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AMD fires back at 'Super' NVIDIA with Radeon RX 5700 price cuts

MD unveiled its new Radeon RX 5700 line of graphics cards with 7nm chips at E3 last month, and with just days to go before they launch on July 7th, the company has announced new pricing. In the "spirit" of competition that it says is "heating up" in the graphics market -- specifically NVIDIA's "Super" new RTX cards -- all three versions of the graphics card will be cheaper than we thought.

The standard Radeon RX 5700 with 36 compute units and speeds of up to 1.7GHz was originally announced at $379, but will instead hit shelves at $349 -- the same price as NVIDIA's RTX 2060. The 5700 XT card that brings 40 compute units and up to 1.9GHz speed will be $50 cheaper than expected, launching at $399. The same goes for the 50th Anniversary with a slightly higher boost speed and stylish gold trim that will cost $449 instead of $499.

That's enough to keep them both cheaper than the $499 RTX 2070 Super -- we'll have to wait for the performance reviews to find out if it's enough to make sure they're still relevant.

AMD fires back at 'Super' NVIDIA with Radeon RX 5700 price cuts 

1,953 Replies

Well with the final naming being 5700 and 5700XT, something AMD vowed never to do again starting with the HD 3000 series, and the fact that the review sites found AMD's reference cooler to be, as usual, barely adequate, we're going to have to wait until September to find out if AMD is still relevant, with custom editions coming in August, then about a month to make sure prices won't spike up again, which AMD has shifted to "free" games to counter instead of rebates.

The really sad thing is, with the 5700 and 5700 XT now taking the place at the upper end of the mid range, places formerly held by the RX 580 and RX 590, the upper end of the mid range market has increased from $230 and $280 to $350 and $400, and they still require playing at 1920x1080 to hit minimums of 60fps in many games. That's not a great thing for a company which, according to the Steam Hardware Survey, commands less than 15% of the market compared to nVidia's 75%...

Well, they changed the shroud a little bit on the 5700XT, so that it looks damaged or dented. The performance per dollar still favors AMD, according to the one review I watched.

I don't see the market share changing anytime soon. As far as I am concerned, I wish I never switched back to an Amd GPU. I picked a freesync monitor that doesn't work so great with NVidia as it has very slight stutter, while being much smoother with Amd. I should have just paid the gsync tax, and stuck with NVidia's overpriced products. It's amazing how Amd fails at the simplest things like getting profile loading to consistently work. So now I must use Afterburner, just to remove that aggravation. Then there's the 1 minutes shutdown time. Sorry didn't mean to turn this into an amd rant

I will say that I think amd does older game compatibility better than nvidia.

And that's the biggest reason why AMD's pricing on Radeon is a massive mistake. For people with nVidia cards, which is the vast majority of the market, there is no reason to choose AMD over nVidia, and for people with AMD cards, as well as people who prefer nVidia cards but currently use AMD, there is little compelling them to stick with AMD since the pricing is so close. That's why the 5700 and 5700XT needed to launch at $250 and $300, not at the prices they did with a valueless 3 month XBOX PC subscription. That's what they did with the Radeon HD 4870 and is what brought AMD back against nVidia for a time, if they would have priced it directly against nVidia's counterparts, it would have flopped, but they didn't, which is why it succeeded.

The pricing strategy looks fine to me.  AMD is on exactly the same performance per dollar curve as NVidia, except below $300 where Polaris is so cheap there is no reason to buy NVidia at all.  In the area where most users buy GPUs, the RX 570, 580, and 590 can't be beat in performance per dollar. 

AMD is able to sell small (sub 300mm^2) GPUs on the same performance/dollar curve as NVidia.  So for AMD, they replaced Vega with a GPU that is more efficient, actually performs on par with NVidia, and is cheaper to manufacture (smaller die, no HBM), that is nothing if not a win.

For NVidia they had to drop the price of their 445 mm^2 GPUs.  In the case of the RTX 2070 Super, NVidia had to jump up to the RTX 280 die which is 545 mm^2 and sell it for $500 instead of $700 like the RTX 2080.  For NVidia, that is a loss of profit and investors likely won't be pleased.  

Meanwhile, consumers get our first performance/dollar bump in years.  GPUs that perform on par or faster than $500 GPUs now sell for $350-$400.  The $700 price point has been effectively vacated until the RTX 2080 Super launches, and with sales in that tier low, AMD doesn't feel pressured to release a competitor.

