AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 Reference Designs to be Discontinued Soon

[AleksandarK]

Yesterday, Cowocotland, a technology website, has published information that AMD's reference design cards like the latest Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 GPUs are getting discontinued. That means that AMD will stop the production of the reference designs and rely completely on the supply of GPUs coming from add-in board partners to satisfy the market needs. This does not mean that the availability of these GPUs is not going to exist. Rather, there will not be AMD reference designs available for purchase from the company. Only cards that are custom made by AIBs, that AMD provides GPU+VRAM for, will offer customers cards with these GPUs.

VideoCardz claims that they have been able to confirm some pieces of the information, so it is a done deal. From now on, it seems that only graphics cards with Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6800 GPUs inside them will be the ones offered by AIBs. The reference design cards will only be produced until early 2021, giving it a month or two for consumers to purchase cards from AMD. After that period the market will rely completely on AMD's partners.

Update 4:30 pm UTC: Scott Herkelman, CVP & GM of AMD Radeon Tweeted that they have "extended the reference design builds indefinitely due to popular demand." Meaning that the reference cards will remain in production. Mr. Herkelman also thanked for feedback, where community was loud and clear that they want to see reference boards for a while longer.



Here is an interesting quote from Cowcotland:

[…] RX 6900 XT MBA is already at the end of its life even though it has not yet been launched. Just like the RX 6800 MBA and the RX 6800 XT MBA, production has been one shot for this card. A brand told us that they only have about forty cards for France, not one more […] those who manage to have an RX 6900 XT MBA will have a real collector [item] in their hands.—Aurélien LAGNY, Cowcotland

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[nguyen]

When AMD lose money producing these cards, why should they make that many of them .Well now all the MSRP are regulated by AIBs, good luck...

 

[Flanker]

Well that was quick

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Lisa: 'F*** MSRP, let's charge 800/1000/1.2K bucks! It's time to milk some brainwashed FOMOs!'

 

[Jism]

When AMD lose money producing these cards, why should they make that many of them .Well now all the MSRP are regulated by AIBs, good luck...

We dont know... could simply be capacity issues. They are also producing consoles, CPU's and other things.

 

[xkm1948]

I thought there was a similar news piece saying 5700xt/5700 reference stopped production. Did it actually happen?

 

[Outback Bronze]

There goes my chances of scoring a reference..

 

[Valantar]

While I don't doubt this report is accurate, there is something weird with how this is being reported: AMD doesn't sell their reference cards directly, and never have. They are always sold through partners, who buy the assembled card from AMD (and indirectly whoever makes them for AMD). So, if these are being discontinued, they will obviously only be available for as long as AIB partners have them in stock. So despite the weirdly vague wording of this news piece, what it should say is that reference-design RX 6800/6900 GPUs will only be "available" (lol) for a couple more months.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

We dont know... could simply be capacity issues. They are also producing consoles, CPU's and other things.

Sapphire produces Navi 21 FE for AMD, so yeah we know. AIBs demand higher margins. Nitro+ $120 over MSRP, Pulse $80 over MSRP... 12-18% profit margin increase (at least) for Sapphire if it sells AIB instead of FE. AMD just caught Ngreedia virus by allowing AIBs to set market prices. MSRPs look more and more like a joke now, because AMD discontinued FE and decided not to regulate AIB pricing policies

 

[Divide Overflow]

AMD doesn't sell their reference cards directly, and never have.

I'll just drop this here.

https://www.amd.com/en/shop/us/Graphics%20Cards

 

[Vya Domus]

When AMD lose money producing these cards, why should they make that many of them

As usual you don't know what you're talking about, AMD doesn't make reference cards, they are all manufactured and/or sold through AIBs. AMD get's the same money whether it's a reference card or custom 100000$ dollar model.

One would have to be pretty insane to seriously believe that AIBs would sell cards at zero profit or worse just because AMD wants them to. AMD may be willing to lose money but they aren't.

I'll just drop this here.
View attachment 178839

https://www.amd.com/en/shop/us/Graphics%20Cards

They're all custom models from what I can see. I think what he wanted to say is that AMD does not directly sell unbranded reference models.

Anyway, the point is AIBs never really want to sell reference cards because those inevitability have the lowest margins, so they'd much rather sell a custom model that has more or less the same cost to manufacture at a higher price.

 

[wolf]

In the same day we get partners announce their 6900XT cards, most of them reference, and then that they are discontinued.

What the actual heck is happening.

 

[Valantar]

I'll just drop this here.
View attachment 178839

https://www.amd.com/en/shop/us/Graphics%20Cards

Hm, okay, that's news to me at least. I've never heard of them selling directly in any previous generation, and it's even been mentioned in reporting on this latest generation that that's a major difference between the distribution methods of AMD compared to Nvidia. Guess they have a limited direct sales system in some countries? Where I'm from, their "shop" pages are nothing more than a mediocre price comparison service linking to various etailers.

 

[Vya Domus]

I've never heard of them selling directly in any previous generation

They aren't, those are just links that redirect you to retailers. Am I missing something ?

 

[Valantar]

They aren't, those are just links that redirect you to retailers. Am I missing something ?

