More than ever, today’s PC gaming needs truly cost-effective hardware that lets you enjoy the latest technologies and visual experiences without costing astronomical amounts of money. This is exactly what AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics cards with 16GB of memory from the Gigabyte deliver—GPUs unlocking the latest immersive technologies, lasting well into the future, and providing the ideal upgrade for a wide range of older PCs.
RDNA 4: Advanced shaders, AI accelerators and ray tracing
Graphics cards of the Radeon RX 9000 generation feature AMD’s latest RDNA 4 GPU architecture, which has delivered a significant increase in performance in many respects—from general purpose shader units compute and rasterization graphics across all kinds of older games, through apps and games using artificial intelligence, all the way to today’s most graphically advanced AAA titles utilizing ray tracing effects for photorealistic experiences.
GPUs with RDNA 4 architecture provide high-performance acceleration of ray tracing games thanks to the integration of the third generation dedicated Ray Accelerator units. Their raw performance available for ray tracing effect calculations is twice as high per unit, but they also offer improved capabilities with new technologies such as BVH compression or the unique ability to use BVH structures oriented in space relative to axes, allowing Ray Accelerators to convert their performance more efficiently into high FPS even in demanding scenes.
FSR4: Unprecedented visual quality powered by artificial intelligence
Radeon RX 9000 GPUs, thanks to the RDNA 4 architecture, also come with massively improved applications and games artificial intelligence acceleration capabilities. The second generation I Accelerators in RDNA 4 chips support Sparsity technology and increasee AI compute performance by up to eight times. At the same time, RDNA 4 also introduces support for FP8 data type calculations, important for the use of AI in games.
FP8 support underpins the AI Super Resolution upscaling technology and neural rendering of games in AMD FSR4, which is exclusively offered by Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards. Thanks to FSR4, you can enjoy high frame rates in games while maintaining the best possible image quality through the use of a neural network for upscaling, so that you can get fully immersed in the visual marvels of the latest AAA games.
With FSR Redstone technologies, FSR4 also offers higher-quality AI-based frame generation, providing smooth gameplay with high FPS even at very high resolutions, or in games that run into CPU limits.
Highlights of FSR Redstone especially are the Radiance Caching and Ray Regeneration technologies. These bring a new level of realism in simulating light reflections and complex lighting effects in highly dynamic scenes. Thanks to the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning, Radiance Caching can simulate a complex scene with a much higher number of realistic light rays than would be possible with brute-force processing, while maintaining good performance.
RDNA 4 has also deployed a new redesigned architecture of general purpose compute units with improvements such as dynamic register allocation, execution of memory operations out of order, improved scalar units, as well as increased clock speeds. Thanks to these changes, the architecture has significantly better performance in all games you run on it, and not just in the latest titles.
The capabilities of Radeon RX 9000 GPUs stand out in the latest current games released in recent months. For example, in the popular Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, where you can enjoy faithful light reflections thanks to Ray Regeneration technology, or the continuously improving Delta Force.
Or a game from a completely different genre—Starsand Island, in which you can relax as well as embark on adventures in a magical countryside environment of islands, sea and nature away from the chaos of big cities.
A special chapter is the upcoming open world RPG Crimson Desert from the studio Pearl Abyss, which will utilize the full arsenal of FSR Redstone technologies provided by Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards: its visual presentation will captivate you thanks to Radiance Caching and Ray Regeneration technologies, while at the same time you will enjoy maximum performance thanks to FSR4 Super Resolution and frame generation.
Ready for future gaming
RDNA 4’s advanced architecture with support for the latest game technologies is an investment that will pay off in games that are yet to come in the coming years. Radeon RX 9000 GPUs are ready for them, whether it is demanding ray tracing graphics presenting ever more faithful and richer visual experiences, or the use of artificial intelligence, which opens up new possibilities for how games are programmed and simulated without your graphics card suffering heavy FPS drops.
Large memory instead of painful compromises
A major advantage of Radeon RX 9060 XT GPUs is their 16GB graphics memory. A significant portion of graphics cards today still offer only a small 8GB memory, which is already becoming insufficient for some games. Newer titles will continue to increase demands, so such a limitation will become increasingly problematic. Richer game worlds require more texture data and textures with higher resolutions (and thus size) for new levels of visual presentation.
New technologies that are coming to games, for example in the form of various AI enhancements, will also increase memory demands on their own, since they require storing not only textures and other game data in memory, but also the AI models themselves, which require a relatively large number of parameters for reasonable output quality and thus tens or hundreds of megabytes of memory that must be additionally allocated for each neural network used. Graphics cards with 16GB memory are therefore a much better long-term investment that will last much longer in your PC without you losing the quality of your gaming experience.
