This should've been Nvidia’s victory lap after a fairly successful round of high-end GPUs. The RTX 5080 and RTX 5070 were expensive and hard to find at launch, but the performance was impressive for those who could get their hands on one. Most people spend less than $500 on a graphics card, and they've been waiting patiently for their turn to go shopping.
Unfortunately, the RTX 5060 falls short of its similarly priced AMD counterpart, and the gap gets even worse when any pressure is applied. Simply put, I think you should find an extra $50 or $100 in your budget for either an RTX 5060 Ti (7/10, WIRED Review) or AMD’s RX 9060 XT (8/10, WIRED Review).
The upside is that this card is likely to fit into almost any case that will take a full-height GPU, and most users won't need a new power supply. I doubt that will be much consolation to the budget-minded gamers hoping for a worthwhile upgrade in the $300 range.
Gaming
I shared the 3DMark benchmarks in my RX 9060 XT review, and I'll say pretty much the same thing here: They tend to offer a nice view of comparative performance in a vacuum, but they don't always reflect how games will actually play.
Courtesy of Brad Bourque
In this case, they do a pretty good job summarizing the situation. At lower performance levels, Nvidia’s option has better optimization, but in more demanding benchmarks, the AMD option takes the lead. That pattern continues into real-world gaming benchmarks.
Courtesy of Brad Bourque
The RTX 5060 slides in just ahead of the RX 9060 XT at 1080p, but the difference is measured in inches. Importantly, it loses to the AMD offering in both Cyberpunk 2077 and Avowed, the most graphically adept and newest games in my test suite, respectively. That's a strong indication of where even 1080p performance is headed over the next few years.