Tuesday, January 21st 2025
AMD Sets March Launch Window for Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 Graphics Cards
AMD has finally made an official announcement regarding the much anticipated launch of RDNA 4 graphics cards. The first wave of next-generation models—Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 (non-XT)—are lined up for a loose "around March" release, thus conforming to recent company statements that pointed to a first quarter (of 2025) rollout. The rumor mill had Team Red strategizing a launch for later this month—potentially beating NVIDIA to the next-gen GPU punch, but "price hurdles" and other factors have allegedly contributed to a revision of tactics.
Yesterday, David McAfee—Vice President and General Manager of Ryzen and Radeon products—ended speculation with a social media post: "Radeon 9000 series hardware and software are looking great, and we are planning to have a wide assortment of cards available globally. Can't wait for gamers to get their hands on the cards when they go on sale in March!" Hardcore PC hardware enthusiasts will likely be left confused by this fresh proclamation—a steady flow of January leaks have provided evidence of Navi 48 GPU-based products sitting in retail storage facilities, unboxing of certain partner models, and insiders playtesting early samples. Industry watchdogs posit that AMD's "aggressive pricing approach" has rubbed retailers the wrong way—the extra wiggle room could be spent on negotiating wholesale costs.
Sources:
David McAfee Tweet, Tom's Hardware, Wccftech, VideoCardz
Yesterday, David McAfee—Vice President and General Manager of Ryzen and Radeon products—ended speculation with a social media post: "Radeon 9000 series hardware and software are looking great, and we are planning to have a wide assortment of cards available globally. Can't wait for gamers to get their hands on the cards when they go on sale in March!" Hardcore PC hardware enthusiasts will likely be left confused by this fresh proclamation—a steady flow of January leaks have provided evidence of Navi 48 GPU-based products sitting in retail storage facilities, unboxing of certain partner models, and insiders playtesting early samples. Industry watchdogs posit that AMD's "aggressive pricing approach" has rubbed retailers the wrong way—the extra wiggle room could be spent on negotiating wholesale costs.
116 Comments on AMD Sets March Launch Window for Radeon RX 9070 XT & 9070 Graphics Cards
So their first three excuses were all lies? Now the problem is their drivers are shit.
And as far the conjecture about pricing, well the only one that got jebaited was AMD. By their own software team. Great that “AMD is now a software company“ according to their CEO.
AMD wants to get FSR4 right which so far seems to be a big deal, as even HW Unboxed praised how good it looked at CES. If AMD rushed these to market and FSR4 didn't work on more than a few games the nvidia buyers would still be shi$%ing on it.
Whatever dude, leave them be. They'll release when they'll release.
My point was that they've been losing market share rapidly. And to turn it around, they need effective marketing and effective pricing. At the moment, RDNA2 was overpriced and RDNA3 was well overpriced. It also didn't help when retail outlets also overpriced the GPUs well above AMDs price recommendations. I get your point but this topic of market share = profits is subjective. A larger market share does allow a company to produce more at a lower cost per unit and open up more favorable distribution channels. Oh look we are now talking about Nvidia aren't we.
It can also let you sell for cheaper, see how Nvidia made sure that AIBs, along with their custom, more expensive models, also sell one model at MSRP.
Of course, that is little consolation as long as silicon demand far exceeds supply.
My intent was to express that who ever is in charge of the hardware launches is incompetent. Not stupid, I seriously doubt very many people get high level positions with publicly traded companies that are just plain stupid. You can be highly educated, smart as hell and still be completely incompetent at some things.
It's obvious that they have problems, but if they have problems the right thing to do is to make changes in the management, not to delay a critical launch.
And unlike Nvidia, where some of their cards go up in value and the others retain most of their value, the AMD cards are like Alfa Romeos, they are worth less what you pay as soon as you take them home. You can find very cheap RDNA3 cards, making the new ones a hard sell unless price is very competitive
and this is why AMD doesn't sell