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replying to this:

"The pricing strategy looks fine to me.  AMD is on exactly the same performance per dollar curve as NVidia, except below $300 where Polaris is so cheap there is no reason to buy NVidia at all.  In the area where most users buy GPUs, the RX 570, 580, and 590 can't be beat in performance per dollar. 

AMD is able to sell small (sub 300mm^2) GPUs on the same performance/dollar curve as NVidia.  So for AMD, they replaced Vega with a GPU that is more efficient, actually performs on par with NVidia, and is cheaper to manufacture (smaller die, no HBM), that is nothing if not a win.

For NVidia they had to drop the price of their 445 mm^2 GPUs.  In the case of the RTX 2070 Super, NVidia had to jump up to the RTX 280 die which is 545 mm^2 and sell it for $500 instead of $700 like the RTX 2080.  For NVidia, that is a loss of profit and investors likely won't be pleased.  

Meanwhile, consumers get our first performance/dollar bump in years.  GPUs that perform on par or faster than $500 GPUs now sell for $350-$400.  The $700 price point has been effectively vacated until the RTX 2080 Super launches, and with sales in that tier low, AMD doesn't feel pressured to release a competitor."

Just from my perspective as a consumer:

So yes while it may cost them more per piece with the die size, I'm not sure nVidia's investors are upset. On PC desktop graphics nVidia currently has the overwhelming majority of the cards being sold and that is fact. So volume sales certainly can make up for individual cost disparity.

No as far as choosing the right card for me. I bought a RX 580 and unlike my prior 5 AMD cards it was a nightmare out of the box and from what I have seen is the same for a lot of users base on the complaints I help with here daily. So not isolated by any means. I paid more for my RX 580 than I did for it's RTX 2060 replacement. I did not mind as I could not deal with the gaming experience I was getting with the 580 anymore. Constanty feautres that worked in one driver release did not in another. Break one thing fix another. The thermals were getting worse as the drivers evolved not better. Plus many games had glitches.

Now I'm not speaking for all nVidia current card or all drivers, I can only say that in my family we now have a 1050ti 1060 6gb and RTX 2060. All went in and work and default settings. No tweaking needed to be cool or stable. Even with overclocks the cards are super cool and do not throttle. The game driver and features have also worked. We have had issues on 2 new games but both were fixed in less than a week with driver updates. This is the type of support that I had got from AMD also until the brought out Wattman and stretched GCN architecture past it's prime.  Now they have a new architecture that looks honestly great, being tainted by many reviews confirming cooling issues and if you have seen, many early complaints of users looking for help with this here in these forums too.

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It looks like it melted from heat. 

It honestly surprises me the HD 5970 never had this happen, that thing would get about to the melting point of tungsten...

See the source image

I have a 3 fan cooler on my HD 6970 which keep it as cool as a cucumber 

The blower fans are not as effective in practice and they howl which I also dislike

It's amazing they are still using a blower design on their reference cards. NVidia has not in years now. AMD has gotten lambasted for it in their last few generations. It is obvious consumers don't want them. Apparently they feel it is still cooler on some systems. I have seen several 3rd party test sites prove this wrong before. They are never cooler even when no other fans are in the computer than a GPU and power supply in the set I saw. To me it's one of those things that would likely not change the price of a card by more that 10 bucks to implement and be well worth it. If you want to do a single fan solution also then do the compact card that is an extra slot wide. 

pokester wrote:

It's amazing they are still using a blower design on their reference cards. NVidia has not in years now. AMD has gotten lambasted for it in their last few generations. It is obvious consumers don't want them. Apparently they feel it is still cooler on some systems. I have seen several 3rd party test sites prove this wrong before. They are never cooler even when no other fans are in the computer than a GPU and power supply in the set I saw. To me it's one of those things that would likely not change the price of a card by more that 10 bucks to implement and be well worth it. If you want to do a single fan solution also then do the compact card that is an extra slot wide. 

Lots of people besides me have objected to the blower design

Go ask EVGA, very few cards come with a blower now...

many cards are now short one fan units but that is par for my GTX 1060 etc

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This is interesting... it looks like a small basic 2 fan cooler would have made a big difference on the RX5700 at least.
Visiontek Radeon RX 5700 2 Fan Cooler TESTED! - YouTube 

I noticed the above Visiontek cooler mod on the RX5700 seems to have high memory temperatures in firestrike. I think the reviewer messed up the thermal pads on the memory. He has added a comment to say he will redo the test with better thermal pads and possibly on an RX5700XT if he can get one. Gamer's Nexus usually do similar mods to GPU but using AIO coolers, so we will likely see something about that as well.

