**The Great Graphics Card Price War: AMD's 5600 XT and the Fallout**
The graphics card market has always been known for its competitive nature, but the recent launch of AMD's Radeon RX 5600 XT has brought things to a boiling point. At this price point and with this level of performance, the 5600 XT is a strong contender that almost completely invalidates the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Non-Ti (5,700) in many areas. Some titles even come close to matching each other's performance, leaving gamers wondering which card to choose.
However, it's not just the raw performance numbers that are causing confusion – it's also the pricing structure. AMD's decision to keep its launch price similar to Nvidia's RTX 2060 Non-Ti has left many feeling underwhelmed and confused. The status quo of graphics card reviews seems to be shattering, as reviewers like myself were able to talk with AMD reps at CES 2020 about pricing structures specifically. We asked them why they priced their latest cards the way they did, compared to the competition. The answer was simple: they don't need to undercut Nvidia's prices.
AMD reps explained that they're content with current sales volumes and contracts with vendors, which suggests that they're not feeling pressure to adjust their pricing strategy just yet. This is a key distinction between the CPU and GPU environments – in one case, AMD can easily undercut Intel's offerings without issue, but in the graphics card market, competition is fiercer, especially in the low-to-mid-range segments. The consequences of this approach are evident: Nvidia's recent RTX 2060 price cuts have prompted AMD to boost its own RX 5600 XT with a recent V BIOS update, which has unlocked over 10% more performance.
This move has left some wondering if AMD is "bad" for not undercutting Nvidia's prices. However, the reality is that most companies engage in similar practices to drive competition and innovation. The boosted card renders the 5700 virtually useless compared to the RTX 2060 Non-Ti, especially when you consider the price differences. So, does this make Nvidia or AMD "bad" companies? Absolutely not.
The other question on everyone's mind is: what does this mean for gamers? Well, it means that the choice of graphics card depends on your specific needs and preferences. Some may prefer GeForce Experience or the new Adrenaline software, while others may use Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve. It's more complicated than ever before, but in many ways, that's a good thing.
**Unboxing and First Impressions**
The Sapphire Pulse model of the RX 5600 XT was sent to us for testing, and we were impressed with its performance. The card features a sports A-to-Fan cooler and eliminated red branding, making it look sleek and modern. We also noticed that it only requires an 8-pin power connector, which is a significant advantage over some of Nvidia's more powerful cards.
We put the Pulse model through its paces with our usual Dirt Rally loop test, and it performed admirably, keeping temperatures near 70 degrees Celsius under heavy load. The card remained quiet even when pushing its limits, thanks to the effective cooling system. We were also pleased to find that the audio quality was excellent, rivaling some of the most powerful cards on the market.
Overall, we're very pleased with the Sapphire Pulse model, and we'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great mid-range graphics card. It's an excellent benchmark for future models, and we can't wait to see how AMD continues to improve its offerings in this space.
**Conclusion**
The launch of the Radeon RX 5600 XT has brought a fresh wave of competition to the graphics card market, and it's clear that AMD is playing a serious game. While the pricing structure may leave some feeling underwhelmed, we believe that the card's performance and features make it an excellent choice for many gamers.
