February 22, 2019 AMD has confirmed the Radeon RX Vega 56 promotion is not a permanent price drop. The $279 (£249) price tag will not be sticking around.
AMD has slashed prices for the RX Vega 56 ahead of Nvidia’s rumoured 1660 Ti launch. Not only does the RX Vega 56’s shiny $279 (£249) price tag show the red team’s hopeful intention of swaying gamers to Radeon, it also ostensibly confirms the GTX 1660 Ti launch and performance rumours are true. Thanks AMD.
The RX Vega started out life at well over $400 (£400), and over the course of 2018 has slowly but surely been making its way into the affordable. With a little extra help from AMD to cut costs the MSI RX Vega 56 Air Boost OC graphics card is now listed over at Newegg, OverclockersUK, and eBuyer for $279 and £249 respectively. AMD has confirmed that the offer will not be sticking around for good, however. And it already looks like some retailers are sold out.
“Radeon RX Vega 56 has been heavily promoted since the holidays and into the new year as partners have been eager to make RX Vega 56 and its forward looking 8GB of HBM2 available for more gamers,” an AMD representative says. “To clarify, the current Radeon RX Vega 56 promotion is not a price drop. Additionally, the RX Vega 56 graphics card will continue to be offered as part of AMD’s Raise the Game: Fully Loaded bundle with three of this year’s blockbuster titles.”
We’re told that OCUK will be receiving its bargain stock sometime today – so keep an eye out if you hope to take AMD up on its offer.
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This price drop strategically puts AMD’s RX Vega 56 right in the mix with the mainstream, booting the AMD RX 590 out of the picture. The top Polaris card launched late last year was a moderate upgrade over the RX 580 at launch, but doesn’t perform anywhere close to the RX Vega 56. With similar price tags, the RX Vega 56 is too good to turn down… at least for one more day.
Nvidia’s GTX 1660 Ti is rumoured to launch for $279 sometime today and that could send the RX Vega 56 back to relative obscurity. The grapevine would have the Turing card performing similarly to a GTX 1070, and if that’s the case, the RX Vega 56 will slip behind in most titles aside from those that heavily favour the red team’s architecture. At least Vega is a mean overclocker…
That’s all speculative performance and pricing for the moment. But, if the rumours are true, the cat will be out of the bag come tomorrow.
AMD’s RX Vega cards have struggled in the face of Nvidia’s mid-tier Turing GPUs. Sapphire had previously attempted to drop its Pulse RX Vega 56 down to a moderately competitive $329 price tag in January, but that was quickly cut down by the red… sorry, it was a press release error. Definitely an error.
But at least AMD is attempting to make its current generation cards competitive in the face of Nvidia’s latest. Until AMD Navi swings around, the RX Vega 56 is probably the best alternative to the green team below the incredibly expensive, and mostly unavailable, Radeon VII we’ve got.