In 2025, the graphics card market is heating up to the point of boiling over. In the past few months, no fewer than five new cards have rolled out with MSRPs between $299 and $429. (Actual out-the-door street prices, of course, can be another matter with GPUs these days.) Cards in this price range are generally going to be good picks for all-out gameplay at 1080p (1,920 by 1,080). But what if you want to aim higher…say, 1440p?
You’ll likely want a card toward the higher end of that price range, and with as much memory as you can muster. Only two of these new offerings come packed with 16GB of memory, though, and choosing between them can be a challenge. The $429 Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB has a notable performance advantage over the 16GB version of the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT—but then there’s price to consider. AMD’s $349 starting price for its RX 9060 XT cards goes a long way toward evening the score. Let’s take a closer look at both cards to better determine which is the better fit for you—and for what you do and play.
Specs: The GPU Core Battle
Before we delve into the specs of these two cards, be aware that we can’t truly compare most aspects of an AMD GPU against an Nvidia GPU by looking just at specs. Why? When talking about the main parts of graphics processing units (GPUs), the industry uses terms such as shaders, texture mapping units (TMUs), and raster operation units (ROPs). But all those techie terms may not mean exactly the same thing in one company’s GPU as they do in another’s.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The shader cores, TMUs, and ROPs from AMD and Nvidia fill the same role in each company’s products and perform some similar functions. How they actually do their jobs is another story. This can vary greatly, and each one may support some functions and features not supported by the other. A lot of the time, the same rule even holds true when comparing two different architectures from the same company. The upshot: I’ll discuss the two cards’ raw numbers but won’t necessarily stack them up against each other directly.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Fortunately, you can directly compare some parts of GPUs, including the memory used, the ports and power connectors, and (to some extent) the thermal solution. Note that these are the specs for AMD’s and Nvidia’s base/”reference” versions of each card; the spec chart earlier in this article reflects the actual Sapphire and PNY cards we tested, which have some slight clocking differences.
Bearing in mind that we can’t make a one-to-one comparison, it’s still interesting to look at the two cards’ specs. As you can see from the chart, in most cases, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti has numerically more resources than its competitor. The Radeon RX 9060 XT has a higher ROP count, but that’s it.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
AMD clocked the Radeon RX 9060 XT a fair bit higher than Nvidia clocked the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti on both base and boost clocks. This helps to make up for the difference in shader counts.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Both graphics cards feature a 128-bit memory interface with 16GB of RAM, but the type and speed of RAM differs between the two. That adds up to some important differences. The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT comes with 20Gbps GDDR6 memory, while the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti has GDDR7 memory—which is capable of operating faster, at 28Gbps. The upshot: The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT has just 320GBps of bandwidth, while the RTX 5060 Ti has 448GBps of bandwidth—a significant 40% advantage.
Winner: Draw (most numbers are not comparable)
AI Benchmarks
AI performance is a growing area of interest for graphics cards, and for now Nvidia’s chips clearly have the speed advantage in the market. So it comes as no surprise that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti thumps the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT in this area, at least as measured in UL’s Procyon AI Text Generation Test.
AMD’s GPUs aren’t optimized for this particular common trial across a host of LLMs. The answer, then, is pretty clear: If AI performance is a deal-breaker for you, go with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti or a higher-end Nvidia GPU.
Winner: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (16GB)
Content Creation Tests
Nvidia’s cards generally lead the field when it comes to content-creation performance, as well. It’s not surprising to see that the RTX 5060 Ti came out ahead of the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT in these tests.
That said, in the Adobe tests, the AMD did a lot better than it did on the Procyon AI trials, narrowing the performance gap with its Nvidia rival. While the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti is still the better option for content creation, particularly if you do a lot of it, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT should serve well enough for occasional work. The Radeon RX 9060 XT didn’t perform so well in Blender, though. The difference here was significant enough that you probably should pick an Nvidia GPU even if you just use the software occasionally.
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Winner: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (16GB)
Gaming Tests
The AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT puts up a much better fight in gaming workloads, even if the performance difference here varies greatly with the game and the resolution. In Returnal, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti holds a 22% lead at 1080p and a 19% lead at the other two resolutions.
That performance gap all but disappeared in F1 2024, where the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti virtually tied at 1440p and 4K resolutions. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti did hold a slim 5% lead at 1080p, though.
But that is likely the best-case gaming scenario for AMD. In Total War: Three Kingdoms, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti held a strong lead at all resolutions tested. Most likely, the GDDR7 memory lends a huge hand here: The RTX 5060 Ti’s performance advantage grew from 20% at 1080p up to about 27% at 1440p and 4K. And Shadow of the Tomb Raider was more in line with Returnal, with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti holding about a 17% to 18% advantage at all resolutions.
Winner: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (16GB)
Power Consumption and Thermal Tests
We used a Kill-A-Watt power meter to measure the overall power draw of our GPU test system with each card installed in turn. During the Blender content creation test, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti both drew about the same amount of juice. In gaming workloads, however, the RTX 5060 Ti used a bit more power, though not a lot more.
Even though the power-draw figures for the two cards were similar, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT stayed cooler during the testing process, likely because the AMD’s thermal solution outperformed the Nvidia’s. Of course, this is subject to change depending on which model of the card you buy.
Winner: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT (16GB)
Pricing and Value
So far, it’s been an open-and-shut case for Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, right? Ah, time to bring price into the mix. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB of RAM is priced at $429, 23% more expensive than the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT with 16GB of RAM at $349. Note that these are starting prices for “base” models of each GPU. You’ll find pricier versions of each card that are clocked higher and equipped with above-average thermal solutions, or more fans.
Now, $80 isn’t nothing. so think back to the gaming tests. Most of the time, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti was ahead by around 18%. In the end, you’re paying 23% more for a card that delivers 18% better game performance. As long as you exclude AI and content creation from the mix, the RX 9060 XT may in fact be a better-value gamer card than the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti.
Winner: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT (16GB)
And The Winner Is…
Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (16GB)
Quick bottom line? The RTX 5060 Ti is better…but both GPUs are great in their own ways.
The test results make it clear that, when it comes to performance, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti bests the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT, whether you’re talking about AI tasks, content creation, or gaming. (And likely at times, efficiency, too, since both cards had similar power-consumption numbers; it’ll depend on the specific design of third-party card you buy.) But the percentage frame-rate differential on our gaming tests (and we ran some additional tests in the actual longform reviews of these cards, not just what you see here) suggests that the RX 9060 XT may get you a bit more in terms of frames-per-dollar. Does that matter? It could, assuming that the frame rates the AMD card delivers are enough for you.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Realistically, both the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti are equally worth considering. You technically get better value with the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT from a pure gaming-for-dollars standpoint, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti’s performance advantage is sufficiently large enough to make it a tantalizing alternative. While it may not quite offer the best performance for your dollar, it comes close enough to the AMD card in price to justify choosing it. Bottom line: Buy whichever option best fits your budget, and either way, you’ll enjoy.
