Reviewers Bemused by Restrictive Sampling of RX 9060 XT 8 GB Cards

[Bwaze]

It's weird that people are actually defending both AMD and Nvidia in their effort to limit the reviews of their "low end" 8 GB cards - often with excuse that this is anyway below some threshold tech enthusiasts (should or do) have, and that people who watch reviews are only interested in higher performance / better equipped models.

Like we're talking some ultra cheap stuff? This is still enough money to buy you a cutting edge gaming console! And by the state of Steam hardware survey, this is definitely the range most gamers actually use - not 2000+ USD flagships.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Which is why im calling HUB a clickbaiting drama channel than an actual reviewer.

It's not that hard to break them i got the 5060ti 8 in today and wow it's bad

 

[JustBenching]

It's not that hard to break them i got the 5060ti 8 in today and wow it's bad

But I can argue the same about every card is the point. Im sure you can manage to break your 4090 easily.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

But I can argue the same about every card is the point. Im sure you can manage to break your 4090 easily.

It’s worse than my 6700XT was in some games to me that's ridiculous considering it was 80 less.

 

[JustBenching]

It's weird that people are actually defending both AMD and Nvidia in their effort to limit the reviews of their "low end" 8 GB cards

Companies like nvidia and amd are sending out - out of pocket - review samples etc to gain something back out of them. That much is / should be obvious, right? They get exposure among other things. If those companies suddenly realize that reviews are going to harm their sales, OBVIOUSLY they will not and they should not send out review samples, it's completely unreasonably batshit crazy to expect them to pay out of pocket for something that will harm their bottomline.

It’s worse than my 6700XT was in some games to me that's ridiculous considering it was 80 less.

Your 6700xt was equally breakable back when it was released, enable RT and boom single digits. Was it such a huge drama though? Did people keep posting video after video about it?

There is a way to expose 8gb vram cards without being obnoxious. Drop settings until they match the 16gb version in performance and then put them side by side to show the image quality difference. That's the proper way to do it. Using them at uber ultra settings and then showing them drop tot 1 fps like hub does is just not it - cause nobody will use the card like that.

 

[Bwaze]

Companies like nvidia and amd are sending out - out of pocket - review samples etc to gain something back out of them. That much is / should be obvious, right? They get exposure among other things. If those companies suddenly realize that reviews are going to harm their sales, OBVIOUSLY they will not and they should not send out review samples, it's completely unreasonably batshit crazy to expect them to pay out of pocket for something that will harm their bottomline.

In this culture of demonizing press a lot of people actually applaud that - why should a company provide for the freeloaders that only make a living by making reviews of free samples? Fuck them! You can do your own research! Or better yet, just blindly believe the marketing!

 

[JustBenching]

In this culture of demonizing press a lot of people actually applaud that - why should a company provide for the freeloaders that only make a living by making reviews of free samples? Fuck them! You can do your own research! Or better yet, just blindly believe the marketing!

If you are talking about me, im not applauding that, but im being realistic. If you had a company yourself, you made a product that you knew would sell great but you also knew a specific reviewer would trash it , would you send him a sample and harm your sales? I wouldn't.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Companies like nvidia and amd are sending out - out of pocket - review samples etc to gain something back out of them. That much is / should be obvious, right? They get exposure among other things. If those companies suddenly realize that reviews are going to harm their sales, OBVIOUSLY they will not and they should not send out review samples, it's completely unreasonably batshit crazy to expect them to pay out of pocket for something that will harm their bottomline.


Your 6700xt was equally breakable back when it was released, enable RT and boom single digits. Was it such a huge drama though? Did people keep posting video after video about it?

There is a way to expose 8gb vram cards without being obnoxious. Drop settings until they match the 16gb version in performance and then put them side by side to show the image quality difference. That's the proper way to do it. Using them at uber ultra settings and then showing them drop tot 1 fps like hub does is just not it - cause nobody will use the card like that.

To be fair RT sucks on it as well and that's Nvidia MO it's awesome at Call of Duty and Fortnite though what it's primarily going to be used for.

