AMD Reportedly Slashing Radeon RX 590 And RX 580 Prices Due To GTX 1660 Ti Pressure
During the cryptocurrency mining boom, it was a crummy time to be a PC gamer in need of a graphics card upgrade. Practically every mid-range and high-end card was in short supply, and what little inventory did show up online was grossly overpriced. Things have changed dramatically since then, and may get even better. Word on the web is that AMD is getting ready to cut prices on its Radeon RX 590 and 580 cards.
This would be in direct response to NVIDIA's recently announced GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, which is the first Turing card to arrive without the benefit of RT and Tensor cores for real-time ray tracing and Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) support. The appeal of the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti is that it trades sparsely supported features for a cheaper price tag—it's has a $279 MSRP.
Rumor: MSRP of RX580 8GB at 199$ and of RX590 at 229$ in next weeks.
— Bits And Chips - Eng (@BitsAndChipsEng) February 22, 2019
For the most part, AMD has not been able to compete with NVIDIA at the higher end, not when you factor in availability—the Radeon VII gives the GeForce RTX 2080 a run for its money, but it's hard to come by and still does not threaten the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in most instances.
The mid-range sector has been a different story though, and AMD's Polaris cards have been holding strong. As the rumor goes, AMD will be slashing the price of its Radeon RX 590 to $229 and its Radeon RX 580 to $199 in the coming weeks. Those cards launched at $279 and $229, respectively.
A quick peek on Amazon shows the Radeon RX 590 selling for around $265 and up and the Radeon RX 580 already priced at around $199 and up (the vast majority are higher, around $225 and up). However, there are hints of an upcoming price drop—there are a couple of Radeon RX 580 models that are priced at $189.99, with stock anticipated for later this month.
The Radeon RX 590 and 580 are similar cards. Both are built around Polaris and boast 2,304 stream processors, 32 ROPs, and 144 TMUs. They also have 8GB of GDDR5 memory (there is a version of the Radeon RX 580 that has 4GB of memory as well). The Radeon RX 590 sports a slightly more refined GPU with higher clockspeeds.
It would be nice to AMD's Radeon RX Vega 64 and 56 cards receive a price cut as well, but the use of more expensive HBM memory makes that unlikely. That said, Polaris still offers some solid bang for your buck.
