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Making a stand in the mainstream – AMD are cutting the price of the Radeon RX 470

Best budget graphics card runner-up

With Nvidia set to release their low-end Pascal graphics cards AMD is looking to cut the cost of their more powerful Radeon RX 470 cards to hijack the new GeForce launch.

What are the top GPUs around today? Check out our guide to the best graphics cards.

AMD chose not to fight the high-end graphics card battle in this generation, ceding that ground to Nvidia’s GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. But now the GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti cards are set to invade the mainstream market that AMD have made the home of their Polaris GPUs. And that will not stand.

A report from TweakTown claims that AMD is about to cut the MSRP for the Radeon RX 470 down from $179 to $169. That might only be a $10 drop, but with the new Nvidia Pascal cards likely to arrive at around $150 that might be enough to convince some people to opt for the red team’s GPUs instead.

The tricky thing is there are very few RX 470 cards available for the MSRP either in the US or the UK right now, but fingers crossed this expected price cut actually does make a difference at retail or it could all be for nought.

The GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti aren’t expected to have the same level of performance as the more powerful RX 470, but are likely to be a little quicker than the only other low-end Radeon option, the RX 460.

Bringing the pricing for the RX 470 down towards the new GeForce cards would be a smart move for AMD and solidify their position as the mainstream market leaders. And if the Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti is seen to be competing with AMD’s second-tier Polaris GPU then that’s not going to end up looking good for the green team. Estimates put the RX 470 at around 30% faster than the upcoming GTX 1050 Ti, and with the price only a little bit more for the Radeon that would be the card to go for.

With the GTX 1050 Ti launch expected for the last week of October we should find out for sure where the smart mainstream money ought to be going very soon.

The best prices for the Radeon RX 470 we’ve found today:

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