But man the last Nvidia 8GB card I built with was a 3060ti and that was so much better.

I'll have 5-6 hours with it this weekend before it goes to the customer to get a better feel only tried it at 1440p

 

[Bwaze]

If you are talking about me, im not applauding that, but im being realistic. If you had a company yourself, you made a product that you knew would sell great but you also knew a specific reviewer would trash it , would you send him a sample and harm your sales? I wouldn't.

Of course all this was possible before, but now it's almost inevitable. Nvidia is basically the most valuable company in the world. With all the power that comes with that - it's far more powerful and influential than most countries!

And gaming, as much as it created the company and put it in this position is basically only a portion of the side business! "Gaming and AI PC" is both only 8.6% of last quarter's revenue, how much of that is just gaming, not purchases / smuggling to build LLM / AI acceleration rigs?

 

[JustBenching]

Of course all this was possible before, but now it's almost inevitable. Nvidia is basically the most valuable company in the world. With all the power that comes with that - it's far more powerful and influential than most countries!

And gaming, as much as it created the company and put it in this position is basically only a portion of the side business! "Gaming and AI PC" is both only 8.6% of last quarter's revenue, how much of that is just gaming, not purchases / smuggling to build LLM / AI acceleration rigs?

8.6% is still a large pie for then to abandon. Latest data came in, nvidias marketshare increased to 92%. Amd is sharing the remaining 8% with intel (although i assume intel is at less than 1%.).



Eg1. Nvm, intel is at 0, lol

 

[Bwaze]

Both AMD and Intel aren't eying to take the portion of the (diminishing) gaming sector - all their plans in GPU right now revolve about how to enter the lucrative server AI business. Hell, even decades old AIB graphics card makers are entering server sector, that's where the money is...

 

[Macro Device]

They are blindly failing to see the need for budget cards by an ENTIRE market sector

They are doing the opposite, actually. 8 GB cards belong, correct, in budget sector. But budget sector is WAY below four benjies. Both NV and AMD are asking insane money for 8 GB pieces. I might agree with a 300 dollar 8 GB card if it's slot powered, tiny and stuff but these are full-blown 145+ W devices that are sometimes size of a truck. And they have a lot of calculating power that's not useful because they run out of VRAM in modern games.

8GB cards perform just fine

In ancient games they do. Sometimes.

Anyone who has a problem with 8GB cards can't see the forest for the trees. Very narrow thinking.

What's narrow is the VRAM buffer here. If you're fine with an absolute stagnation it doesn't mean whoever's not is a gonzo. They feed us 3 to 4 C-note 8 GB cards for years now and this frankly has to stop. Whoever bought 2060 when it was brand new only ran out of VRAM in outlier scenarios trying to do something extreme like maxed out 4K gaming (when, honestly, even 500 GB of VRAM couldn't've saved this GPU as it's too slow anyway).

Today, 5060 Ti can't even do maxed out 720p gaming. Well, it can if you buy a 16 GB model, then it's perfectly fine even for most 1440p and it's decent at 4K if you don't mind some DLSS and can live without advanced RT. But an 8 GB version dies.

Both NV and AMD know that. Yet they still do that. I'm sick of shrinkflated food supplies, why should I suffer from shrinkflated GPUs, too? I'm not okay with it. Once again: I have no grudge against 8 GB VRAM per se, it's okay to see this option. What's not okay is seeing 300+ USD price tag alongside it.

 

[Hiner101]

When you feel like there’s nothing left to hold onto...

It seems the NVIDIA media disinformation division and their supporters are working overtime.

