AMD Marketing Highlights Sub-$500 Pricing of 16 GB Radeon GPUs

[T0@st]

AMD's marketing department this week continued its battle to outwit arch rival NVIDIA in GPU VRAM pricing wars - Sasa Marinkovic, a senior director at Team Red's gaming promotion department, tweeted out a simple and concise statement yesterday: "Our @amdradeon 16 GB gaming experience starts at $499." He included a helpful chart that lines up part of the AMD Radeon GPU range against a couple of hand-picked NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards, with emphasis on comparing pricing and respective allotments of VRAM. The infographic indicates AMD's first official declaration of the (last generation "Big Navi" architecture) RX 6800 GPU bottoming out at $499, an all time low, as well as hefty cut affecting the old range topping RX 6950 XT - now available for $649 (an ASRock version is going for $599 at the moment). The RX 6800 XT sits in-between at $579, but it is curious that the RX 6900 XT did not get a slot on the chart.

AMD's latest play against NVIDIA in the video memory size stake is nothing really new - earlier this month it encouraged potential customers to select one of its pricey current generation RX 7900 XT or XTX GPUs. The main reason being that the hefty Radeon cards pack more onboard VRAM than equivalent GeForce RTX models - namely the 4070 Ti and 4080 - therefore future-proofed for increasingly memory hungry games. The latest batch of marketing did not account for board partner variants of the (RDNA3-based) RX 7900 XT GPU selling for as low as $762 this week.



AMD's senior marketeer did not bother to include any of Intel's offerings in the comparison chart - Team Blue's Arc A770 16 GB graphics card can be purchased for $350, but this range-topper cannot trade blows performance-wise with the $499 RX 6800 GPU. AMD is currently busy working on lower specification cards in the Radeon RX-7000 family - set for tentative release windows in the coming months. It will be interesting to find out about intended memory allocations for the cheaper models, as well as a different marketing angle - how will Team Red address the fitting of smaller pools of VRAM to upcoming low and mid-range cards?

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[LabRat 891]

16GiB of GDDR6 for less than $500?
Here I am, chillin out w/ 16GiB of HBM2 on Vega for <$100

Don't care that Navi's uArch is 'faster'. HBM won't be beat for years to come

Which, makes me wish for a new GPU from AMD that uses their MCM layout to attach HBM# to a 'controller' that can be paired with a myriad of GPUs and PCBs. That way, they can work out good yields on an HBM 'modular memtroller', to keep costs reasonable. (As I recall, the barrier to HBM in consumer products were interconnect/bonding issues, not so much the yields on HBM silicon itself)

 

[dgianstefani]

16GiB of GDDR6 for less than $500?
Here I am, chillin out w/ 16GiB of HBM2 on Vega for <$100

Don't care that Navi's uArch is 'faster'. HBM won't be beat for years to come

Which is it? Navi is faster/HBM can't be beat?

 

[tvshacker]

@T0@st

but it is curious that the RX 6900 XT did not get a slot on the chart

Where I live 3 models of the 6950 XT are cheaper than the cheapest 6900 XT:

PS: similar situation happens with the 6650XT vs the 6600XT

PPS: fingers crossed that this means there will be RDNA3 products at 499$/€ with 16GB VRAM

 

[ZoneDymo]

how about you make that sub 350....

 

[T0@st]

Where I live 3 models of the 6950 XT are cheaper than the cheapest 6900 XT.

I've got a Sapphire RX 6900 XT in one of my builds, I could've purchased a 6950 XT for similar money at the time (oops memory slipped, I meant 2022)...but opted for the former due to the resultant cheaper electricity bills!

 

[bonehead123]

Oh my, now Lisa & Jacket Man are gonna be fightin like spoiled little youngins....

Anyone wanna bet on who will win ?

Maybe Lisa will start wearing a nicer jacket than wuhang ..

 

[tvshacker]

I've got a Sapphire RX 6900 XT in one of my builds, I could've purchased a 6950 XT for similar money at the time (late 2021)...but opted for the former due to the resultant cheaper electricity bills!

It's one of the reasons I feel more inclined to the 6800 and not the 6800XT (they're also very similarly priced at the moment here).

 

[R0H1T]

Oh my, now Lisa & Jacket Man are gonna be fightin like spoiled little youngins....

