And then you have the GTX1650S which delivers 90-105% of the performance for 80% of the price, easily the better bang-per-buck option among current-gen lower-end.
While I agree that the launch pricing is very mediocre, saying the 1650 SUPER is 80% of the price is a bit of an exaggeration, seeing as the 4GB 5500XT does exist, with an MSRP that's only $10 higher, or about a 6% difference in price. That makes for a better comparison than a card with double the VRAM, or models with hefty coolers that are probably unnecessary for this level of card. Comparing the 4GB model, the price to performance ratio should be a lot closer, even though it's still probably not quite as good.
It feels like AMD decided on their pricing months ago, and didn't bother to adjust it to compete with the 16 SUPER cards. Against the original 1650, which typically performs below an RX 570, a 4GB 5500XT for just $20 more might be considered a relatively decent offering, albeit one that doesn't really improve much over AMD's own RX 500 series. Likewise, the $200 MSRP of the 8GB model might have been a little more tolerable if the original 1660 was still priced upward of $230, but the 1660 SUPER has pushed prices of the original 1660 down, with models starting around the $210 range, and even one that's currently on sale for $190 after rebate at Newegg.
Nvidia ran away with the flagship tier. Thereby granting them the power to set the price/performance curve as they wished. They chose to keep the price/performance curve the same and simply offer more performance for more $$. Although AMD competed valiantly with the RX570/RX580, the price curve remains steep.
That doesn't actually make any sense. : P While Nvidia might have more leeway to set prices for their highest-end models that don't have any direct competition, they don't have any direct control over AMD's pricing. If AMD wanted to undercut Nvidia with their new cards, they could. When the RX 480 4GB came out, the card outperformed Nvidia's GTX 970 at a much lower price point. The rough equivalent to that would be if the 5500XT 8GB outperformed the 1660 Ti. But no, the 1660 Ti is still around 25% faster, and even the 1660 SUPER is around 20% faster. AMD is just offering similar, or slightly worse performance for the money than what's already on the market.
This also doesn't bode well for RX 5600/5600 XT pricing. If those cards perform roughly in between a 5500XT and a 5700, we'll be looking at somewhere around 1660 Ti levels of performance, and probably similar pricing. Again, that brings nothing new to the table, and if someone wanted that level of performance around that price range, they could have had it the better part of a year ago with the 1660 Ti. To make AMD's new generation of cards exciting, the 5500 XT should have launched for around $150, and the 5600 for around $200, at least for the lowest VRAM variants. I can't see AMD gaining any market share with cards that just do the bare minimum to compete with the market leader.
Plus, the widespread use of raytraced lighting effects looms on the horizon, with the next generation of consoles apparently featuring hardware support for them. That makes it all the more questionable to pay more than you have to for a graphics card with limited raytracing support. That goes for Nvidia's existing RTX cards too though, since they don't exactly have enough RT cores to handle the effects all that well, and I suspect they'll be launching a new generation of cards with significantly better raytracing support within the next year.
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