Largest Swiss Retailer Digitec to Receive a Grand Total of 35 AMD RX 6900 XT Graphics Cards for Launch

[Raevenlord]

AMD's launch of their top of the line RX 6900 XT graphics card seems that it will have even less availability than the company's high-end RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT graphics card. This isn't surprising; the RX 6900 XT is a 590 mm² beast of a GPU with all of its execution units enabled - that's a lot of die space to harvest without a single silicon fault, no matter how good TSMC's 7 nm manufacturing process really is. Stock will be scarce, and likely will be scarce throughout the lifetime of the product, especially with the clogged, unmet, existing demand for high performance GPUs from a world population that has turned to gaming as a solace in times of quarantine.

Digitec, the largest Swiss retailer (serving a population of 8.5 million people), is only receiving 35 RX 6900 XT graphics cards for launch. We don't know, of course, what exactly is the Swiss demand for high-performance graphics cards, but it being one of the world's wealthiest countries (when it comes to its population's average income) it's expected to be higher than other countries with comparable population but lower income. As a result, the retailer isn't even putting the cards up for sale as they normally would; instead, there's a sweepstakes of sorts where 35 random users that opt-in for the event will receive a code that allows them to purchase the graphics card for its retail price of $999. An interesting solution, albeit of course, it just signals the dimension of the cards' availability issues.



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[nguyen]

so AMD is not giving preorder links only to Team Red influencers this time around anymore ?

 

[AusWolf]

I don't understand. Why bother launching a product with absolute zero market availability?

 

[laszlo]

better give them as a Christmas gift to random buyers in Dec. ; it will increase the sales and benefits will be higher than the cost of those cards...

 

[djisas]

Those "lucky" 35 will just sell them for 2X MSRP anyway...

 

[RedelZaVedno]

only 35 6900XTs for the one of the wealthiest countries in the world? What is AMD thinking? They could sell thousands of 6900ies in Switzerland. Maybe they actually don't wanna sell them at all? 6900 80CU GPUS rebranded as Instinct prosumers GPUs could be sold for triple the price to prosumer market. Maybe that's the catch, 6900XT being here just for marketing purposes to disturb 3090 victory lap?

 

[windwhirl]

only 35 6900XTs for the one of the wealthiest countries in the world? What is AMD thinking? They could sell thousands of 6900ies in Switzerland. Maybe they actually don't wanna sell them at all? 6900 80CU GPUS rebranded as Instinct prosumers GPUs could be sold for triple the price to prosumer market. Maybe that's the catch, 6900XT being here just for marketing purposes to disturb 3090 victory lap?

I'm thinking that low supply may come from somewhat low yields on already low amount of wafers (according to some rumors, of a total of some 150k wafers for Q4/2020, around 70/80% will be dedicated exclusively to consoles SoCs). The 6900 XT is the fully enabled RDNA2 core, so any defect means that it will not be usable as 6900XT and will have to be rebranded as something else.

And forget about rebranding with Instinct GPUs. Instinct uses a different architecture and IIRC it's not like it's simply lacking the HDMI/DP port, it literally lacks the capability to output video signal in the core itself.

 

[seccentral]

at first i thought it reads "for lunch"
that would have been funny

 

[hat]

I'm sure it will all work out in the end, if humanity just kinda... calms down? Everyone's constantly pushing for bigger(smaller?), better, faster. TSMC is apparently the only fab that can do what everyone wants, and they're overbooked. Even if they made 100% good parts, yields at 100%, they couldn't keep up. So there's only so much to go around, and graphics cards and consumer level processors are evidently low on that list. Phones are probably pretty big, as everyone always wants a new iPhone. They're easy to sell for big money. It's not like a processor that has to beat every existing processor in every existing metric to win the hearts of the enthusiasts who are buying them.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

I don't understand. Why bother launching a product with absolute zero market availability?

AMD missed a huge opportunity, nVidia is struggling but now I can see all Ampere cards at a premium less than before, but no RX6000. They should've postponed Zen3 and focus on GPUs, as Intel isn't competitive anymore, discounting Zen2 would've been enough.
It seems Microsoft messed up also, they just let Sony get the jump on them, by not launching enough consoles.

 

[Punkenjoy]

Well, that is expected. I do not think that product is made to be sold in mass and i suspect that not many of them will be sold over time

But as far as AMD difficulties to supply, there are few things to say
1. 6900xt are clearly the top binned parts, i wonder if they also keep a reserve for a future pro product that would have higher margin.
2. They had to fulfill the Sony/Microsoft deals first as both wanted to launch as many console as possible for the holidays
3. The chip is still huge, the chance of defect on a huge chips is higher, it may also happen in a location they can disable.
4. They were not sure on the final spec until last minute as per the rumors. They need 2-3 month to really ramp up the production at minimum. They probably launched it while production just started.

