It's the same pricing game they played last generation, they want you to buy the more expensive parts so they jack up the price of lesser parts to make higher end parts look like a better deal.
This is partly true, part of the thing you need to consider is to not devalue older parts such as 7900gre/7800xt/6800xt.
Had 9070 been priced more-fairly ($400-450 imo, ~$500 to others) the price on those older GPUs would have fallen through the floor, destroying the new low-end market (9060 etc). By keeping this level of performance this price, it ensures the aftermarket value of the aforementioned cards stays at ~$400, rather than going down to as low as $300 (on average). To me, that's the apparent reason, given it's essentially a price hike on a 7800xt to the price of 7900gre (which over-all are very similar cards if you factor in overclocking). For this reason, I'm not a fan of this pricing. They could have kept it stagnant, they could have given a small cut, they could have given a large cut (to compete with 5060ti, which again I know sounds a little crazy but are the moves AMD really needs to make if they want to gain market share).
Instead, the price went up. Some will argue things like new RT and up-scaling, but wrt a card like this, I don't really think they'll be strong-enough to take advantage of any of those features to a large extent. You really need a 7900xt to capitalize on 1440p->4k raster, and this ain't that. We still don't even know if a 9070xt is 'good-enough' for demanding RT, and the lower-end card is almost-certainly not. People can buy them and/or argue value for these features on such a product, but I would not.
As for 9070xt, I'm glad people appear to be mostly content. I think they're again over-priced by a good 10%, but this is on the highest-end of acceptable. I could write a whole spiel on why, but would prefer to wait for reviews to truly explain it. These are mid-range cards; they're not high-end cards. To me, $600 is a bit excessive for mid-range, and I do not think these cards will be able to do a lot of things people are hoping (which would require a 5080, give or take extra ram). Had a card for this price had faster ram and/or high power-level/clock potential, I would think it is fair, but it does not. AMD apparently wants to charge even MORE for that, give or take extra ram it *may* not need, and I think that's a little greedy.
It's possible they wait and the cards launching now drop to more where I think they should be by the time something like that launches.
In that case it would make sense, but I still think they're 'optimizing revenue' on this chip.
I think AMD needs to optimize more people using their cards, but that's JMO.
It's possible this will happen anyway, given nVIDIA's 12GB cards have very severe and apparent limitations (some of which shared by 6800xt/7800xt/7900gre/9070).
I would have preferred they fought them head-on to accentuate these differences, but I guess they figure they can get away with a small premium, which may be true.
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