With AMD set to launch their new 1080p-focused Radeon RX 5600 XT next Tuesday, NVIDIA isn’t wasting any time in shifting their own position to prepare for AMD’s latest video card. Just in time for next week’s launch, the company and its partners have begun cutting the prices of their GeForce RTX 2060 cards. This includes NVIDIA’s own Founders Edition card as well, with the company cutting the price of that benchmark card to $299.

The timing, of course, is anything but coincidental. AMD’s Radeon RX 5600 XT announcement back at CES already revealed a significant portion of AMD’s hand, particularly that the card would launch at $279, and that the company is expecting the card to outperform NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, their own $279 card. Assuming AMD’s performance claims hold true, then NVIDIA would need to act; either the GTX 1660 Ti or RTX 2060 would need to come down in price for NVIDIA to maintain a competitive edge, and the latter is the direction NVIDIA has decided to take.

Even at $299, the RTX 2060 is not going to be a precise counter to the $279 RX 5600 XT. But the junior TU106 card packs more performance than the GTX 1660 Ti, as well as the complete Turing architecture feature set, making it the strongest hand NVIDIA can play. As always, we’ll see where things land on Tuesday for both AMD and NVIDIA, but it should make for an interesting fight.

On the whole, price adjustments for NVIDIA are quite rare. While prices of NVIDIA cards do tend to fall over time, the company seldom adjusts official pricing in any capacity. Even this week’s cuts aren’t wholly official; NVIDIA hasn’t announced a price cut so much as sent out a reminder that RTX 2060 cards can be found for $299. But regardless, where NVIDIA leads on pricing their board partners will follow, and EVGA, Gigabyte, and others have already begun releasing new cards and shifting the pricing of other cards to reach the new $299 level.

Q1 2020 GPU Pricing Comparison
AMD Price NVIDIA
Radeon RX 5700 $329  
  $299 GeForce RTX 2060
Radeon RX 5600 XT $279 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti
  $229 GeForce GTX 1660 Super
Radeon RX 5500 XT 8GB $199/$209 GeForce GTX 1660
Radeon RX 5500 XT 4GB $169/$159 GeForce GTX 1650 Super
  $149 GeForce GTX 1650
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  • 0ldman79 - Thursday, January 16, 2020 - link

    I've been waiting on the GPU price war.

    Looks like the first volley has been fired.
  • TEAMSWITCHER - Thursday, January 16, 2020 - link

    This is more of the same.. Nvidia is leveraging their commanding lead to force AMD into price cuts on products they are trying to bring to market. Profit for companies is like Oxygen for athletes. Nvidia is suffocating AMD's Radeon "Technology" Group.
  • Kjella - Thursday, January 16, 2020 - link

    With the CPU side fixed AMD is going to take back market share in laptops giving them plenty reason and breathing room to fund further Radeon development. Obviously nVidia is going to rake in profits where AMD lacks a competing product and dump prices when they make one, but the danger of AMD suffocating seems over. They're not losing money anymore.
  • neblogai - Thursday, January 16, 2020 - link

    2060 is made out of a large 445mm2 die- so if they try to suffocate AMD with it, they will also suffocate themselves.
  • GreenReaper - Thursday, January 16, 2020 - link

    Worth it to take out AMD. Red vs. Green comes to its inevitable conclusion.
  • nt300 - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link

    AMD should easily tripple it's GPU market share within 2020 and 2021 as RDNA2 is looking really great.
    FYI, AMD's APU's are stronger than ever, AMD ain't going to go anywhere but UP.
  • ZipSpeed - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link

    Radeon isn't going anywhere. Especially with Sony and Microsoft paying the R&D for the next-gen consoles, it's only natural this R&D will migrate towards the PC side. They managed to claw back some marketshare from Nvidia too with the RDNA cards. At least AMD isn't on life support anymore, and lets be candid, the market NEEDS an AMD to counter Nvidia.
  • Gastec - Tuesday, January 21, 2020 - link

    You are looking forward to Nvidia's monopoly? Perhaps a few more wars and natural disasters to go with it?
  • Korguz - Wednesday, January 22, 2020 - link

    GreenReaper doesnt understand what would happen if there was only one video card maker, or for that matter, one cpu maker... but in some ways we had just that before AMD released Zen, intel got lazy, stagnated the cpu market, and wasnt innovating, and only increasing performance by less then 10% i think it was year over year, all while charging more for each new generation. zen comes out, and look what happened, 10xxx series DROPPED by 1k at the top end over the 99xx series... if intel can do that, then it is a little obvious, they were over charging...
  • Irata - Friday, January 17, 2020 - link

    But that die is on a cheap mature process and all R&D, marketing... costs long since amortized.

    Why do you think AMD keeps Ryzen 2000 (and even 1000) series around ?

    The question here is who can afford to hold their breath longer.

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