A hard pass at these prices.
AMD’s upcoming Radeon RX 9060 XT is meant to be about accessible gaming performance when it arrives, probably within a few weeks. But if a couple of listings that currently appear on Amazon (via Videocardz) are anything to go by, we may have to adjust expectations. The 8 GB variant of the GPU is listed for $449, with the 16 GB option at $519. Ouch.
Both of the cards are XFX-branded ‘OC’ GPUs. So, they may have MSRPs well above whatever AMD chooses as a base price for the RX 9060 XT twins—though as XFX “Swift” models, they are not from XFX’s very highest tier of AIB cards. And, of course, MSRPs are only very loosely related to real-world pricing when it comes to graphics cards these days.
Despite all that, these prices still look awfully unappealing. By way of example, Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB, which is probably the closest existing competitor for the new AMD GPU, has an MSRP of $429. The 8 GB 5060 Ti is MSRP’ed at $379.
Real-world pricing is a little higher at roughly $420 for the 5060 Ti 8 GB and $480 for the 16 GB card. But that’s still below these XFX RX 9060 XT listings, which hardly fits AMD’s broader sales pitch for Radeon GPUs of late, that’s centred around value and bang for buck.
The prices are also painfully unappealing in the context of AMD’s own Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT boards. While the RX 9060 XT hasn’t been officially announced, its specifications are fairly certain to be exactly one half of the 9070 XT and thus 2,048 stream processors and a 128-bit memory bus to the 4,096 processors and 256-bit bus of the 9070 XT.
Lest you have forgotten, the 9070 XT is MSRP’ed at $599, with the vanilla 9070 at $549. So, the idea you’d want to pay over $500 for half the GPU simply doesn’t scan.
The catch is that the 9070 XT tends to go for well over MSRP, and that’s if you can get it at all. Newegg, by way of example, lists 9070 XTs from about $660. But the cheapest actually in stock is up for a ridiculous $899.
Of course, US pricing is particularly bad right now. In the UK you can grab a 9070 XT for £660 easily enough. Above MSRP, to be sure, but not nearly as bad.
Arguably more of a problem is the fact that you can grab an Nvidia RTX 5070 in the US for just over $600 in the US and just over £500 in the UK. OK, you’re only getting 12GB of VRAM with the 5070. But it’s a fundamentally more powerful GPU and also offers Nvidia’s industry-leading feature set, superior path tracing performance and all that stuff.
Anyway, we’ll obviously have to wait and see where the new AMD GPUs land in terms of both MSRP and real-world pricing when they arrive, probably at Computex starting 20 May. But these Amazon listings hardly bode well.
For the record, the Amazon listings mention a June 5 release date. So, that’s probably a relevant marker in terms of actual retail availability.
Best CPU for gaming: Top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game first.
About Post Author
