The AMD Radeon RX 9000 series had everything going for it at launch, solid RDNA 4 architecture, competitive performance numbers, and a price tag that made Nvidia sweat.
The RX 9070 XT debuted at $599 MSRP back in March 2025, and people were genuinely excited. Fast forward a few months, and that excitement has completely evaporated, because the prices went off the rails, and gamers simply said no.
How did we get here?
GDDR6 memory shortages pushed AMD and its partners to raise prices steadily after launch, and street prices ballooned past the $800 mark at their peak.
That’s nearly $200 more than what was originally advertised, on a card that was supposed to be the budget-friendly alternative to Nvidia’s pricier Blackwell lineup. Not exactly the deal of the century.
The RX 9000 series, based on the RDNA 4 architecture, was originally designed to offer a competitive balance between performance and price.
However, external factors such as higher VRAM memory costs and other component increases pushed final prices much higher than expected. The result? Gamers looked at their wallets, looked at the price tags, and quietly walked away.
Retailers are now feeling the pain
When nobody buys, inventory piles up, and that’s exactly what happened. The price increase for AMD RX 9000 GPUs resulted in a drastic drop in demand, at least in the Japanese market, where prices for RDNA 4 GPUs increased by around 30-40%. Retailers were left sitting on stacks of unsold cards, which is never a good place to be.
The correction is now happening in real time. The RX 9070 XT, which was hitting highs of around ¥130,000 ($840) in Japan, has dropped to lows near ¥108,000 ($770). In the US, 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.
It’s a 15-20% price drop driven entirely by one thing: nobody was buying. And honestly? Good. This is exactly how the market is supposed to work.
Many PC enthusiasts, who usually invest in the latest technology, are choosing to keep their current graphics cards or look at second-hand options rather than overpay for something that launched at a fair price and then quietly became unreasonable.
The message from the gaming community was loud and clear, there’s a limit to how much price inflation people will tolerate, and AMD’s partners crossed it.
The silver lining here is that if the downward trend continues, the RX 9070 XT could realistically get back to territory where it makes sense to buy again. At $599-$649, this card is a genuine competitor. At $800+, it’s just another overpriced GPU in a market already full of them.
What do you think, are the current prices still too high, or is this the right moment to pull the trigger on a Radeon RX 9000 card? Drop your take in the comments, we want to hear it!