Or maybe they'll duke it out the right way

Spoiler

 

[LabRat 891]

Which is it? Navi is faster/HBM can't be beat?

Yes.

While 'gamers' rarely run across it, there are applications where more (fast) VRAM is better than more ASIC processing power. Most of the 'pro-workstation' GPUs throughout the last 2 decades 'apply'.
In the world of gaming, more faster VRAM is very useful for extra AA and supersampling on older games; meaning re-plays of personal favorites can look closer to one's own visually upconverted memory of said game.
(I know for a fact, that I'm not alone in 'remembering' old games looking better than they actually did/do.)

 

[qlum]

It would at this point be a typical AMD move to release a € 500 device, with as much vram or less as the Nvidia competition at the same price.
I really hope they don't but it wouldn't be the first time AMD's marketing team makes a blunder like that.

 

[LabRat 891]

Or maybe they'll duke it out the right way

Spoiler

That's called an Oligopoly (or cartel). No thanks.
I'd rather pay to watch a figurative and/or literal cage match

 

[evernessince]

Yes but on last gen cards, which isn't particularly impressive. Normally I'd expect something like the 6800 XT to be priced between $300 - $400 right now. I could care less about who is the slightly better value in a market where both are overpriced.

 

[A&P211]

I've got a Sapphire RX 6900 XT in one of my builds, I could've purchased a 6950 XT for similar money at the time (oops memory slipped, I meant 2022)...but opted for the former due to the resultant cheaper electricity bills!

You can always manually downclock it

 

[GoldenX]

Never forget the RX 6500 XT.

 

[Icon Charlie]

Oh my, now Lisa & Jacket Man are gonna be fightin like spoiled little youngins....

Anyone wanna bet on who will win ?

Maybe Lisa will start wearing a nicer jacket than wuhang ..

As stated before for quite some time. I do NOT trust Dr. Lisa Su.

Secondly it seems that my rumors are more on the money than not and I don't like it one bit.

 

[LabRat 891]

Never forget the RX 6500 XT.

Ah, yes. The impossible card.

4GB of vRAM, yet would meet or beat my 2 different RX 580 8GBs, reliably.

 

[natr0n]

Paid $980 for 3070ti

Never again

 

[T0@st]

You can always manually downclock it

The RX 6950 XT models (on offer at the time) were also bordering on being too big for my case. The Sapphire Toxic LE would've nice, but it wasn't going for anywhere near the price of a regular 6900 XT back then.

 

[Zareek]

As stated before for quite some time. I do NOT trust Dr. Lisa Su.

Secondly it seems that my rumors are more on the money than not and I don't like it one bit.

??? But you do trust Jensen Huang??? Please elaborate, I have to hear this.

 

[Guwapo77]

It's one of the reasons I feel more inclined to the 6800 and not the 6800XT (they're also very similarly priced at the moment here).

There is a pretty decent performance gap between the 6800 and the 6800XT - 14%. Same price, go for the XT imo.

 

[Makaveli]

There is a pretty decent performance gap between the 6800 and the 6800XT - 14%. Same price, go for the XT imo.

This.

the gap between the 6800 vs 6800XT is larger than 6800xt vs 6900xt gap.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

I've got a Sapphire RX 6900 XT in one of my builds, I could've purchased a 6950 XT for similar money at the time (oops memory slipped, I meant 2022)...but opted for the former due to the resultant cheaper electricity bills!

You should have bought a 6600xt, much cheaper and would have drawn far less power.

 

[Tek-Check]

Paid $980 for 3070ti
Never again

And rightly so. You probably want premium 1440p or 4K performance by now, which means 16GB of VRAM as a bare minimum. Peace of mind for 3-4 years, beyond next generation.

I bought 6800XT around Xmas 2020. Stopped buying Nvidia cards since Ampere due to low VRAM and didn't want to pay for top halo 90 class SKU absurdly high price.
Best decision ever. Most important thing is solid and future-proof hardware, then any software perks. Do not allow marketing of RT and DLSS to cloud your mind.

 

[T0@st]

You should have bought a 6600xt, much cheaper and would have drawn far less power.

I'm considering putting one of those into my compact build - to replace a creaky Sapphire RX 580 8 GB SE, but I'll be waiting to see how the RX 7600 pans out.