As for Nvidia:
1. Selling a bunch of chips to Miner won't help gamer card availability for sure
2. The chip is also huge (same as Navi21). Meaning higher rate of defect
3. Samsung still learning to make big chip. they used to mostly do memory/nand and cellphone soc.

And for both, global transport is slow down. They used unused space on commercial flight to ship parts and the number of these flights are much lower than pre-covid. The fallback solution is commercial freight flight (that cost much higher.) or slower method of transport. This will last for a long time but will be resolved eventually.

So be patient. And yes, maybe your config is still fine !

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

the RX 6900 XT is a 590 mm² beats of a GPU

Did you mean "beast"?

 

[Metroid]

35? this must be a joke, Switzerland is where people with more money than sense live, will sell in seconds. Also, now scalpers know they can buy it without worrying, if they said 3500 instead of 35 then scalpers would be nonexistent.

 

[R-T-B]

beats

 

[bencrutz]

Did you mean "beast"?

nope, i'm sure he meant "deats" by brother dre

 

[claylomax]

nope, i'm sure he meant "deats" by brother dre

View attachment 178800

 

[mtcn77]

I think this will be the last generation in which AMD launched flagship monolithic dies and will switch production to MCM multi-chip-modules just like their cpus. You didn't hear it from me.

 

[AusWolf]

I think this will be the last generation in which AMD launched flagship monolithic dies and will switch production to MCM multi-chip-modules just like their cpus. You didn't hear it from me.

I'm curious what that would do in terms of efficiency. The 6000 series (and nvidia 3000 series) GPUs are sure fast, but shoving a 300+ W room heater into my PC? Hmm... nope! I'm having enough trouble with the heat output of my 5700 XT as it is.

 

[nguyen]

I'm curious what that would do in terms of efficiency. The 6000 series (and nvidia 3000 series) GPUs are sure fast, but shoving a 300+ W room heater into my PC? Hmm... nope! I'm having enough trouble with the heat output of my 5700 XT as it is.

If you don't know how to drag the power limit slider down in Afterburner, you shouldn't be buying high end GPUs...

 

[windwhirl]

I'm curious what that would do in terms of efficiency. The 6000 series (and nvidia 3000 series) GPUs are sure fast, but shoving a 300+ W room heater into my PC? Hmm... nope! I'm having enough trouble with the heat output of my 5700 XT as it is.

Probably not much, if anything at all, but rather it would be a move to improve yields.

 

[AusWolf]

If you don't know how to drag the power limit slider down in Afterburner, you shouldn't be buying high end GPUs...

Why would I buy a high end GPU if I wanted to drag the power slider down anyway?

 

[nguyen]

Why would I buy a high end GPU if I wanted to drag the power slider down anyway?

Do you floor the gas pedal of your car every time you drive ? yeah it's like that.

 

[AusWolf]

AMD missed a huge opportunity, nVidia is struggling but now I can see all Ampere cards at a premium less than before, but no RX6000. They should've postponed Zen3 and focus on GPUs, as Intel isn't competitive anymore, discounting Zen2 would've been enough.
It seems Microsoft messed up also, they just let Sony get the jump on them, by not launching enough consoles.

I'm not so sure. At least Zen 3 CPUs are selling like hotcakes.

Do you floor the gas pedal of your car everytime you drive ? yeah it's like that.

No I don't. But the possibility is always there. Dragging the power slider down means you're not using your GPU to its full potential at any given time.

Edit: I wish manufacturers didn't design chips and cooling solutions that run hardware to its thermal limits without adjusting settings. I mean, I remember when you didn't even need a heatsink for a GPU, and even if you did, you never had to think about case airflow just to keep it within its operating temperature range. I understand the need for faster hardware, but still...

 

[nguyen]

No I don't. But the possibility is always there. Dragging the power slider down means you're not using your GPU to its full potential at any given time.

See, the choices are always there, you can reduce the power usage in games that already have good FPS (>100fps) and max out the power limit in games that have low FPS (like CP2077), or you need a heater in the winter.
For true efficiency nerd though, when you drag the 3080 down to 220W, it will give better performance than 3070 which has stock TDP of 220W --> higher perf/watt. No overclocking involved here, just drag the power limit slider down.

For the price of 6800XT and 3080, AIBs are cutting their own margins by making exceptional coolers. If you check the Asus TUF 3080 review, the thermal/noise characteristic is almost the same as watercooling.

 

[AusWolf]

See, the choices are always there, you can reduce the power usage in games that already have good FPS (>100fps) and max out the power limit in games that have low FPS (like CP2077), or you need a heater in the winter.
For true efficiency nerd though, when you drag the 3080 down to 220W, it will give better performance than 3070 which has stock TDP of 220W --> higher perf/watt. No overclocking involved here, just drag the power limit slider down.

For the price of 6800XT and 3080, AIBs are cutting their own margins by making exceptional coolers. If you check the Asus TUF 3080 review, the thermal/noise characteristic is almost the same as watercooling.

That is very interesting. It would be nice to see reviews investigating it - also the reasons why that is.