After the worst launch in the company’s history, wouldn’t it be better for them to focus on their users and fix their graphics cards?
I understand they might be busy for something else, especially since they recently announced they’ve resolved issues affecting the Blackwell GPUs dedicated to AI servers. Yet, every few months since last summer, we hear that everything is fixed and production is ramping up, but then they are still facing the same problems. In a couple of weeks, we’ll likely see another announcement claiming they’ve solved the issues.
The reality is that Blackwell is probably a disaster even on the server side. Unfortunately, NVIDIA keeps its large customers chained to its ecosystem, leading large companies to swallow their pride and stay silent for fear of retaliation.
Their contracts are quite different from a simple purchase of cards and include confidentiality clauses. Moreover, if you don't have NVIDIA engineers coming to your facility and fix your problems (since it's a proprietary ecosystem), how do you resolve any other issues? So it's better to stay "quiet".

Consumer side we’re dealing with GPUs that catch fire, melting connectors, black screens, constant driver crashes, reboots, and display issues. There are defective GPUs with incomplete dies and missing ROPs (even in laptops and who knows in server GPUs). The so-called multi-frame generation is being marketed as something it’s not, alongside the scandal of reviews and threats against reviewers who dare to not "align" with them and forcing reviewers to publish data only as they want. Recent also othere new compatibility issues with the 5060 and 5060Ti. A chaos mitigated only by users blind brand loyalty.

And what’s their solution? To throw some mud at their competitors, fabricating stories out of thin air just to create a distraction. Look at how far they’ve fallen.

Moreover, take a close look at that internal document given to reviewers, which clearly states that AMD doesn’t ask for anything in return, just professional integrity and adherence to the review embargo dates. It even specifies that negative reviews won’t affect future sample availability. Quite a contrast to NVIDIA’s “practices,” wouldn’t you say? Well done, AMD!

 

[lexluthermiester]

What's narrow is the VRAM buffer here. If you're fine with an absolute stagnation it doesn't mean whoever's not is a gonzo.

And that is you failing to see the focus of these cards. They are budget offerings directed at the folks who can't or won't spend more. I suppose you and others are going to bitch & moan even more when the 5050 6GB card are released, am I right? Just let it go. If YOU don't want one, don't buy one.

In ancient games they do. Sometimes.

As the benchmarks CLEARLY have shown, that is not remotely correct. Also keep in mind, those benchmarks? Yeah, they're run at max settings. Come on man, you're smart guy, you can figure this out.

 

[Macro Device]

And that is you failing to see the focus of these cards.

What if the focus is wrong? GPUs marketed as 1080p beasts can't max 1080p out in almost every new AAA title. Sometimes to the point you gotta enable upscaling on top of lowering textures to the bare minimum if you want steady 60+ FPS.

They are budget offerings directed at the folks who can't or won't spend more.

They don't even offer sensible value. Why would one care what's the purpose of the GPU if the GPU fails to serve it? People might be unable to pay more than 400 USD but they pay SIGNIFICANT money for a GPU that can't do modern games at settings higher than low or, if you're lucky, medium. Yeah, sure, economy is a little whacked, 300 bucks of yesterday ain't 300 bucks of today but it hasn't been that bad of inflation. Not to the "400-dollar GPUs of 2025 should struggle with modern game worse than 150-dollar GPUs from 2019 did" extent.

I suppose you and others are going to bitch & moan even more when the 5050 6GB card are released, am I right?

If the price is right then why do that? But it's not gonna be right, this market is terminally ill. I'll actively boycott these GPUs as well.

As the benchmarks CLEARLY have shown, that is not remotely correct.

They have only shown a King Kong sized gap between texture losing meta-stable 8 GB GPUs and perfectly playable 16 GB ones. Keep in mind most people who would buy an under 400 USD GPU have relatively old systems, sometimes with PCI-e 3.0. This makes 8 GB cards even worse.

Yeah, they're run at max settings.

This could've excused a 250-dollar GPU when it's one or maybe two Crysis-alike super dooper AAA+ tech demos failing to run smoothly maxed out at 1080p but when it's a systemic failure in at least a dozen modern titles when you pay 300+? I don't even know Russian words to describe it, let alone English ones.

8 GB cards sold for 300+ USD should be a thing of the past.

 

[lexluthermiester]

What if the focus is wrong?

