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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 (opens in new tab) 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 (opens in new tab) it shot back up in price.
Still, there’s the ASRock-branded reference (opens in new tab) RX 7900 XT and third-party-designed XFX Merc 310 (opens in new tab) 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 (opens in new tab).
Nvidia launched the RTX 4070 Ti last month with an MSRP of $799, a whole $100 cheaper than the RX 7900 XT (opens in new tab). 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.
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 (opens in new tab). 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.
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