Ever since the ongoing price hike of chips started, it"s not every day that we hear a major piece of hardware drop in price. That"s why news of retailer reductions on any GPU catches attention, which is exactly what"s happening with the AMD Radeon RX 9000 series.
The RX 9070 XT launched at $599 MSRP back in early 2025, but GDDR6 memory shortages pushed AMD to raise prices through its partners, and street prices ballooned to $800+ at their peak. Gamers simply refused to purchase the cards at those prices, which left retailers stuck with stagnant inventory they need to move.
Japanese market data from GazLog shows the correction is already happening. The RX 9070 XT, which was hitting highs of around ¥130,000 ($840), has dropped to lows near ¥108,000 ($770) in Japan. The trend is similar in the US, where RX 9070 XT variants are currently listing between $649 and $729, down from recent $800+ levels, and the RX 9070 is sliding toward $589-$669. That’s a 15-20% drop in price compared to last month.
The cards themselves are a mixed bag. Reviewers praise solid performance compared to more expensive GPUs, but many users are reporting driver instabilities, crashes, timeouts, and black screens. Ray tracing still lags behind Nvidia, and FSR continues to draw unfavorable comparisons to DLSS. When you combine those inconsistencies with the inflated price, you get low adoption. The Steam Hardware Survey from January showed only 0.16% of users running the RX 9070.
If we don"t count Black Friday sales and other holiday deals, this is one of the biggest price drops for the series. And it"s purely reactive, as buyers simply don"t accept the deal.
In a market where GPU prices are almost universally climbing due to component costs and AI demand, it"s refreshing for consumers to see any pricing dips. And it also shows that companies still need to somewhat justify high prices with decent hardware, instead of hoping people will buy anything.
Via: WCCFTech