As always, the best way to determine which card is right for you is to do your own research and compare different models side by side. We've linked all of our benchmark results below, so be sure to check them out if you're interested in seeing more. Thanks for watching, and we'll catch you in the next video!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso you're preparing for your next PC build and find yourself in need of a solid mid-range graphics card that doesn't necessarily break the bank I know that's subjective but we're talking around two to three hundred bucks is the rx 5600 XT want to consider let's find out if you're upset about that inconsiderate Windows activation watermark plugging your screen snag an OEM license sed key makes it simple you have one in a few seconds for a little over $10 paste your activation key and you can kiss that watermark goodbye and be sure to use my new offer code GSL for a 12 percent discount on your order let's cut straight through the BS these are the benchmarks I'm not gonna hide them probably the fastest you'll see these in any review today and the answer is yes this card is great value for money but I've got to say at one point it wasn't that great a reason BIOS update forced this card into a different class I know Brian over at bps custom specifically noted a near 15% increase in some tests as a result of the flash that's pretty incredible but it gets me thinking why now and why was AMD restricting performance in the first place and heck why only a week before the launch of the car that kind of shafts us reviewers I was kind of lucky I was procrastinating up until now then I started digging a bit the raid on divisions only direct competition is of course Nvidia and the team green recently announced an RT X 2060 price drop from $349 to $2.99 and I've got to say it $2.99 seems like a pretty compelling offer so it's no coincidence that the 5600 XT is priced slightly under this at around 279 USD I do have an EVGA 2060 KO ready to test mind you it wasn't finished by the time this embargo lifted so you'll see a dedicated review comparing that and this very soon what I can say is that the 5600 XT at this price point and with this level of performance is a strong contender tank it almost completely invalidates the 5,700 non ex T's existence and some titles the 5600 xt comes awfully close to matching it's more expensive counterpart which i think is pretty cool but also it's kind of confusing and that's why i've titled this video what i have I don't think anybody wanted to do this from the get-go because now they've almost invalidated another SKU that is supposed to be better I wanted to present a different perspective here something different than the status quo of graphics short reviews I was able to talk with AMD right on reps at CES 2020 about pricing structures specifically they were forthcoming to a degree of course they won't dispel everything which is a bit unfortunate but I asked them explicitly why they price their latest cards the way they did with respect to the competition why did they not undercut invidious pricing structure and look on the CPU side AMD's often done this they undercut blue team offerings and it's worked out pretty well for them so far but we're talking about two different markets here Intel's struggling still with the current demand as well as the new nodes they're developing the new fabrication processes ten nanometer whenever we're gonna see that the desktop space who knows right but prices have risen as a result on their side in the graphics card market though competition particularly in the low to mid-range segments is fierce so I asked AMD reps point-blank why aren't you undercutting your competitions pricing could you would you and the simple answer I got back was we don't need to this leads me to assume then that AMD's content with current sales volumes and contracts with vendors otherwise they'd adjust accordingly they're probably perfectly content with offering alternatives that aren't necessarily better more viable and that's the key distinction between the CPU and GPU environments in one it's difficult to not recommend AMD I'm recommending Rison to almost everyone who asked me for PC building advice but in the other I struggle to recommend one company skews over the other what is your worker look like do you use premier to use DaVinci Resolve do you prefer GeForce experience or the new adrenaline stuff like it's it's more complicated and I guess that's a good thing but it did initially confuse me and that's why I thought it was worth asking the reps I'm not gonna get too many chances to do that so yes the 5600 XT was likely boosted with a recent V BIOS update that unlocked in excess of 10 percent of additional Headroom all because of Nvidia in its recent RT X 2060 price cuts they won't admit it I'm sure they won't but it's typical marketing stuff Nvidia does the same thing so does Intel AMD was provoked they probably wouldn't have given us the extra performance if they had the real choice for Fears the boosted card would render the 5700 virtually useless and it in fact almost does especially when you consider the price differences so does that make them bad people no does it make Nvidia or AMD bad companies absolutely not most companies do this one in the so start competition and as badly as some of you want to see Nvidia fail in particular you should thank them for what just happened and you could say the opposite sure Nvidia new AMD was releasing a competitive mid-range card so they flinched first and lower the 2060s MSRP in that case thank AMD or thanked both better yet thank competition by the way in case you're wondering all rx 5600 XTS shipping from here on out will boast the new V BIOS so you'll see that 10 percent performance bump you might not be you know comparing before and after but you'll get all of it that you should a card we were sent to test was the sapphire pulse model that's this one here at sports a to fan cooler with eliminated red branding you'll only need a single 8 pin the cooler was beefy enough to keep temps near 70 degrees Celsius after a 30 minute dirt rally loop not too shabby it also held its own in the audio department remaining as quiet as our enormous 5700 XT Red Devil from power color granted that is a more powerful card but still it was a really quiet card under load I'd call that it win as well so I kind of have no qualms at all with pulse multi or sapphire does it right I recommend it in fact you won't find referenced versions of the card anyway so I'd say this is a great benchmark for future models we test and you can find it linked below if you're interested so if you like this one click the like button consider