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colesdav wrote:

This is interesting... it looks like a small basic 2 fan cooler would have made a big difference on the RX5700 at least.
Visiontek Radeon RX 5700 2 Fan Cooler TESTED! - YouTube 

That custom cooler that person uses, the VRAM was over 85C which can cause all kinds of problems.

A proper cooler is needed to deal with the audible noise. One that is made for the logic board so the GPU and the VRAM can been cooled.

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Yes I did notice that the VRAM temps were too high. The reviewer reckons they need new thermal pads.

It looks like removing the thermal pad on RX5700XT and replacing with good thermal paste along with adding a few washers on the GPU retention bracket makes a big difference to Thermal performance here:
Fixing the RX 5700 XT Cooler for $0.04 | Paste & Washers vs. Thermal Pad - YouTube 

colesdav wrote:

Yes I did notice that the VRAM temps were too high. The reviewer reckons they need new thermal pads.

It looks like removing the thermal pad on RX5700XT and replacing with good thermal paste along with adding a few washers on the GPU retention bracket makes a big difference to Thermal performance here:
Fixing the RX 5700 XT Cooler for $0.04 | Paste & Washers vs. Thermal Pad - YouTube 

I will await a proper design like EVGA et al all do. The abandoned blowers and now they are more popular as their cards are long lasting and do not heat up much.

You will wait a long time. EVGA doesn't do AMD cards. 

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That may change given AMD has gained market share back from nVidia

I usually like Sapphire which has their Nitro cooler that seems to work ok

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There is always this Several of Arctic Cooling’s existing coolers support AMD's Radeon RX 5700 cards | PC Gamer :
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Or this: EK-Vector Blocks Engineered for AMD Navi GPUs - Cooling - Press Release - HEXUS.net
More details here: https://www.ekwb.com/shop/quantum/gpu-blocks/vector-rx-navi

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Both are lots of additional  cost and time that you have to consider versus waiting for a Navi GPU with decent fans, quiet cooler and backplate with working BIOS and Drivers.

I hope new AIB Cards come with dual BIOS just in case any required BIOS Updates go wrong.

I have two theories on that. One is that, being a reference edition, most people that buy them are either stupid or are going to liquid cool them. Two is that the major reason for buying a custom board is for their cooler, so if AMD's reference cooler actually worked decently, people wouldn't want to pay the price premium.

Personally I want reference liquid cooled cards again for the acoustics.

I have seen a couple of the tech sites that I actually trust now say the same one being LTT that said the XT runs so hot it actually shut down on them. They said the card could use liquid cooling and that the blower just doesn't suffice as it is. 

What I take away from what they said on the reference cards is that you should wait for non-reference cards. I would bet we will see better priced cards with way better thermals in the near future. I think these cards will be competitive enough to bring the price of the RTX Super cards down a bit too. So win win for consumers. 

So unfortunately again they release a card not ready for prime time but with good potential once AIB makers fix the shortcomings. 

The video I was referencing: Why NOT to buy Radeon 5700 XT… Yet – Our Review - YouTube 

Have seen them mention that the 5700 XT's maximum junction temperature reached throttling temperature, but haven't seen one that said it shut down on them, but I've only looked at a couple. It reminds me of the Radeon HD 5970 fiasco where the reference cooler left one bank of VRMs untouched, leading to issues. Sadly as we all know custom cooled cards will be more expensive than the reference edition, so I'm not expecting significantly less expensive prices until 2021 when Navi's replacement is due, and sadly we are already starting to see the reference edition cards increase in price over SRP, and to add insult to injury sites are clearing out their 2070 inventory before the 2070 Super arrives, so on top of existing rebates they have instant savings, cutting the price difference to as little as $20, though that's a custom edition against a reference edition. AMD is going to have to act fast else Navi will quickly slip into irrelevancy.


Here is the way to remove the dent on the top side of the RX5700XT GPU at least - the one on the side seems to be nothing to do with airflow and the fins on the rear of the GPU seem to be "dummies": AMD RX 5700 XT Tear-Down: Inside the Vapor Chamber - YouTube 

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colesdav wrote:


Here is the way to remove the dent on the top side of the RX5700XT GPU at least - the one on the side seems to be nothing to do with airflow and the fins on the rear of the GPU seem to be "dummies": AMD RX 5700 XT Tear-Down: Inside the Vapor Chamber - YouTube 

 

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When I saw this pic I laughed.  It made me think of wanting to smash a hammer on my RX 5700 XT like Billy Mays.  Man I love those YouTube Poop videos they made of him and his infomercials.

