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AMD sent us a PowerColor Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB Reaper card for the launch review, and it’s as close as we’re likely to get to “reference” performance. The Reaper line was introduced by PowerColor with the RX 9070 XT / RX 9070 launch and represents a baseline model. Things like cooling, aesthetics, RGB lighting, and thermals are all tied into the card design, while the out-of-the-box performance usually falls within a relatively narrow window. Few graphics cards come with more than a few percent overclock by default, and while you can certainly push some models further than others, that’s true of any modern GPU.
Despite the basic design, the 9060 XT Reaper still appears to have a modest overclock. PowerColor lists a 2620 MHz Game Clock, which is 90 MHz higher than AMD’s official reference clock. The boost clock also gets a modest bump, up to 3230 MHz from the reference 3130 MHz. However, it’s important to note that boost clocks represent the maximum clock from the GPU on AMD’s RDNA 4 cards, where Nvidia’s boost clock tends to be a conservative average clock speed. AMD’s Game Clock sort of serves a similar purpose, except it’s even more conservative than Nvidia’s approach. Average clocks, according to our testing, end up at around 2950 MHz — 330 MHz higher than the rated Game Clock and 280 MHz below the maximum boost clock. YMMV.
The Reaper card has a compact form factor, measuring 200x100x39 mm. It comes with two custom 87mm fans that have integrated rims, which helps improve static pressure and airflow. With a 160W rated power use, such a design shouldn’t have much difficulty, though larger triple-fan cards would naturally be able to run even cooler and quieter — but those wouldn’t fit in some of the places where this dual fan Reaper can go.
In a slight change of pace from the usual, the Reaper comes with just three video ports: two DisplayPort 2.1a ports and a single HDMI 2.1b port. The DP2.1 ports are rated for UHBR13.5, so a maximum bitrate of 54 Gbps compared to Nvidia Blackwell’s UHBR20 and 80 Gbps. The HDMI port only offers 48 Gbps by comparison, though both are capable of driving a 4K 240Hz monitor with DSC (Display Stream Compression) enabled.
Interestingly, while Nvidia opted for a PCIe 5.0 x8 electrical link on its RTX 5060-class GPUs, AMD’s Navi 44 and the RX 9060 XT still get the full PCIe 5.0 x16 electrical and physical connectivity. AMD’s previous generation RX 7600 XT / RX 7600 had PCIe 4.0 x8 links, so there’s up to four times as much link bandwidth for the slot this round. It doesn’t seem like that’s something that would really be necessary, but for older systems that only support PCIe 4.0 or even 3.0 speeds, the full-size x16 connector could be beneficial.
As we’ll likely see with most RX 9060 XT cards, PowerColor uses a single 8-pin power connector, located toward the rear of the card. There’s no need for a 16-pin connector here, or even dual 8-pin connections, as a single 8-pin connector can supply up to 150W of power. The PCIe slot provides for another 75W, which should be sufficient for the vast majority of users.
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