Few launches are as exciting for the PC enthusiast as new graphics hardware. Cutting-edge architecture and modern cards hold immense promise, however there is typically a shortage issue that blights new arrivals. As a result, we’ve become accustomed to inflated post-launch prices, needing to wait for new cards to reach their supposed MSRP.
For gamers eyeing up a 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT, that wait is coming to an end. At the time of writing, said GPU is available in Sapphire Pulse guise for £319 at Amazon UK. That’s a mere £4 higher than the £315 MSRP, or in other words, the price we want to pay for a current-gen card from one of the best add-in-board partners.
Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB
“The graphics card’s VRAM capacity goes a long way, giving the Radeon legs to run at FHD and QHD.” Read our review.
Launched two months ago to the day, RX 9060 XT 16GB touts 2,048 cores boosting up to a lofty 3,130MHz and returning a smidge over 51.3 FP16 TFLOPs of firepower. There is an 8GB variant that we encourage you to skip over; it’s this 16GB model with 20Gb/s GDDR6 hooked up via a 128-bit bus that we recommend.
Put all that together and you’re looking at a best-in-class 3DMark Steel Nomad score of ~3,750 marks. You’d have to spend a couple of hundred pounds more to get to the next rung on the ladder – Radeon RX 9070 / GeForce RTX 5070 – and it’s clear to see why 9060 XT holds mass appeal.
In this segment, the 16GB choice rests between RX 9060 XT and RTX 5060 Ti. It’s a close call as the latter pulls ahead in some games and offers superior frame generation chops, but the Radeon is now some £70 cheaper, which more than helps balance the scales.
Averaging over 100 frames per second in modern titles at a lush QHD resolution, and RX 9060 XT isn’t particularly thirsty, with system-wide power consumption in our tests averaging 315W under load. Sapphire’s Pulse cooler will have no difficulty shifting the heat, but if you do want to keep energy use as low as possible, it’s worth noting the rival GeForce is more frugal, to the tune of around 25 watts during real-world gameplay.
Even at this mainstream end of the market, the choice of partner cards is vast. Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB can hit close to £400 for the most extravagant models, and Sapphire’s own stable includes a beautifully built Nitro+ as well as an all-white Pure. All well and good, but for plain ‘ol value, it’s hard to beat the Pulse at current pricing.
We don’t envisage pricing will drop significantly in the weeks ahead, so if you’ve been sat on the fence, now’s a good time to grab the upgrade at a sensible price.
