point, but MLID's leak also notes that performance is 'above RTX 4060 Ti, but likely below RX 7700 XT'. Okay, so that doesn't sound that impressive, but here's the thing: the leak also includes pricing details, and it's looking very attractive on that front.
The 8GB model will reportedly cost between $269 and $299, while the 16GB version is claimed to be priced at $329-379. It's unclear whether these are potential price ranges AMD itself is still contemplating, or projected price ranges for AIB partner cards. For reference, the RTX 4060 Ti - which it supposedly outperforms - originally retailed at $399, and that was almost two full years' worth of GPU price inflation ago.
Battle of the budgets
Even if AMD hits us with the high end of these price estimates, it'll be a seriously competitively priced desktop GPU. Although Nvidia has been dominating the high-performance end of the market with its RTX 5000 cards, there's no denying that AMD's biggest rival has been fumbling its budget game lately, leaving Intel (isn't that weird) as one of the best options in the affordable PC gaming space thanks to its excellent Arc B580 card.
If Team Red can deliver RXT 4060 Ti-beating performance at a $269 price point, well, it's game set and match for the budget GPU market - at least, for the time being. It's worth noting, though, that MLID's source does say 'original plan as of a month ago' regarding these projected prices, likely in reference to the recent tech pricing carnage caused by Donald Trump's tariff war. So... watch this space, I guess.
Another interesting point raised by the leaker was that the RX 9060 XT might lack hardware encoders - it's possible that to keep the price down, AMD has opted to include only the free-to-implement AV1 video encoder, not the (arguably better) H.264 and H.265 encode functions, since those require a licencing fee.
The leaker claims there are no plans for a 'non-XT' RX 9060 card, which tracks given the two different VRAM versions and the suggested $269 base price. Additionally, AMD might be considering a Radeon RX 9050 XT, presumably priced somewhere in the $200-250 range.
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