XFX Swift Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB OC Triple Fan Gaming Edition Review

Introduction

2025 has been somewhat of a tumultuous year in the graphics market. Product shortages, rising prices, economic unknowns, and a strange combination of consumer apathy and strong end user demand. NVIDIA started off with their RTX 5000 series announcements at CES with product shipping at the end of January. AMD originally looked to have a competing announcement at the time, but decided to hold off for far longer than expected in announcing the RX 9070 series of cards.

The RX 9070 launch was considered a success by users and pundits alike, setting AMD up to have competing and compelling products at prices slightly undercutting that of NVIDIA at that performance level. The next step was to announce the new “midrange” lineup for AMD as NVIDIA had already shown off the 5060 and 5070 lineups. While the product specs were not a mystery for long, its overall price and performance had people guessing for some time.

AMD held their RX 9060 XT announcement at Computex on May 21 with full specifications and a price. The 8GB 9060 XT would be available at $299 and the 16GB version would start at $349. Performance was compared against the RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti 8GB cards. The 9060s at each price point showed very competitive performance with its counterpart, but people were left a little confused as to why AMD did not show how well the top end card performed against the big RTX 5060 Ti 16GB.

Questions still remain as to how much actual product will be selling for as MSRP pricing this year has been more wishful thinking than concrete for the cards that have been released so far. We have seen a slow price erosion across the board with AMD cards over the past month, so perhaps these cards will remain around MSRP after release? That could be more wishful thinking, but looking across the aisle we see base RTX 5060 models at $299 and the RTX 5060 Ti 16 available at $479. The 16GB card is above MSRP, but not hundreds more than what we have seen previously.

The basis of 9060 XT is a chip code named Navi 44. This is essentially ½ of a Navi 48, which powers the RX 9070 series. It is a 29.7 billion transistor chip with a die size of approximately 199 mm square. It is produced on TSMC’s N4P node. It features 2048 shading units, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 32 RT cores, 32 compute units, and a 128-bit memory controller. Higher end 9060 XT boards will consume upwards of 180 watts of power (and likely more). It does not quite scale down to half the actual size of the Navi48, but that is due to other common structures such as the decode engines remaining in the same number of units and sizes.

The 128-bit memory bus is paired with 20 Gbps GDDR6, giving it around 320 GB/sec of memory bandwidth. Each chip also features 4 MB of L2 cache and 32 MB of L3 cache. This does take some of the burden off of the smaller memory bus to achieve better overall throughput in modern graphics applications.

The RDNA 4 architecture is a clean sheet design that borrows some things from previous generations, but advances the entire family with redesigned RT units as well as dedicated AI Acceleration Cores (NVIDIA uses the term Tensor Cores). It also features a significant improvement in overall power efficiency from the RX 7000 series. For example it achieves a 30% increase in performance vs. the RX 7600 XT while actually consuming less power than that older 6nm product.

AMD truly has a competitive architecture to throw at NVIDIA in 2025. So far their products have compared well with the competition, all the while being slightly less money at every level of performance.

The XFX Swift Radeon RX 9060 XT Triple Fan OC Edition

XFX was kind enough to ship us a sample of their overclocked version of the base lineup of Swift (sometimes stylized as “SWFT”) cards. The company has shown off their Swift and Mercury units, but it looks as if they are foregoing a midrange Qickster model. The Mercury units are always of a more robust build with extras such as more RGB lighting. This is not to say that the Swift sample we received is a skimpy offering.

For being a 180 watt card the Swift is still a large unit. It has three 80 mm fans and a 2.5 slot cooling design. It is around two pounds of copper heat pipes, copper cold plate, and aluminum fins to provide more than adequate cooling for the RX 9060 XT GPU.

It features a full metal back plate and a plastic front shroud. It only requires one 8 pin PCI-E power connector due to the 180 watt draw (75 watts from PCI-E slot and 150 watts from 8 pin). This should still allow for some overclocking headroom with an increased power limit.

One area that is a change from the larger 9070 cards is that the 9060 XT only features three outputs. These will primarily show up as 2 x DisplayPort 2.1 and 1 x HDMI 2.1. This should satisfy most users, but there is the odd individual who will want to attach 4 monitors to any video card they have (I know a few of these people).

The card is structurally quite sound and is not heavy enough to require a support at the back of the card. The PCB is actually quite small, which seems like a hallmark of this generation of cards. This allows a large passthrough cooling solution to exist at the back of the card. One full fan will be able to eject a significant amount of air through the cooler and up into the CPU area. This will mean better cooling for the GPU and some extra heat for the CPU. Overall probably a fair tradeoff.

The plastic should features one RGB lighting element with the XFX logo located near the back of the card. It only shines white and is not programmable. It also cannot be turned off via a dedicated switch. The only switch on the card controls the dual BIOS chips that XFX has been producing for a while. The firmware on each chip is identical to the other, so there is no Quiet/Performance mode switch. While it offers no feature like a quiet mode, it does offer some peace of mind by having a backup firmware readily available in case of a failure.

XFX will be offering this large triple-fan version of the Swift AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT at an MSRP of $399.99 USD, with a dual-fan version of the Swift (featuring same clock speeds and specs, interestingly enough) at AMD’s $349.99 USD MSRP. Of course initial pricing will be near MSRP, but if demand grows we would expect to see prices go up as well. It will all depend on how much product AMD is able to provide their partners for this launch.

Performance Testing

I used my slightly older test bed to compare the performance of more than a handful of cards. I tried to provide a solid field of older and newer cards. This should allow users of older generations of cards to see how these new products stack up. Sadly, I do not have access to any RTX 4060 or 5060 classes of cards. What I do have should allow users to read between the lines and get a good idea of overall performance across a wide range of cards.

