AMD to take on Nvidia's latest video card with competitive pricing

With the release of GeForce GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti graphics cards from Nvidia, AMD shaves US$10 (AU$13) off the price of its Radeon RX 460 and 470 graphics cards, This highly-anticipated release from Nvidia aims to compete head-on with AMD's Radeon RX 460 and 470 series. In consequence, AMD is forced to take preemptive measures.

AMD announced the two graphics just last June, at the height of the virtual reality fever on PCs, heralded by the arrival of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets. The promise of the Radeon 460 and 470 cards was irresistible: wallet-friendly video cards that had enough muscle to support VR experiences.

The RX 460 has seen its price drop to US$99 (AU$130), for the original MSRP of US$109 (AU$143). In the case of the RX 470, it dropped to US$169 (AU$222) from the original MSRP of US$179 (AU$236).

The more important comparison, though, is of the GTX 1050 and 1050Ti, which are priced at US$109 (AU$143) and US$139 (AU$183) respectively. While the cards can’t be directly compared on every aspect, they are close enough in price and performance that these numbers matter and it's the possible reason why AMD dropped a few dollars off the RX cards’ price tag. Not much is known about the performance Nvidia's upcoming GPUs will actually provide, but if AMD has chosen to react, that's a sure sign that they will be highly competitive. The supposed price drop rumoured last week is not confirmed on the updated retailer listings.

Just for comparison's sake, the RX 470 has 2048 cores clocked at 1206 MHz and 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM that comes in a 120W package. The GTX 1050 Ti comes with 768 cores clocked at 1392 MHz and 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM. The card is expected to feature a thermal design power close to 75W. It’s quite evident from the the specs that the RX 470 is the faster solution but these are different architectures and what matters is the price to performance value of both of these cards.