It isn't. The focus of these cards it to offer budget models for that market sector. The focus is fine.

Sometimes to the point you gotta enable upscaling on top of lowering textures to the bare minimum if you want steady 60+ FPS.

Adjusting settings is a part of the experience. Budget Gaming 101.

They don't even offer sensible value.

That's your opinion, not supported by the benchmark numbers found in the reviews.

8 GB cards sold for 300+ USD should be a thing of the past.

Again, that is your opinion. It's not supported by fact of reality. If it was profitable for companies to sell them at a price lower than $300, they would do it. It isn't, so they don't.

 

[Macro Device]

Adjusting settings is a part of the experience. Budget Gaming 101.

Never to THIS extent. 4060 dealt with games from 2023 better than 5060 Ti deals with games from 2025. And by a significant enough margin. Now tell me what the heck happened these two years that 380 dollars should buy you a worse product than 300 dollars did two years ago?

4060 failed to deliver 60+ FPS in two games. Not far away from it though.

5060 Ti, however, failed to do so in four games, and one game is seriously lagging behind 60 FPS. And this chart doesn't even show where the textures were missing or corrupted.

That's your opinion, not supported by the benchmark numbers found in the reviews.

Let me just ignore this because it's just "you fool" for the sake of "you fool". Every benchmark suite full of recent games shows an 8 GB card user must lower their settings everywhere, sometimes to the bare minimum, for the game to become sufferable. Comfortable gameplay only exists in older games and a limited number of recent ones that still surprisingly fit within this 8 GB buffer.

If it was profitable for companies to sell them at a price lower than $300, they would do it. It isn't, so they don't.

They don't do it because:
• nVidia face NO competition so they do whatever.
• AMD want it this way so they offer exactly the same pisspoor value every year so the leaps are actually tiny steps.
Both companies experience extraordinary super profits throughout the last five or so years. $300 is not even remotely close to what these GPUs actually cost them. Even 150 bucks is a vast stretch.

Companies are not our friends. And these two both reek of excessive greed.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Let me just ignore this because it's just "you fool" for the sake of "you fool".

Not at all. It's a "RTFM" kind of suggestion because the reviews of the 5060 8GB clearly show it's a good performer, regardless of the naysaying. The 9060 8GB should perform in the same ballpark.

Companies are not our friends.

No, they're in business to be in business.

And these two both reek of excessive greed.

No, they're trying to stay in business by selling GPUs at prices that allow them to both justify the effort and make a profit. There's nothing wrong with that and it's not evil. Business Management 101.

$300 is not even remotely close to what these GPUs actually cost them.

That's your opinion. I've worked in manufacturing, I've been a reseller and am currently a retailer. $300 MSRP for these cards are barely pulling a 25% margin for NVidia and less for resellers and retailers. These cards are not a massive profit making product. You're not a part of the supply chain and thus have zero qualifications to offer your above statement with any degree of merit. Proof you ask?...

Even 150 bucks is a vast stretch.

... this.

So when the reviewing community blasts them for making a set of cards that make very little profit as to benefit the budget sector of the market, we can't expect them to be very nice to said reviewer community. And yes, NVidia and AMD are actually doing the world a bit of a favor by selling these budget models. They don't have to and they're not a great money maker.

 

[josge]

Every benchmark suite full of recent games shows an 8 GB card user must lower their settings everywhere, sometimes to the bare minimum, for the game to become sufferable.

While i do agree that any gpu that comes today at 300$+ should have at least 12gb, i haven't find a single game that needed to drop settings everyhere in order to play it properly, and i've played a lot of recent AAA titles (like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Doom TDA, Stalker 2, Space Marine 2 and Silent Hill 2).

 

[oxrufiioxo]

While i do agree that any gpu that comes today at 300$+ should have at least 12gb, i haven't find a single game that needed to drop settings everyhere in order to play it properly, and i've played a lot of recent AAA titles (like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Doom TDA, Stalker 2, Space Marine 2 and Silent Hill 2).

