AMD did it! Now we need to keep the pressure up for price cuts

Yahoo

07-03-2025

Well, look at that. AMD actually released a graphics cards that was competitive on price, performance, and features with Nvidia. And it managed to keep enough cards in stock for the launch that it wasn't immediately ruined by scalpers. Although that might seem like a low bar to reach, it's what passes for a success story for GPU launches in 2025, because Nvidia's has been one of the worst we've ever seen.
As exciting as it is that there's a new graphics card that's actually kind of good and worth paying money for, though, it's not time for AMD (or fans) to rest on their laurels. There's more to push for: most notably that prices should come down further.
The RX 9070 XT is an awesome graphics card — one of the best in a long time. It offers 5070 Ti/4080 performance for $600-ish, and its feature set is great, too. The RX 9070, though? It's a good card, with 5070-like performance, 16GB of VRAM, and similarly strong features. But its price is only $50 less than the base 9070 XT price. That's far, far too close.
This is the same weird pricing choice AMD made with the RX 7900 XT last generation. With just $100 between it and the 7900 XTX, and a much greater gap in performance, the XT model made no sense. It was only later when AMD dropped the price that it became a particularly great value option.
AMD should end up doing the same with the 9070 (non-XT), but we need to make sure it does. Margins and margins and they're typically not great with graphics cards, but come on AMD. Drop it down to sub $500 and really put the boot in to Nvidia's gouging.
Nvidia needs to step up now. It might still be the king in performance and DLSS might still be a bit better than FSR4, but that's not the win it used to be. Especially when it just doesn't really have any graphics cards to sell at the moment. There are models, there are listings at retailers, but none of them are in stock and the second-hand market is a mess (and AMD might upend that soon, too).
Nvidia will need to lower the prices of its 5070 and 5070 Ti if it wants to remain competitive with AMD, and get more of the cards in stock in much greater numbers. That will likely happen in the next few months, but the price cuts will only come if people put their money where there mouth is and buy AMD's new cards. Again, that'll likely happen as the reviews are strong and stock is there, but that momentum needs to be maintained.
If Nvidia's cards come back close enough to MSRP, they're still too expensive: The 5070 Ti in particular. Hopefully Nvidia sees the writing on the wall after a few weeks of high 9070 XT sales and realises multiple frame generation alone isn't going to be enough to save the 50-series.
We need to then continue that momentum forward into the rest of this generation and the next. Graphics card prices have grown dramatically in recent years, and though inflation and tariffs can be blamed for some of it, there's also Nvidia's sheer greed at play — and AMD has been just as guilty when it's had market dominance with CPUs.
PC gaming is always going to be that bit more expensive than console gaming, but no one should be forced to spend $500+ on a graphics card to get something that can play the latest games at 4K resolution. That's more than the entire price of a full console, even before factoring in the added cost of a monitor and all the additional peripherals.
Halo products like the RTX 5090 are always going to be ridiculous, and to some extent they should be. For those on mega bucks there isn't much of a difference between spending $1,500 and $2,000. But for everyone else, there needs to be better options for affordable, high-fidelity PC gaming.
Intel is handling the super-entry level portion of the market, AMD's done the right thing with its 9070 XT, but I'd still like to see the 9070 sub-$500 before long, and the 9060 needs to be the darling $300 card we all know it wants to be.
That might be wishful thinking, but once Nvidia's AI-hype-gravy-train starts to hit reality and that bubble pops, it might need to remember its roots and start selling gamers GPUs that are more than just marketing spin and a high price tags.