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Close to the Metal Ep. 14: GTX 1060 review, and what’s up with video card prices?

Nvidia’s GTX 1060 is the company’s latest mid-range video card, and heir to a long line of superb value cards. The story this time around is much the same as before, with a base price of $200.

But you may not end up with a base model. There are many options available, like the Zotac GeForce GTX 1060 AMP! edition we reviewed. It has a slight overclock – about 50MHz – and carries the beefier 6GB configuration.

That means good things for the performance, but it also means bad things for the price, which reaches $280 at retail right now. Affordability is the point of a mid-range card, so it’s disappointing to see an extra $80 has been tacked on – and this places the GTX 1060 side-by-side with the GTX 970, which is now being sold at a discount.

This isn’t the only card suffering from surprisingly high pricing. In fact, inflated pricing has become a disappointing trend across all price brackets, and across both AMD and Nvidia.

In fact, AMD’s RX 480 seems particularly hard-hit by the problem. Though it debuted at $200, its actually retails closer to $240 or $250 at most stores. That’s a big increase, and it completely destroys the “everyday gaming” value that AMD originally touted when the video card first came out. And that price only applies if you can find one – which is still difficult.

We decided to do some digging to discover what might be causing the problem. What did we find? Well, you’ll just have to listen to find out.

Close to the Metal is a podcast from Digital Trends that focuses on the geekier side of life. It tackles the topics PC enthusiasts argue over in language everyone can understand. Please subscribe, share, and send your questions to podcast@digitaltrends.com. We broadcast the show live on YouTube every Wednesday at 1pm EST/10am PST.

Matthew S. Smith
Matthew S. Smith is the former Lead Editor, Reviews at Digital Trends. He previously guided the Products Team, which dives…
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