Leading price/performance ratio
All this is offered by Radeon RX 9000 at very favorable prices—the performance you get per euro is among the best on the market, whether you choose the affordable Radeon RX 9060 XT or the powerful Radeon RX 9070 XT.
These can be, for example, Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics cards with 16GB memory that we tested directly in our lab:
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Review: Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC 16G
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Review: Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC Ice 16G
Gigabyte Radeon RX 9060 XT Gaming OC 16G can be purchased at Datacomp.sk for 506.80 €.
A hassle-free upgrade for your old faithful gaming setup
However, Radeon RX 9000 graphics cards will run without issues not only in the years to come, but also when installed into an older computer that may have already served you for several years. They still use traditional and proven power delivery via 8-pin PCI Express connectors, which are provided on every ATX power supply, eliminating the need to buy a new PSU or look for adapters. All you need is making sure your existing PSU has adequate wattage.
Upgrading your old GPU with a new Radeon RX 9000 is a matter of seconds—just unplug the cables from the old card and plug them back into the new one. And what may be even more important is the reliability and trouble-free operation of these standard connectors, which has proven to be a potential pitfall of graphics cards using 12+4-pin connectors.
Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics cards are actually particularly suitable for upgrading your older computer for another reason: Most of today’s GPUs in their price category use a narrower PCI Express interface with only eight lanes and rely on higher PCI Express 5.0 speeds to compensate for the missing bandwidth. However, if you install such a card into an older PC where the motherboard and processor only support PCI Express 4.0 or even just PCI Express 3.0 with their much slower lanes, the GPU will lack bandwidth and you will notice reduced performance in games. Therefore, using a GPU with a narrower PCI Express interface as an upgrade for older PCs can be quite problematic.
But the Radeon RX 9060 XT is different in that even as a more affordable graphics card it still retains a full PCI Express 5.0 ×16 interface, which benefits new computers as well, but becomes crucial in older PCs being upgraded with a new gaming GPU, where the use of all 16 lanes prevents performance drops.
Upgraded older computers will also feel a significant benefit from the higher memory capacity of 16GB Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics cards, as this also helps mitigate issues caused by motherboards supporting only PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 4.0. The graphics card does not need to load as much data from system memory and continues to perform well, whereas competing 8GB cards can easily saturate their eight-lane interface with game data transfers and their performance drops significantly.
The right monitor, so that your graphics card can show what it can do
You will get the maximum out of the performance and capabilities of the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB when pairing it with a quality monitor tailor made for immersive gaming. It will pair particularly well with the Gigabyte M27UP monitor which combines a large 27-inch panel with one of the best innovations in gaming monitors in recent years—the so-called dual mode.
Dual Mode: Immersive 4K graphics or fast response with Full HD
Dual mode monitors combine the advantages of two monitors in one: Very fast eSports monitors for competitive gaming can augment your ability to defeat opponents thanks to high refresh rates, but have also always suffered from worse image quality and their low Full HD resolution. On the other hand, you have high-resolution 4K monitors with excellent image quality for visually rich single-player games, but those usually do not have high refresh rates in turn.
The Gigabyte M27UP Dual Mode monitor can fulfill both roles—you can use it in 4K resolution mode with 3840 × 2160 pixels and extremely sharp and detailed graphics, where it still handles a very respectable 160 Hz refresh rate.
However, when playing multiplayer online games, the monitor can be switched to Full HD resolution with a 320 Hz refresh rate for maximum performance and minimal response times. Dual Mode technology thus gives you the best of both worlds without needing two separate monitors on your desk.
Its SS IPS panel with a 1 ms gray-to-gray response time and intelligent automatic Smart Overdrive offers beautiful color vibrance thanks to 95% coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, which is 125% of the standard sRGB color space.
Naturally, this monitor also includes features specifically aimed at gamers—an on-screen crosshair (AI Crosshair), automatic brightness adjustment in dark scenes for better visibility in action, or even a night vision mode and brightness adjustment during sudden flashes, such as when enemies use a flashbang against you.
At the same time, the Gigabyte M27UP provides USB ports with power delivery support as well as a KVM Switch, allowing you to switch between two connected computers or a computer and a laptop.
And this monitor can also be yours for a fairly affordable price, so the bang for buck ratio is very reasonable. Gigabyte M27UP can be purchased at Datacomp.sk for 355.45 €.
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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