Thursday, October 13th 2016
AMD's RX 470 may see price-cut in wake of NVIDIA's GTX 1050 Ti Launch
According to TweakTown, AMD may be preparing to bring the fight to the as-of-yet unannounced GTX 1050 Ti with a $10 price-drop on their 1080p price-performance king RX 470 from the current $179, bringing the price down to $169. NVIDIA is purportedly planning to bring the GTX 1050 Ti to market at the $149 price point, with a rated TDP of only 75 W and apparently no need for additional power connectors (at least on reference designs). However, faced with a measly $20 difference from the supposedly higher-performing RX 470 - which could sometimes be up to 30% faster - the battle for the $150 bracket might prove to be an uphill battle for the green camp.
Add to that the latest updates unveiled by Oculus on Oculus Connect 3, with the RX 470 being stamped with the VR-ready approval, as well as the greater availability and lower price of FreeSync monitors (sometimes with as much as four times the number of FreeSync offers versus G-Sync ones), and it really does seem that AMD is poised to offer the best value in its price bracket. Of course, things get muddier if you take into account the current pricing landscape for graphics cards from either manufacturer (where most models are selling upwards of their MSRP).
As a reminder, the RX 470 has 2048 cores clocked at 1206 MHz and 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, with a 120 W TDP. The GTX 1050 Ti is expected to come in with 768 cores clocked at 1392Mhz, paired with 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM and the already mentioned 75 W TDP. While in purely performance-per-watt terms this Radeon generation still can't compete with NVIDIA's offerings, the expected performance difference between both of these cards can somewhat tilt the scales in AMD's favor.
Source:
TweakTown
Add to that the latest updates unveiled by Oculus on Oculus Connect 3, with the RX 470 being stamped with the VR-ready approval, as well as the greater availability and lower price of FreeSync monitors (sometimes with as much as four times the number of FreeSync offers versus G-Sync ones), and it really does seem that AMD is poised to offer the best value in its price bracket. Of course, things get muddier if you take into account the current pricing landscape for graphics cards from either manufacturer (where most models are selling upwards of their MSRP).
10 Comments on AMD's RX 470 may see price-cut in wake of NVIDIA's GTX 1050 Ti Launch
When there's competition it's all good...
You just have to look at GTX950/960 vs. R9 280X/380/380X/R9 290 to see that price/performance and absolute performance metrics don't matter to many consumers. Believe it or not a lot of PC gamers don't cross-shop the two brands and simply buy the fastest NV card that fits inside their XYZ budget.
Even at $185, RX 470 should already have superior price/performance to the $149 GTX1050Ti. The bigger threat to the RX 470 is the GTX1060 3GB which can be readily purchased for $190-$195.
The headlines that GTX1050Ti's launch may force AMD to cut RX 470's prices makes AMD sound a lot more desperate than a headline that would explain that AMD is cutting prices on RX 470 to better position it against the GTX1060 3GB. Such headlines wouldn't generate as many clicks and AMD-bashing, however.