Later this month, Nvidia is set to launch two new Pascal based graphics cards, the GTX 1050 and GTX 1050 Ti. In a pre-emptive strike against Nvidia, AMD is reportedly planning to drop prices on their RX 470 mid-range graphics card. Launched at $179, the Polaris 10 based GPU will see a minor price cut of $10, dropping down to $169. This will hopefully see more competition for the lower end of the market which is currently dominated by AMD offerings.
At $149 for the GTX 1050 Ti, Nvidia will have a tough time facing off against the discounted RX 470. Even though it wins the efficiency battle, the GTX 1050 Ti will only feature 768 CUDA cores. This won’t be enough to pit it against the RX 470, meaning consumers could get a lot more extra performance, up to 30%, for a mere $20 investment. The RX 470 also ticks a lot more boxes like FreeSync and being just powerful enough to be VR ready.
The big question, of course, will be how much the market prices actually shift. The GTX 1050 Ti might see some price drops or MIR discounts real soon if it runs into trouble and the RX 470 is still somewhat overpriced compared to its MSRP. It will be an interesting couple of weeks as the GTX 1050 Ti launches at last.
