The mid-range graphics card market heats up as AMD and Nvidia get aggressive

At the same time as the launch of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE last week, AMD announced an official price cut for the RX 7700 XT, bringing it down to $419. That helped to increase its appeal against its primary competitor, the RTX 4060 Ti. However, the RTX 4060 Ti is also falling in price with several 8GB models falling well under the $400 mark.

Of course, the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB is clearly the more appealing RTX 4060 Ti variant, though its price has remained stubbornly higher than the 8GB version—until now.

Tom's Hardware spotted an attractive deal on an MSI RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Ventus 3X model that will set you back $419 at Newegg after the application of a $30 promo code. The original $100 premium for the 16GB has shrunk dramatically. There's also a Gigabyte RTX 4060 Ti 16GB Windforce model costing $429 after a $20 promo code is added. That really reinstates the pressure on the RX 7700 XT and it seems like it won't be long before one or both models are available for under $400. The value proposition of both cards becomes pretty good at that point.

The RTX 4060 Ti 16GB isn't a bad card at all. It just didn't make a lot of sense at $499. The addition of 8GB of memory didn't justify a $100 premium over the RTX 4060 Ti 8GB given that the extra VRAM is the only difference between the two cards. I believed it to be the weakest card of the Ada Lovelace generation, but now that it's falling towards the $400 mark, it deserves re-evaluation.

Honestly, $400 is still historically on the high side for what are very much mid-range GPUs, but with both AMD and Nvidia perhaps a year away from launching replacements, they're now looking a lot more interesting. Should they fall under $400 sometime during the rest of 2024, a lot of gamers will feel compelled to pull the trigger and replace aging cards like the RTX 2060 or RX 580. They are running out of grunt with modern titles in more and more cases.

That's the beauty of competition folks. If Nvidia and AMD are duking it out, gamers win. Nvidia still has a stranglehold over the graphics card market that doesn't look like changing anytime soon, so AMD needs to be aggressive if it's to see an uptick in the number of cards sold.

Both the RTX 4060 Ti 16GB and RX 7700 XT appeal with their 16GB and 12GB frame buffers respectively. That will hold them in good stead into the future, and with games like GTA 6 to come, more than a few of them will be tasked with running what is sure to be a demanding game when the eye candy is turned up. 

The mid range GPU market is looking as healthy as it's been since before the Ethereum mining boom began.