We’re only days away from one of the biggest launches AMD has ever put together, involving both its Zen 2-based processors, and Navi-based Radeon graphics cards. That’s not to mention the updated AM4 platform with X570, which debuts things like PCIe 4.0 to gamers and creators. It’s without question an exciting time for AMD, and it feels like its momentum is only ever building lately.
On the CPU side, things are almost ridiculously fun. Intel is about to be given an extremely hard fight if AMD’s promises live up, with more cores for less cash (but more cache). Ultimately, Ryzen screams value, but that’s unfortunately not the impression Radeon has been making lately. Since the unveiling of RX 5700 series pricing, the internet has been vocal about its targeted pricing. Then NVIDIA came along with SUPER, and welp, the green side of the fence has completely slimed the red side.
In response to NVIDIA’s SUPER, AMD has decided to drop the price of both of its RX 5700 series GPUs ahead of their launch. Updated pricing is $399 for the RX 5700 XT, reflecting a $50 drop, and $349 for the RX 5700, a drop of $30. The higher-clocked 50th anniversary SKU also sees a price drop, now sitting at $449 (the old XT slot). These prices still include the three-month subscription to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass, which has just debuted on PC, and will soon offer the highly-anticipated Gears of War 5. If you like racing games, we’d also highly recommend checking out Forza Horizon 4.
Nonetheless, this price drop is ultimately great for the consumer, but not particularly great for either AMD or NVIDIA. AMD obviously loses out on better margins, but NVIDIA caused itself to get much stronger competition in an instant. Unfortunately for AMD, a price drop ahead of launch doesn’t give a great impression of confidence in its own product, but considering SUPER didn’t exist until this week, it’s a little hard to fault the company for the move.
For consumers, we’re seeing a direct example of what competition can do. With the weekend upon us, we’re sure many AMDers are due a strong bitter tonight.