It's 100% a cost thing and while I think there can be a debate at at 299 and below, $350 or more should definitely come with 12 or more. On an Nvidia RTX card with 8GB while upscaling from 720p you are going to be fine in almost every game and with Transformer that upscale is decent enough I imagine it would be close enough on an RDNA4 card with FSR4 they just really need to get it into more games.

I fully believe Nvidia feels that's what users should be doing with the 8GB cards. I don't agree with it but given their earning report I would say they know a lot better than me.

Beyond that it's mostly console ports that will give people issues but I would argue they will still get an overall better experience than buying a Series S and likely a better experience than buying a PS5/Series X. With only the PS5 pro giving them an actually better experience.

 

[dark_globe]

I've been a reseller and am currently a retailer.

and as such it is understandable that you are defending these 8gb overprised cards from both companies
because you are actively trying to sell them as part of your stock supply (i assume)
so of course you can´t say they are "not so great" .

your defending position is based on "but look in 95% games they perform the same" -
yes that may be true but if even as much as 10 recent and popular games more demanding on VRAM exist and
if you put 8gb and 16gb model side by side and you find out that the 16gb model
can run certain games at max. or near max. settings while the 8gb model with otherwise the exact same compute power
is a stuttery mess and you have to dial down textures to mid. in order to play the game smoothly than of course it is going to raise questions ...

companies are not our friends and when it comes to gpu market it was never so apparent as it has been these past 2 or 3 years .
AMD and nvidia are doing the same thing intel was doing on a CPU market for years not so long ago -
selling us 4 core cpus for almost a decade with almost zero progress (except those quad core cpus were actually pretty OK compared to these 8gb cards for $300-400 in 2025)

No, they're trying to stay in business by selling GPUs at prices that allow them to both justify the effort and make a profit

except it gets to the point when it is no longer justifiable ...
making profit is great as long as you are offering a decent product which is no longer the case ...

you mentioned people are gonna "lose it" when 6gb rtx 5050 gets released
well a low profile video card powered by pcie slot only? yeah sure bring it if the price is right (i´m all for it)
there are plenty of people who want to play older AAA titles or less VRAM demanding newer games at 1080p on a 50w video card ...
make it $150 and we can talk ...

8gb rtx 5060 for $300 is a bad product simple as that ...
8gb 9060xt for $300 is a bad product simple as that ...
8gb rtx 5060Ti for almost $400 is a bad product simple as that ...
16gb 9060xt for $350 is decent and we can even go as far as to call it "customer friendly" video card given the current state of the GPU market .

$300 MSRP for these cards are barely pulling a 25% margin for NVidia and less for resellers and retailers. These cards are not a massive profit making product.

i doubt you actually have real unbiased numbers as to how much nvidia or AMD is actually making on these cards .
i worked in similar field coming into contact with people from companies like samsung etc. and i know for a fact that their margins even on more budget oriented TVs
or washing machines etc. were higher than this ...

So when the reviewing community blasts them for making a set of cards that make very little profit as to benefit the budget sector of the market, we can't expect them to be very nice to said reviewer community. And yes, NVidia and AMD are actually doing the world a bit of a favor by selling these budget models. They don't have to and they're not a great money maker.

this straight up amused me ...
in one section you talk how they are doing business and they are here to make profit
yet here you say they are basically doing it from the kindness of their heart . we should thank them i guess ... lol

on the contrary these mid tier cards are the best money makers for both companies ,
most people are buying these cards instead of class 80 or class 90 and they are the ones getting most sc.we.d over (often without even knowing what they are actually buying) ...

 

[Dr. Dro]

While i do agree that any gpu that comes today at 300$+ should have at least 12gb, i haven't find a single game that needed to drop settings everyhere in order to play it properly, and i've played a lot of recent AAA titles (like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Doom TDA, Stalker 2, Space Marine 2 and Silent Hill 2).

This computer is the very definition of average. R5 3600, midrange CPU from 6 years ago. RTX 4060, previous generation's lowest end desktop card. And it's running games very well, with frame rates comfortably above 60. Of course this machine won't handle 4K ultra. And that's fine.

