Synthetic Benchmarks
As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. With the RX 9060 XT being a new GPU, I’m not comparing the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC with any other 9060 XT but I do want to focus on how it compares to the RX 7600 XT and RX 7600 from AMDs last generation of cards and the 6750 XT from the generation before that, Nvidia’s new RTX 5060 Ti that I recently tested, and other Nvidia cards in that same range like the RTX 4060 Ti, RTX 3070, etc. Sadly I don’t have the RTX 5060 in to compare just yet, but hopefully soon.
The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The RX 9060 XT Challenger OC scored a 38923 in the base Fire Strike test putting it right with the RX 6750 XT, below the RTX 4070, and ahead of the RTX 3070 Ti. In Fire Strike Extreme it scored 18501 and this time the RX 6740 XT edged out in front just slightly and the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC was right with the RTX 3070 Ti. Then in Fire Strike Ultra, it scored a 9436 here it is at the top of a group of cards all at nearly the same score including the 3070 Ti and the 6750 XT but also this time the RTX 5060 Ti as well.
The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. In the base Time Spy test the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC jumped up ahead of the 6750 XT and the 3070 Ti and was running just below the RTX 5060 Ti with a score of 16162. In Time Spy Extreme the result was similar but the 5060 Ti did pull ahead slightly putting the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC just below it and ahead of the RTX 3070 Ti with a score of 7384.
I did also test using the new 3DMark Speed Way which is one of their latest benchmarks and Port Royal as well. Speed Way is DX12 as well but combines more future-focused tech like Ray Tracing which up until its release where only used in feature tests, not full benchmarks. The RX 9060 XT Challenger OC dropped down the charts here. It scored a 2880 on Speed Way but that put it behind the RTX 3060 Ti and ahead of the RTX 4060, it was still noticeably ahead of the RX 6750 XT which shows the improvement AMD has made. For Port Royal, it’s a little farther up in the chart sitting ahead of the RX 7700 XT but below the RX 6800 XT and 2500 points ahead of the RX 6750 XT.
I also ran the newer 3Dmark Steel Nomad benchmark. Officially this is the replacement for the Time Spy benchmark. It is a DX12 benchmark and doesn’t include ray tracing but is updated to better take advantage of modern cards. The RX 9060 XT Challenger OC scored a 3706 and is sitting just ahead of the RTX 5060 Ti and just a hair behind the RX 6800 XT.
Last up I also ran the 3DMark FSR 2 comparison tool on the RX 9060 XT Challenger OC. This doesn’t test the newer FSR 3 or the latest FSR 4 but it does still give us a look at the difference in performance just the detail settings can make. The RX 9060 XT Challenger OC came in at 22.19 FPS without FSR 2 on at all, turning it on at the highest quality ran at 43.2 FPS, the balanced setting was 51.85 FSP and the performance setting took that up to 64.17 FPS. The most impressive though is the ultra performance setting which jumped up to 100.79 FPS.