subscribing if you haven't already and let me know the comments down below how you feel about this launch I'll catch them the next one my name is Greg thanks for learning with meso you're preparing for your next PC build and find yourself in need of a solid mid-range graphics card that doesn't necessarily break the bank I know that's subjective but we're talking around two to three hundred bucks is the rx 5600 XT want to consider let's find out if you're upset about that inconsiderate Windows activation watermark plugging your screen snag an OEM license sed key makes it simple you have one in a few seconds for a little over $10 paste your activation key and you can kiss that watermark goodbye and be sure to use my new offer code GSL for a 12 percent discount on your order let's cut straight through the BS these are the benchmarks I'm not gonna hide them probably the fastest you'll see these in any review today and the answer is yes this card is great value for money but I've got to say at one point it wasn't that great a reason BIOS update forced this card into a different class I know Brian over at bps custom specifically noted a near 15% increase in some tests as a result of the flash that's pretty incredible but it gets me thinking why now and why was AMD restricting performance in the first place and heck why only a week before the launch of the car that kind of shafts us reviewers I was kind of lucky I was procrastinating up until now then I started digging a bit the raid on divisions only direct competition is of course Nvidia and the team green recently announced an RT X 2060 price drop from $349 to $2.99 and I've got to say it $2.99 seems like a pretty compelling offer so it's no coincidence that the 5600 XT is priced slightly under this at around 279 USD I do have an EVGA 2060 KO ready to test mind you it wasn't finished by the time this embargo lifted so you'll see a dedicated review comparing that and this very soon what I can say is that the 5600 XT at this price point and with this level of performance is a strong contender tank it almost completely invalidates the 5,700 non ex T's existence and some titles the 5600 xt comes awfully close to matching it's more expensive counterpart which i think is pretty cool but also it's kind of confusing and that's why i've titled this video what i have I don't think anybody wanted to do this from the get-go because now they've almost invalidated another SKU that is supposed to be better I wanted to present a different perspective here something different than the status quo of graphics short reviews I was able to talk with AMD right on reps at CES 2020 about pricing structures specifically they were forthcoming to a degree of course they won't dispel everything which is a bit unfortunate but I asked them explicitly why they price their latest cards the way they did with respect to the competition why did they not undercut invidious pricing structure and look on the CPU side AMD's often done this they undercut blue team offerings and it's worked out pretty well for them so far but we're talking about two different markets here Intel's struggling still with the current demand as well as the new nodes they're developing the new fabrication processes ten nanometer whenever we're gonna see that the desktop space who knows right but prices have risen as a result on their side in the graphics card market though competition particularly in the low to mid-range segments is fierce so I asked AMD reps point-blank why aren't you undercutting your competitions pricing could you would you and the simple answer I got back was we don't need to this leads me to assume then that AMD's content with current sales volumes and contracts with vendors otherwise they'd adjust accordingly they're probably perfectly content with offering alternatives that aren't necessarily better more viable and that's the key distinction between the CPU and GPU environments in one it's difficult to not recommend AMD I'm recommending Rison to almost everyone who asked me for PC building advice but in the other I struggle to recommend one company skews over the other what is your worker look like do you use premier to use DaVinci Resolve do you prefer GeForce experience or the new adrenaline stuff like it's it's more complicated and I guess that's a good thing but it did initially confuse me and that's why I thought it was worth asking the reps I'm not gonna get too many chances to do that so yes the 5600 XT was likely boosted with a recent V BIOS update that unlocked in excess of 10 percent of additional Headroom all because of Nvidia in its recent RT X 2060 price cuts they won't admit it I'm sure they won't but it's typical marketing stuff Nvidia does the same thing so does Intel AMD was provoked they probably wouldn't have given us the extra performance if they had the real choice for Fears the boosted card would render the 5700 virtually useless and it in fact almost does especially when you consider the price differences so does that make them bad people no does it make Nvidia or AMD bad companies absolutely not most companies do this one in the so start competition and as badly as some of you want to see Nvidia fail in particular you should thank them for what just happened and you could say the opposite sure Nvidia new AMD was releasing a competitive mid-range card so they flinched first and lower the 2060s MSRP in that case thank AMD or thanked both better yet thank competition by the way in case you're wondering all rx 5600 XTS shipping from here on out will boast the new V BIOS so you'll see that 10 percent performance bump you might not be you know comparing before and after but you'll get all of it that you should a card we were sent to test was the sapphire pulse model that's this one here at sports a to fan cooler with eliminated red branding you'll only need a single 8 pin the cooler was beefy enough to keep temps near 70 degrees Celsius after a 30 minute dirt rally loop not too shabby it also held its own in the audio department remaining as quiet as our enormous 5700 XT Red Devil from power color granted that is a more powerful card but still it was a really quiet card under load I'd call that it win as well so I kind of have no qualms at all with pulse multi or sapphire does it right I recommend it in fact you won't find referenced versions of the card anyway so I'd say this is a great benchmark for future models we test and you can find it linked below if you're interested so if you like this one click the like button consider subscribing if you haven't already and let me know the comments down below how you feel about this launch I'll catch them the next one my name is Greg thanks for learning with me\n"
