AMD’s cheapest RDNA 3 graphics card has already dropped under MSRP, despite only being released back in December ’22. A sign of wider GPU price drops to come? Uh, probably not. There are a lot of other pricing factors involved in that. But it is likely some result of AMD and Nvidia’s constant competition.
It’s been such a long time since we’ve seen this sort of price reduction early on in a graphics card’s lifespan, but lo and behold there are two RX 7900 XT listed over on Newegg for under MSRP of $899. There was a third even cheaper model earlier, too, a BioStar reference card, but after it was spotted by Videocardz it shot back up in price.
Still, there’s the ASRock-branded reference RX 7900 XT and third-party-designed XFX Merc 310 on sale for $880 right now. A price reduction from MSRP on both counts, if only a small one.
And what might be the cause for such a price drop? Supply and demand, for one. If retailers have inventory of a graphics card to shift and they’re not flying out the door quick enough, a price reduction will surely help.
Though the elephant in the room is Nvidia’s RTX 4070 Ti.
Nvidia launched the RTX 4070 Ti last month with an MSRP of $799, a whole $100 cheaper than the RX 7900 XT. These two cards trade blows in our testing at 4K, with the Radeon occasionally a nose ahead in regular rasterized gaming. However, the RTX 4070 Ti can offer faster performance in some games. It also has the added benefit of Nvidia’s DLSS 3 upscaling and DLSS Frame Generation, which can deliver a major uplift in frame rate in a compatible game.
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You’ll not always find the RTX 4070 Ti for exactly its MSRP today, but sometimes a sale will bring one tumbling down in price; like this Asus TUF RTX 4070 Ti for $800. Importantly, the GeForce is regularly cheaper than the RX 7900 XT by some margin, and I’m not convinced that’s a battle for customer’s cash the Radeon card is going to win all that often.
One thing’s for sure: both AMD and Nvidia’s cheapest current-gen graphics cards remain too expensive today. I’d like to see both cards take a tumble into the realms of reasonably affordable. I’d also like to think AMD is taking these pricing battles into consideration when deciding on price tags for its more mainstream RDNA 3 graphics cards. But pricing is tighter down at the lower-end of the market, and so far my personal hopes and dreams have yet to actually impact the graphics card market all that much. Darn.