What more do people want?

8gb rtx 5060 for $300 is a bad product simple as that ...
8gb 9060xt for $300 is a bad product simple as that ...
8gb rtx 5060Ti for almost $400 is a bad product simple as that ...
16gb 9060xt for $350 is decent and we can even go as far as to call it "customer friendly" video card given the current state of the GPU market .

This "opinion" we're attempting to standardize is nonsense and has no basis in reality. These prices just aren't practicable in this economic environment. The market just isn't compatible with the prices you guys want, and there's no way around this until gaming GPUs are intentionally built one node behind the cards they'll sell for AI and volume is ramped up massively. Economic incentive to do so: zero. Technical incentive to do so? Zero.

on the contrary these mid tier cards are the best money makers for both companies ,
most people are buying these cards instead of class 80 or class 90 and they are the ones getting most sc.we.d over (often without even knowing what they are actually buying) ...

No, they aren't. High margin products with moderate to high demand (aka cards like the RTX 5090) are what make the entire business profitable. Selling 500 cards at $300 with a $50 profit or selling 50 cards at $2000 with a $1400 profit... do the math...

 

[lexluthermiester]

And that's fine.

Exactly.

Additionally, someone doesn't seem to realize they're on my ignore list... I've had my fill of DarkYoda's silly nonsense.

 

[Bwaze]

No, they aren't. High margin products with moderate to high demand (aka cards like the RTX 5090) are what make the entire business profitable. Selling 500 cards at $300 with a $50 profit or selling 50 cards at $2000 with a $1400 profit... do the math...

Demonstratively false. As someone else summed from Steam survey, all the mid and high end Nvidia cards only account for 20%, all the rest is low end. Also, do the math on GPU sizes between low end and high end cards. High end cards are so rare in reality we might dismiss them altogether.

———————————————

As for the steam stats:
4090 is at 0.90% at #28th place.
3090 is at 0.48% at #49th place.
5090 does not even appear in the list.

Only 3070 appears on the TOP10. No other 70, 80 or 90 class card is in the TOP10.

2070, 2070S, 2080, 2080S and 2080 Ti combined are only 2,55%. This is less than any of the top 7 cards individually. Not exactly 50% of the market.
3070 variants, 3080 variants and 3090 combined fare better at 7,51% combined.
4070 variants, 4080 variants and 4090 combined are at 9,79% combined.
5070 variants and 5080 combined are only at 1,5% combined.

Combining all these percentages for the 20, 30, 40 and 50 series cards results at 21,35%.

 

[dark_globe]

Exactly.

Additionally, someone doesn't seem to realize they're on my ignore list... I've had my fill of DarkYoda's silly nonsense.

apparently you are still reading it so jokes on you
and if anyone is posting "silly nonsense" it´s you my friend
but from here on out i´m not gonna bother , this is the last time i´m reacting to your post .

No, they aren't. High margin products with moderate to high demand (aka cards like the RTX 5090) are what make the entire business profitable. Selling 500 cards at $300 with a $50 profit or selling 50 cards at $2000 with a $1400 profit... do the math...

wrong ...
high end products are just there to showcase technological inovations and in this case also demonstrate dominance over AMD in high end .
they are not here to make the "real" bulk of companies profits , they exist to draw customers in ,
to make them feel like they want to become the "part of the family" by buying a lower end product from a leading company ...
it´s basic marketing psychology ...
every big brand is doing it - they draw you in , they intrigue you and than they offer you a dialed down product
with almost the same set of features as the high end product has for a "fraction of its price" ...

and then they make real money on a mid tier products - it works the same for TVs , washing machines , refrigerators ... you name it ...

nvidia is making far more on these cards than you think they are .
the estimated volume of rtx 4090s that have been sold worldwide is between 100-160K units overall ...
whereas rtx 4060s sold in millions and they are much cheaper to make ... it is not hard to figure out where the real money and real profits are ...