AMD may have a sneaky surprise in store for Nvidia, which just released its SUPER lineup of Turing RTX graphics cards to preemptively battle this weekend's Radeon RX 5700 Series launch. If what's being reported shakes out to be true, it could seriously disrupt Nvidia's competitive plans. Why? It's looking like the announced pricing for AMD's Navi-based RX 5700 and RX 5700 XT is about to get a last-minute drop.
AMD originally announced the RX 5700 Series -- its newest 7nm Navi GPUs -- with this pricing:
- Radeon RX 5700 XT: $449
- Radeon RX 5700: $379
AMD has publicly stated that the 5700 XT -- intended for 1440p gaming -- is targeted squarely at competing with Nvidia's RTX 2070. The twist is that Nvidia's RTX 2060 SUPER will now replace the more expensive RTX 2070 in the market -- and it comes awfully close to matching the performance of the RTX 2070 for $399. That poses an immediate challenge for AMD as (officially), it's still expected to launch the 5700 XT with a $50 higher price tag of $449.
Today however, two sources have told prominent leaker VideoCardz that the Navi RX 5700 Series will receive these last-minute price adjustments:
- Radeon RX 5700 XT: $399
- Radeon RX 5700: $349
For those of you paying close attention at home, the alleged launch pricing now goes head-to-head with Nvidia's RTX 2060 ($349) and RTX Super ($399) price tags.
I have the RX 5700/XT in hand, but independent performance results are embargoed until July 7 when the cards go on sale at retailers and AMD.com (Nvidia's SUPER lineup starts shipping on the 9th). That means I can't provide insight into the effect a price change like this could have, but we can speculate based on some internal AMD benchmarks that surfaced after its E3 Next Horizons gaming event. These numbers pit the RX 5700 XT against the RTX 2070:
What we see are a couple minor losses, some close wins, and one or two standouts where the RX 5700 XT outperforms Nvidia's RTX 2070. If we head over to PCWorld's review of the Nvidia RTX 2060 Super, we consistently see it basically competing neck-and-neck (minus a few frames here and there) with the RTX 2070.
It's reasonable to conclude that if AMD launches the RTX 5700 XT at $399 to face-off against Nvidia's $399 RTX 2060 Super, AMD could have a slight performance advantage at the same price. Obviously factors like performance-per-watt, the FreeSync versus G-Sync ecosystem and other software-based features will sway some people to one side or the other.
To add more fuel to this fire, though, I have to point out this cryptic tweet from AMD's Scott Herkelman. This may not be an impulsive response to Nvidia SUPER, but rather a carefully calculated plan to bait Nvidia. (Read the Urban Dictionary definition of "Jebaited" here and draw your own conclusion):
I've reached out to AMD PR for an official comment and will update this post ASAP if and once they respond. If AMD is indeed slashing the expected price, that may cause some reviewers to revisit their SUPER reviews, and this new-gen GPU race will be a very exciting one to watch.
UPDATE 5pm EST :
"AMD is focused on providing gamers with amazing experiences and access to the very best gaming technology at attractive price points. As you have seen, competition is heating up in the GPU market. We embrace competition, which drives innovation to the benefit of gamers. In that spirit, we are updating the pricing of our Radeon RX 5700 Series graphics cards. The revised pricing is as follows:
- 50th Anniversary Edition AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card -- $449 USD SEP
- AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT graphics card -- $399 USD SEP
- AMD Radeon RX 5700 graphics card -- $349 USD SEP
We know that gamers will be thrilled once they have the opportunity to experience the amazing performance, stunning visual fidelity and highly responsive gameplay these new graphics cards provide. Making history on 7/7 as the first company to launch gaming CPUs and GPUs together – the first in 7nm and PCIe 4.0 – is all about pushing the ultimate gaming experience forward for as many gamers as possible."
