AMD RX 7700 XT's latest price cut means the mid-range GPU now makes sense - at long last

AMD's Radeon RX 7700 XT continues to drop in price and is becoming a more attractive GPU at the kind of pricing it's now at, compared to when the board first launched.

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AMD's Radeon RX 7700 XT Challenger with 12GB of VRAM (which could be a sticking point, still, for some gamers) (Image Credit: ASRock)

If you recall, the RX 7700 XT arrived on the shelves with an MSRP of $450, but the graphics card witnessed a drop to $419 in February 2024, and has continued to sink since then, moving to as low as $395 recently.

• Read more: Get two free games when you buy an AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT or 7700 XT GPU
• Read more: Radeon RX 7700 XT for $350 is a pretty good deal, and it comes with Space Marine 2
• Read more: Current GPU pricing is making it hard to recommend PC gaming

But now one model of the RX 7700 XT has dropped well below the $400 mark in the US, and you can grab the ASRock Challenger version of the RX 7700 XT for $379 at Newegg.

That's effectively 15% that has been knocked off the recommended price since this graphics card first came out.

If you're not keen on that particular vendor, there are other board makers who have the 7700 XT below $400, too. There's a Sapphire Pulse model at $389 (though you have to apply a $10 discount code at checkout, it should be noted). All pricing is correct at the time of writing, but it could change, of course.

Price gap widens

What's interesting to remember is that when the 7700 XT and 7800 XT first emerged, you may recall all the criticism of the former based on the price gap being just $50 ($450 and $500 respectively). In short, it made little sense to not push the extra $50 with your budget to secure considerably better performance, unless you absolutely couldn't afford a cent more.

Now we look at the picture of discounts on Newegg, and of course, the 7800 XT has also had some money knocked off at this stage of the game, but not all that much. The cheapest RX 7800 XT graphics card is $480 currently, again an ASRock Challenger model.

So, the difference between the cheapest 7800 XT and 7700 XT is now $100, which is definitely more like it. With that much of a saving on offer, the lesser card of these mid-range GPUs now feels like a sensible purchase.

As always, the market corrects these kind of imbalances over time, but really, this is something AMD should have got right in the first place, when these GPUs hit the shelves. It feels a bit like the initial idea was to persuade gamers to fork out that extra money for the 7800 XT.

We noted in our review that the RX 7800 XT was just better value, period, when these graphics cards were first released, but at least that's no longer the case - there's a genuine choice to be made now.