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D
• 32GB (2x16GB) G.Skill DDR4-3600
• ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming X Motherboard
• SK Hynix P44 SSD (OS)
• Samsung 980 PRO SSD (Data)
• be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1200 Watt PSU
• Corsair Full Size Case with 3x 120 mm Fans
• Windows 11 Pro

On to the results.

Unigine Superposition

This is an older benchmark, but it really has a nice mix of raster and older shader workloads. The Extreme test really hammers traditional shading and challenges even high end cards.

The RX 9060 XT is only slightly behind the 7700 XT and the recent Arc B580. It also keeps up well with the last gen RTX 4070.

3D Mark Speed Way

The latest RT benchmark pushes all of the latest cards with a complex scene with detailed lighting.

The 9060 XT falls a bit behind the older 7700 XT, but it outclasses the B580 and the now ancient 3060 12GB.

3D Mark Steel Nomad

This is a more balanced benchmark that features some RT effects, but also mimics some of the latest AAA gaming titles in how it handles textures, shading, and geometry.

Here the 9060 XT is a few frames above the 7700 XT and is right next to the RTX 4070. This is a solid showing for the new card.

Forza Horizon 5

Though this title has been out a few years now, it is still an outstanding looking racer with some advance RT features thrown in. Extreme preset is used with all RT features enabled with 4x MSAA.

This is a really good result for the RX 9060 XT as it edges out the older RTX 3080 and is still close to the newer RTX 4070. At 4K the 9060 XT stays above 60 fps average.

Far Cry 6

This title is starting to show its age, but it still is a workout with plenty of RT features thrown in for good measure. It also can easily eat up more than 12 GB of video card memory at Ultra settings with HD textures enabled. All available RT functions are enabled as well as the Ultra preset/HD.

The RX 9060 XT performs very well due to its 16GB of available memory. We can see a dramatic drop at 4K for several cards featuring 12GB or less.

Watch Dogs Legion

Another older title that still holds up well and challenges any card on the market with Extreme settings. The Extreme preset is used with all RT functions enabled. This is another title that will easily fill 10GB or more of video card memory.

The RX 9060 XT holds up well against a lot of its competition, and it features far better 1% lows than cards like the RTX 3080 or 3060. It also takes a step above the 7700 XT thanks to the larger memory pool and the improved RT Cores.

Monster Hunter Wilds Benchmark

This is the newest addition to the benchmark suite and it provides an interesting new graphics engine with all of the latest technologies baked in. I used the Ultra preset, enabled all RT features, and disabled scaling and frame generation.

The 9060 XT falls in the middle of the pack and takes a big step up from the 7700 XT.

Cyberpunk 2077

No review would be complete without a run of the Cyberpunk benchmark. The Ultra preset was used with RT also set to Ultra (no path tracing). Scaling and frame generation were turned off.

I did not include 4K results as they were a slideshow for every card tested. At the lower resolution the 9060 slots under the much pricier RX 7900 XT and it still shows as faster than the RX 7700 XT as well.

Power Consumption

The measurement was taken with a P3 Kill-A-Watt. This measures the entire computer at the wall. Total system power is shown.

The 9060 XT is the second lowest draw of the group, and it absolutely outclasses the now 4 year old 3060 12GB in terms of performance and features. One would certainly hope this was the case. The RTX 4070 is also extremely efficient in terms of consumption for each frame generated. Pay no attention to the 7900 XTX…

Thermals

I checked the overall chip temperature at idle as well as at load using the Speed Way Benchmark.

They 9060 XT had a max temperature of 55C after multiple runs. The cooler worked very well and provided one of the lower measurements that I have had as of recently. Only the massively cooled RX 9070 beat it out by a significant amount.

Boost Clocks

The 9060 XT now has the highest official boost clock that I have measured at the home lab. I’m sure we will see some numbers well beyond that with overclocking, but for now an observed 3.235 GHz is the top.

Conclusion

I am still a little surprised that XFX does not have a bigger footprint in the graphics card market. All of their products that I have tested these past few years have been outstanding. They really stepped up their quality and designs with the RX 6000 series of cards and continued that with the very latest RX 9000 series. Outstanding thermals, low noise, above average build quality, and a solid warranty and support make for a compelling product.

The aesthetics are also something I find appealing. Products like the Swift Radeon RX 9060 XT have a very industrial design without overdoing things with extravagant RGB lighting. All we see with lighting is a very subdued XFX logo in white at the back of the card. It is visually appealing along with the faceted fan shroud and the XFX logo cut into the display back plate.

Performance is good for that $350 level of product (well, $400 in this particular case). It is very comparable to the older RX 7700 XT that was originally priced at $449, all the while providing more memory and about 70 watts lower power consumption in a smaller package. We also see the Intel Arc B580 being offered at retail around $315 US, though it officially is a $249 product. With very little pricing space between a B580 and the 9060 XT, it is a solid win for the AMD part.

Gleaning some results around the web, we noticed that the RX 9060 XT is going to be slower overall than the 5060 Ti 16GB. The RX performs well against the 5060 8GB and 5060 Ti 8GB, but will not surpass the 5060 Ti 16GB. This is not a terrible thing, as the 5060 Ti 16GB will be around $100 to $120 more expensive than the card we have shown here today.

This is a solid launch for AMD, and an even better launch for XFX. The RX 9060 XTs will likely be a popular choice among the budget enthusiasts and the advancements that AMD is doing on the software side will make the product more compelling as the months roll by. XFX has provided a really nice product to consumers with an ultra quiet, ultra cool, and well performing RX 9060 XT that shouldn’t break the bank.