A new cheap AMD Radeon gaming GPU is in town, but with a really annoying catch

AMD has quietly announced a new budget-friendly graphics card. Without any fuss, the company has uploaded specs for the non-XT AMD Radeon RX 9060 to its website, with a quick note of its existence also appearing in a recent driver update. However, it looks like it won't be possible to buy it yourself, with reports suggesting that only certain manufacturers of pre-built gaming PCs will have access to it.

The Radeon RX 9060 XT is currently our top budget gaming GPU recommendation in our best graphics card guide, and we were expecting AMD to release a non-XT model to compete against the $249 Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050.  The RX 9060 will still compete with it, but without a wider release, PC builders on tight budgets will only have the option to buy an RTX 5050 instead.

AMD has confirmed that the RNDA 4-based Radeon RX 9060 features 28 compute units (CUs), a modest drop from the 32 CUs available in the 9060 XT, which we put through its paces in our AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT review.

As a result, it only has 1,792 Steam processors, down from 2,048 in the 9060 XT, and only 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM with a 128-bit memory bus. The RX 9060 will also feature a TGP of 132W, with a 450W power supply recommended, and RX 9060 cards using an 8-pin power connector.  Some details about the RX 9060, such as GPU clock speeds, are still unclear at this stage.

On paper, with 8GB VRAM and with specs that suggest a modest downgrade from the RX 9060 XT, this would be a pretty reasonable competitor to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050. However, Tom's Hardware has reported, based on a press release that it has obtained, that AMD won't be releasing this GPU to the general public at all.

Instead, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 will only be available with PCs from "select system integrators," meaning manufacturers that build gaming PCs, although it doesn't mention which companies are involved at this stage.

This decision would give Nvidia a wider berth in the ultra-budget gaming GPU market with the RTX 5050. While that GPU isn't breaking any performance records, its $249 price tag leaves the RTX 5050 as the only option available for 1080p gaming PC builders who can't afford the extra cost of an RTX 5060 or 9060 XT.

It's just a shame that it looks like we won't see the RX 9060 non-XT compete like-for-like as an option that gamers can pick up themselves. With any luck, we'll still see some decent AMD-powered pre-built machines with affordable prices hitting the shelves.

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