Confirmed: AMD’s Navi RX 5700 Graphics Cards Will Be Cheaper Than We Thought

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Updated 7/5/2019, 5pm Eastern: AMD has confirmed to us via email that its upcoming Navi RX 5700 XT, RX 5700, and RX 5700 XT 50th Anniversary Edition graphics cards  are indeed getting pre-launch price cuts of between $30 and $50, as VideoCardz reported earlier. 

In the email, the company also seems to acknowledge that Nvidia’s Super cards are the impetus for the change, while simultaneously putting a positive spin on the whole thing:

Zhiye Liu
Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

23 Comments Comment from the forums
  • TCA_ChinChin
    This makes things more competitive, but its still not really a win for AMD. Turing has been out for a while now and even if RT cores aren't really as useful as Nvidia make them out to be, they are still an extra compared to Navi. At least it seems that power efficiency for AMD isn't 2 generations behind like it was and there are finally more (AMD) choices for a potential customer. Its certainly different, where the previous generation was an obvious price to performance leader compared to Nvidia, while this one tries to match.
    Reply
  • tennis2
    Nvidia lowers it's price/performance points a week ahead of AMD GPU launch.
    AMD in-turn lowers it's price/performance points to match.

    ...shocker....

    Nvidia has been without real competition in their Turing cards, so they're pushing prices as high as the market will tolerate. Once competition (eminently) appears, they can lower pricing without much pain. AMD, having less market share than Nvidia, and being behind on power consumption, needs to always sit below Nvidia on the price/performance curve, or they won't sell any product. Therefore, AMD looks to Nvidia to set GPU costs, and has to conform to that structure at slightly lower pricing.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    AMD here's our new card it competes with nVidias gimped edition cards.
    nVidia launches ungimped version, makes sure reviews are out before AMD to steal the thunder
    AMD     You just activated my trap card. PRICEWAR!

    Reply
  • InvalidError
    The RX690 made no sense at the original launch prices. I knew AMD would be compelled to drop prices shortly after launch, wouldn't be surprised if it preemptively dropped launch prices to avoid backlash from screwing people over on pricing almost immediately at launch. Still not convinced $350 is low enough for the bottom SKU, probably going to get another $50 drop within months from launch.

    AMD should spend less effort on repeatedly shuffling its GPU brands to get people confused about the product stacks and pricing structures so it can attempt to raise prices some more without people raising hell over it and focus on actually getting people to buy its stuff.
    Reply
  • mdd1963
    Lower each one by yet another $75 again, and I'm all in! :) (My GTX1060 will keep on 'chugging' until I find a GTX1070 -equivalent for $250!)
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    mdd1963 said:
    Lower each one by yet another $75 again, and I'm all in! :) (My GTX1060 will keep on 'chugging' until I find a GTX1070 -equivalent for $250!)
    The 1660 Ti is already pretty close at $279. Trades blows with the 1070. But I don't know if it's worth making a jump like that - personally I'd wait to upgrade until you've saved up a little more, and hopefully the price war shuffles a 5700 or 2060 Super down to $300.
    InvalidError said:
    Still not convinced $350 is low enough for the bottom SKU
    What are you basing that on? If it edges out the same-priced 2060 Super (which already is a MUCH better value than the old 2060) then I'd say the price is good. IF - as in, waiting for the reviewseses.
    TCA_ChinChin said:
    This makes things more competitive, but its still not really a win for AMD.
    In the business of selling widgets, what makes it a win or loss depends quite a bit on how many widgets you sell. Obviously that is going to be heavily influenced by price and performance, but my point is that whether or not this is a "win" for AMD is something that remains to be seen.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    alextheblue said:
    What are you basing that on? If it edges out the same-priced 2060 Super (which already is a MUCH better value than the old 2060) then I'd say the price is good. IF - as in, waiting for the reviewseses.
    Simple marketing: Nvidia has a much stronger brand and much stronger features, which means for most average buyers, AMD is a no-go for similar features at similar prices. Add Navi's lack of ray-tracing to the equation and it becomes a tough sell.

    Reviewers review products at launch only once. If the launch reviews say the pricing to performance and features makes no sense, your launch is f'd and your sales will suffer. AMD messed up pricing on the RX570/580, now it is struggling to get rid of them for $120-180 including free games or Xbox pass bundle that make the GPU itself nearly free if you care about the addons. AMD is practically writing those GPUs off at this point. If AMD messes up Navi's pricing, something similar may happen again.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    InvalidError said:
    Simple marketing: Nvidia has a much stronger brand and much stronger features, which means for most average buyers, AMD is a no-go for similar features at similar prices. Add Navi's lack of ray-tracing to the equation and it becomes a tough sell.

    Reviewers review products at launch only once. If the launch reviews say the pricing to performance and features makes no sense, your launch is f'd and your sales will suffer. AMD messed up pricing on the RX570/580, now it is struggling to get rid of them for $120-180 including free games or Xbox pass bundle that make the GPU itself nearly free if you care about the addons. AMD is practically writing those GPUs off at this point. If AMD messes up Navi's pricing, something similar may happen again.
    Raytracing is an overblown feature at this stage. Games that use it heavily suffer a heavy performance hit, games that use it lightly might as well not bother (well, other than the Dev Cash they get). This is particularly true at the 2070 and under level. Even most of the fanboys seem underwhelmed by RT. The next generation or two should greatly improve capability, performance, and see more widespread use (maybe without even paying devs to use it). Hybrid rendering is definitely the future.

    Nvidia's "stronger brand" isn't really as massive of a deal as you imply. Intel had an overwhelmingly strong brand pre-Ryzen (and they still do) - before Zen landed everybody and their mother recommended Intel everywhere but the lowest end. AMD's CPUs were even less popular than their GPUs are now. Ryzen's strong performance per dollar (despite not generally seizing the crown in the first two go-arounds) and positive reviews allowed them to turn it around. Much like Intel, Nvidia's name absolutely buys them a premium, but only to a point.

    So that goes back to pricing vs performance... as we have no performance data, your opinion isn't grounded in hard data. If they offer better performance for the money, they'll get positive reviews, and they'll be OK. If they don't, they either cut price fast and promote hard, or suffer. But again, there's no way to know what the correct price IS, without first knowing performance across a broad swath of games.
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    alextheblue said:
    Nvidia's "stronger brand" isn't really as massive of a deal as you imply.
    It is when the other options have no compelling benefits. RTX may not perform particularly well on first-gen hardware but it is still one more checkbox people can play with out of curiosity. Given the coiice b4tween two similarly-priced and similarly-performing products, I'd rather have the one with extra features to play with.

    As far as prices are concerned, they are way too effin' high on both sides as far as I am concerned. I want the mid-range back to $200-250.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    InvalidError said:
    It is when the other options have no compelling benefits.
    Price is a compelling benefit, when coupled with equal or better performance.
    InvalidError said:
    As far as prices are concerned, they are way too effin' high on both sides as far as I am concerned. I want the mid-range back to $200-250.
    Agreed. The midrange has shifted upwards too much. Although I don't know who to blame more, the GPU manufacturers and card vendors, or the game devs. They keep pushing to new graphical heights, but most of the engines don't scale back DOWN very well. So if you're playing on lesser hardware, and you tweak settings down, many games both run and look worse than older titles. There are some exceptions, well-crafted games that have eyecandy options but still offer a decent-looking and fast baseline.

    At any rate this trend is going to push me into a $300+ purchase, I'm pretty sure. As much as I hate it. I won't even spend that much on a display.
    Reply