AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT vs Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti – the leaks show a close fight, but I’m betting on better value

AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT is set to launch on June 5, and we’re all keen to find out two things: how good is it against Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti, and how much is it actually going to cost?

Well, there’s been some pretty significant leaks that give us answers to these questions, and while I stand by the fact that AMD is going in hard on beating the lower-end RTX 5060, it is also indeed a worthy foe to the 5060 Ti, too — but not in the ways that you’d think.

Let’s tear into the leaks, see what data we can glean and give you a quick bit of consumer advice about which way you may want to go if you’re shopping for a new GPU or a mid-range prebuilt packing these.

Performance

Let’s start with leak number one — how powerful is the RX 9060 XT vs RTX 5060 Ti?

As I always say in desktop GPUs, while you can do a lot with 8GB and AI tricks (looking at you, RTX 5060), 16GB is a surefire way to protect yourself against the ever-increasing video memory demands of games. And that’s exactly the card we’ve got a frame of reference for.

YouTuber eTeknix accidentally went early with his 9060 XT 16GB benchmarking, and Reddit was quick enough to grab screenshots to help us pull some numbers.

It’s an interesting mix of results that have left some commenters on the Reddit post feeling “underwhelmed,” so let’s get into it. To get a full measure of frame rate, you need to look at two things:

• Average FPS: What is the frames per second on average across a whole benchmark? This is good to show how fast a GPU can be.
• 1% Lows: What is the lowest 1% of frame rate counted? This is good to show how stable a GPU can be.

As you can see, while Nvidia may have the higher average and faster frames, it falls short of AMD’s steadiness in its frame rate. I’ll let you be the judge on which one is more important, between speed and stability.

Ray tracing-wise, Nvidia continues to walk away with its fine-tuned RT cores with a roughly 10% uplift over AMD. That’s not to ignore that Team Red has definitely closed the gap, but there’s still plenty of ground to cover, which hopefully some of the new FSR 4 path tracing features will be the shortcut for.

Price

In isolation, the performance numbers above show a mixed bag of AMD taking 1% low performance, but Nvidia clinching ray tracing capabilities and average frame rates. But that would be to view it in a vacuum — what about value for money?

Because on paper, AMD should take this. The MSRP of that 16GB 9060 XT is $70 less than the RTX 5060 Ti. However, you and I both know that it’s been messy trying to find any cards anywhere near that price.

Well, we just got the first price leaks, and while there is a price bump in the U.S., it’s not as bad as I feared, and could make Team Red a smarter buy here.

U.S. retailer Central Computers is the first out of the gate listing the RX 9060 XT with a minimum $20 price bump over the MSRP, which is a far cry from the $50-$100 average increase we’re seeing for RTX 5060 Ti.

Meanwhile in the U.K., a quick look at Overclockers’ Google Cache (thanks to VideoCardz for spotting this before the retailer quickly changed pricing to hide it) shows pricing starting at £269 for the 8GB model, and £315 for the 16GB.

If final (may not be, so take them with a pinch of salt), that puts the lower-end GPU right on the RTX 5060’s doorstep, and manages to undercut the 5060 Ti by quite a margin.

Way-too-early verdict

So, based on raw horsepower, there may be no clear knockout winner here. But when it comes to connecting price to performance, there’s a strong case here that AMD could take the lower-mid range GPU crown here with the RX 9060 XT.

And this is before seeing how the new FSR 4 tricks up AMD’s sleeve (codenamed Redstone) will impact performance, too. While it may not be fully caught up with the AI trickery that DLSS 4 is capable of, the company is on the right track in terms of extracting as much value from lower-cost GPUs as possible.

As the subheading states, it’s all too early to say definitively one way or the other, but this is all starting to show that Team Red has shown up for a fight.

More from Tom’s Guide

• I tested the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 for 2 months — here’s why it’s good, but not great
• I played Call of Duty on AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 — and this GPU could steal the mid-range crown from Nvidia’s RTX 5070
• I abandoned my Steam Deck for a year – but Nvidia GeForce Now has made it a Nintendo Switch 2 killer

Jason brings a decade of tech and gaming journalism experience to his role as a Managing Editor of Computing at Tom’s Guide. He has previously written for Laptop Mag, Tom’s Hardware, Kotaku, Stuff and BBC Science Focus. In his spare time, you’ll find Jason looking for good dogs to pet or thinking about eating pizza if he isn’t already.