AMD's flagship RX 6950 XT graphics card is down to $610 at Newegg in the US
Around 15-20% faster than RTX 4070 for $10 more.
As you may have noticed, the RTX 4070 was released earlier this week - indeed, the official RPS 4070 review went live yesterday. It's a good graphics card, fundamentally speaking, but like many recent releases it's a bit more pricey than it should be at $599 / £589.
Thankfully though, in the US you can actually pick up AMD's more powerful last-gen flagship card, the RX 6950 XT, for just $10 more thanks to a deal at Newegg.
The RX 6950 XT performs better than the RTX 4070, with on average about 15-20% higher frame-rates in rasterised (ie non-RT) games. However, it does have some downsides too, namely that it's physically larger, draws more power, lacks a DLSS 3 competitor and uses FSR 2 instead of DLSS.
Still, despite the limitations the RX 6950 XT still makes a lot of sense for anyone that isn't interested in ray tracing or DLSS 3, as that higher frame-rate will provide a smoother experience in almost all games, while RT and DLSS 3 are only supported in a small (albeit rapidly growing) number of AAA titles. For more retro or indie fare, I'd say the RX 6950 XT is definitely the better card, although for these titles performance tends to be less of a factor anyway.
What do you think - is the RX 6950 XT the surprise RTX 4070 competitor that Nvidia wasn't expecting? Or is $599+ just too much to spend on a GPU in the first place. I'll look forward to seeing your answers in the comments if you've got the time and inclination!