The VRAM Conversation: 16GB Where It Matters
One of the RX 9060 XT’s biggest value propositions is its 16GB of VRAM. With modern games pushing well past 8GB at high settings even at 1080p (Hogwarts Legacy, TLOU Part I, Alan Wake II), cards with less memory are frequently caught in stutter or texture pop-in. The RX 9060 XT avoids these issues entirely. It is the most affordable 16GB card on the market, and this makes it a better long-term investment than similarly priced 8GB cards like the RTX 5060 or even the $379 RTX 5060 Ti.
Benching Methodology
Performance Bench Hardware and Tests – we benched across two very similair benching platforms.
Test Configuration – Hardware
- AMD Ryzen 7 9950X3D 16-Core Processor
- ASRock TaiChi – BIOS v. 3.25
- 2x32GB G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo DDR5 6000 CL30-36-36-96
- RTX 4070 TI SUPER, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- RTX 4060 TI, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- RTX 5080 FE, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
- RTX 5070 Ti, ASUS PRIME, supplied by Nvidia
- RTX 3070 FE, stock clocks supplied by Nvidia
- EVGA Black RTX 3060 12GB supplied by EVGA
- RTX 5060 Ti, PNY, Supplied by Nvidia
- AMD RADEON RX 7800 XT, stock clocks, supplied by AMD
- XFX Radeon RX 9060 XT, factory clocks, supplied by AMD/XFX
- PowerColor Radeon RX 6700 XT Red Devil, factory clocks, supplied by PowerColor
- DeepCool Castle 360EX AIO, Corsair 5000D
- Samsung 990 Pro 1TB Gen4x4 M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 (7400/6900MB/s) C: Drive
- TeamGroup MP44 4TB Gen4x4 M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 (7400/6900MB/s)
- Super Flower Leadex Platinum SE 1200W 80+ Platinum
- LG C1 48″ 4K/120Hz
2nd test platform:
- AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor
- MSI B650M PROJECT ZERO (MS-7E09) – Bios Version 1.70
- Team T-Force Delta RGB 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 5600 (PC5 44800) Desktop Memory Model FF4D564G5600HC36BDC01
- 1 x Team Group MP33 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 3.0 x4 with NVMe 1.3
- 2 x WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
- Corsair RM1000x, 1000W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
- ALIENWARE 32″ 4K QD-OLED GAMING MONITOR – AW3225QF
Test Configuration – Software
- Nvidia GeForce 576.52 game-ready press drivers; ‘Prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile basis); Shader Cache Size ‘Unlimited’ (globally); fixed refresh rate (globally).
- Game Bar features ON for Radeons
- Press drivers used for Radeons, AMD SW Edition 25.10.09.01
- We enable Resizable BAR
- ‘V-Sync application controlled’ in the control panel; V-Sync off in-game.
- We note and specify the main in-game display, graphics, AA, and scaling settings in the performance summary charts.
- Windows 11 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates, Balanced power plan, HAGS & Game Mode are enabled, Game DVR & Game Bar features off, Control Flow Guard (CFG) off on a per-game basis, Hypervisor and Virtualization-based security are disabled.
- We do not install MSI tools.
- Latest DirectX
- All games are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication
- 3DMark Professional Edition
- FrameView, the latest version
- Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), the latest version; always uninstall drivers using DDU in safe mode, clean, and restart.
GeForce Driver Suite-related
- We use DCH Game Ready drivers.
- The display driver is installed.
- We install the latest version of PhysX.
Hybrid & Non-Synthetic Tests-related
- Single run per test.
Game Benchmarks-related
- We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
- We find a demanding custom scene representative of a majority of the game or a highly demanding sequence
Frametimes Capture
- We use FrameView to capture frame times and analyze the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.