Ooooh, a huge juicy rumor -- and it makes perfect sense.
According to @coreteks on Twitter, "They (AMD) want to release the 16GB at $599 and the 8GB at $499 but after the Ampere announcement I'm expecting $549 for the 16GB and $499 for the 8GB. We're receiving the ASIC (GPU+MEM) this month (September)".
So, NVIDIA's surprise jebaited price of $499 for the new Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3070 and $699 for the even-better GeForce RTX 3080 -- has really affected AMD. I'm sure they didn't expect the pricing to be so damn unlike the RTX 20 series, that AMD could be shaking at their knees a little bit.
Now for just $499 you're getting performance that beats the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- a card that had a launch price of $1199. Now if you remember back to January this year, I wrote a story headlined "AMD Big Navi GPU: RTX 2080 Ti killer, but will lose to RTX 3080" and it seems I was right on the money.
In that article, I said that the new Big Navi graphics card would have hardware ray tracing, and a "massive kick in performance over the Radeon RX 5700 XT. It will compete and beat NVIDIA's now flagship GeForce RTX 2080 Ti... a graphics card released in September 2018".
I continued, adding: "AMD is another 6 months (at least) away from releasing its new Big Navi / Radeon RX 5950 XT graphics card, with my sources telling me it'll arrive in September/October 2020. NVIDIA will have its own next-gen Ampere GPU on the new 7nm node before then, with the GeForce RTX 3080 to beat the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, and thus crush AMD's next big thing in Big Navi / Radeon RX 5950 XT".
Here we are -- NVIDIA has its new Ampere GPU nearly here (on Samsung's 8nm, not 7nm) and the GeForce RTX 3080 easily beats the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti -- but now we need to see if AMD's next big thing with Big Navi, can topple Ampere...
So where are we sitting with price now?
- AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT launch price: $449
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 launch price: $699
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti launch price: $1199
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 launch price: $499
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 launch price: $699
- AMD Big Navi 8GB rumored launch price: $499
- AMD Big Navi 16GB rumored launch price: $549
- AMD Big Navi 16GB price before Ampere: $599
Will AMD be able to triple-jebait NVIDIA with lower pricing, or a better card -- something in between the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 priced at let's say $899-$999? We'll have to wait and see.
- Read more about NVIDIA's new 'ferocious' GeForce RTX 3090 -- which costs $1499, right here.
- Read more about NVIDIA's new 'flagship' GeForce RTX 3080 -- which costs $699, right here.
- Read more about NVIDIA's new 'gaming king' GeForce RTX 3070 -- which costs $499, right here.