Too many comedians and too many channels leads to dilution

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Really sad how he died too, bumped his head getting out of an airplane which ruptured an aneyuerism.

Which AMD GPU is he fixing there?

black_zion wrote:

Really sad how he died too, bumped his head getting out of an airplane which ruptured an aneyuerism.

 

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He still lives on in the funny videos made, people sharing the real commercials and well if you saw him how could you forget him .....

RIP Billy 

Definitely can say the people loved him.  Even if he sold you crap you wanted to buy it.  

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Looks like the fan for one of the Reference R9 290X LB Edition cards:

Why are blower cooling bad ? | <H>ard|Forum

Anyone else find it funny we are supposedly approaching Navi Refresh and RDNA2's release dates, and there  have been no leaks of AMD's reference coolers?

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colesdav wrote:

But we have a new driver:
July Updates for Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 

Will try it out but don't have to care as this card is going back to Amazon.  While it was my last day to return it I was unable to and so I have it for a little longer with guarantees of a refund.  I could not print off the label to be put on the box and so they have to send one to me which could take up to 2 weeks.  It will be all connected to this date and got an email too stating everything is in order for a refund.  They offered a replacement but with all the hell I have been through with this card (black screens, games that run on some cards and not others while having the same card, driver failing, undervolting not working, driver installed without the software, etc.)  .. RX 5700 XT .. I said right away I wanted a refund.  Now I get that there are always going to be lemons but with all AMD it just sounds like a headache I don't want.  This killed me getting their cpus btw too.  I got an i5 9600k coming tomorrow with a more than decent motherboard and ram and lol both have RGB.  I hope I can finally have some fun.  Dealing with driver issues is not fun.  I knew about AMD having driver issues many a time before buying but this is a powerful card and wanted to give it a chance but nah ...

Anyway hope this driver solves many problems for others.  

PS: This here listed in the July Updates says quite a bit for me ... "AMD will continue to monitor and investigate any new reports of black screen or system hang issues during extended periods of gameplay closely. Users are encouraged to use the new Bug Reporting Tool for any issues they may encounter."  ..... On and on with the driver issues : S
 

I hope you enjoy your new system. I would not be scared of Ryzen at all. It is pretty solid and I have zero issues other than a motherboard that failed but that can happen to any board.

pokester wrote:

I hope you enjoy your new system. I would not be scared of Ryzen at all. It is pretty solid and I have zero issues other than a motherboard that failed but that can happen to any board.

Thanks and I agree that any board or piece of hardware can fail but I don't need anymore right now so man this stuff arriving tomorrow better be cool. LOL!

Don't bother.
July Updates for Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition

The above driver just blackscreened my PC at BOOT after installation and I spent 2 hours getting my PC back to operating state.

Bunch of Clowns.

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colesdav wrote:

Don't bother.
July Updates for Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition

The above driver just blackscreened my PC at BOOT after installation and I spent 2 hours getting my PC back to operating state.

Bunch of Clowns.

On my X470 box with the RX 480 the new driver did not bork windows v 2004, the machine is used for testing video cards and attempting to repair borked cards etc

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I do not think Navi refresh will have any reference cards, just AIB, with maybe some of them dropping out, like ASUS.
I do not think the Navi Refresh will do much.
Possibly go for full triple slot 60mm GPUs, "tweaked XT silicon", bigger coolers and increase the power limit in BIOS as usual.
Maybe 3% performance improvement.

I have worked on Navi and tried overclocking one.
An RX Vega 64 Liquid is a better GPU.

I find it difficult to get interested in AMD Radeon RDNA2.

The Adrenalin 2020 drivers and GUI/UI and having to install Hybrid Drivers is getting very boring.

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It depends, if Navi Refresh launches at $150-$300 price range, taking the place of Polaris through existing Navi cards in the hierarchy, with RDNA2 going from above the 5700XT to however high they can get, it's going to be a big seller. Remember AMD said Navi Refresh and RDNA2 would bring lower prices, and they simply cannot afford to START their GPUs at $250, no matter how strong Renoir may be.