Well, it does say "buy direct" (rather than the "see prices" on other products), but that just links to a page saying they're ot of stock, so ... I have no idea.

 

[Chomiq]

They aren't, those are just links that redirect you to retailers. Am I missing something ?

People have ordered their cards directly from AMD store, it was so for 68xx and yesterday for 6900 XT. With 6800 regular and XT people that were part of the Red team whatever you call it got emails in advance which allowed them to place orders before the official launch.

 

[windwhirl]

I thought there was a similar news piece saying 5700xt/5700 reference stopped production. Did it actually happen?

The non-XT model was discontinued. The 5700 XT is still in production until at least Q1/2021

AMD RX 5700 Series Reportedly Enter EOL - No Longer Manufactured

Update, October 7th 2020: AMD has confirmed it has ceased production for the RX 5700, but that RX 5700 XT manufacturing will be ongoing at least until 1Q2021. It's unclear what this means for the company's RDNA2 launch plans; it could be speculated the company will be releasing halo products...

www.techpowerup.com

While I don't doubt this report is accurate, there is something weird with how this is being reported: AMD doesn't sell their reference cards directly, and never have. They are always sold through partners, who buy the assembled card from AMD (and indirectly whoever makes them for AMD). So, if these are being discontinued, they will obviously only be available for as long as AIB partners have them in stock. So despite the weirdly vague wording of this news piece, what it should say is that reference-design RX 6800/6900 GPUs will only be "available" (lol) for a couple more months.

Hm, okay, that's news to me at least. I've never heard of them selling directly in any previous generation, and it's even been mentioned in reporting on this latest generation that that's a major difference between the distribution methods of AMD compared to Nvidia. Guess they have a limited direct sales system in some countries? Where I'm from, their "shop" pages are nothing more than a mediocre price comparison service linking to various etailers.

They aren't, those are just links that redirect you to retailers. Am I missing something ?

I think AMD sells their own reference cards directly to consumers only in a few countries, the US among them, but I don't know if they did it before, so it could be their first time doing this. But from what I heard on Reddit you would only see their cards if at the time there was stock, otherwise the cards would simply not show up.

 

[Fluffmeister]

EOL before launch, wow that's impressive.

 

[Valantar]

I think AMD sells their own reference cards directly to consumers only in a few countries, the US among them, but I don't know if they did it before, so it could be their first time doing this. But from what I heard on Reddit you would only see their cards if at the time there was stock, otherwise the cards would simply not show up.

It might be an attempt at avoiding scalpers and bots in some way (who unlike Nvidia's long established store might not know of AMD having direct sales).

 

[Hossein Almet]

Hence, the MRP of the reference designed card is a con.

 

[Max(IT)]

So now the joke is completed...
Not only they made a paper launch (and I’d like to have a word with that Frank Azor and his $10... ridiculous ), beating even the very bad Nvidia launch.
They fooled us with MSRP about a product never sold and already “discontinued” (well, you can’t really discontinue a product that doesn’t actually exists, can you ?).
Not to speak about underwhelming RT performance and inconsistent general performance ...

I had very high expectations about AMD this time, but they messed things up pretty bad.

 

[phanbuey]

So now the joke is completed...
Not only they made a paper launch (and I’d like to have a word with that Frank Azor and his $10... ridiculous ), beating even the very bad Nvidia launch.
They fooled us with MSRP about a product never sold and already “discontinued” (well, you can’t really discontinue a product that doesn’t actually exists, can you ?).
Not to speak about underwhelming RT performance and inconsistent general performance ...

I had very high expectations about AMD this time, but they messed things up pretty bad.

The RT thing is forgivable, everything else I agree.

 

[Sihastru]

It is sad, yes. Thank you for informing us. They are, in an exaggerated way, discontinuing something that never really existed in the first place.

Even sadder, the quality of the text. Six or seven sentences, one after the other, stating the same thing. I'm trying to be a better person and not do callouts, but this is egregious. Do you have a minimum length requirement for the news articles?

But let me be a tiny bit constructive in my harsh criticism. Here are a number of talking points you could address in order to improve the article:
- the cards
- launch dates (so soon?)
- low availability / inflated prices (in comparison, 5700XT "50th Anniversary Edition" cards are still around)
- performance
- design / compatibility (compact cooling solutions go well with small cases)
- most custom designs eliminated the USB-C port (the reason many would've bought AMD over nVIDIA this generation)
- lament about 2020 in general
- AMD lied about stock (if you want to ruffle some feathers)

And so many things you could've talked about as filler to get to that character/word limit. Filler that could be marginally helpful for less then informed readers. Instead, the same thing, repeated, over and over again.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

So now the joke is completed...
Not only they made a paper launch (and I’d like to have a word with that Frank Azor and his $10... ridiculous ), beating even the very bad Nvidia launch.
They fooled us with MSRP about a product never sold and already “discontinued” (well, you can’t really discontinue a product that doesn’t actually exists, can you ?).
Not to speak about underwhelming RT performance and inconsistent general performance ...

I had very high expectations about AMD this time, but they messed things up pretty bad.

I think AMD never wanted to sell full die (6900XT) to gamers in the first place. It was just a good marketing move, so they can say we have the fastest 1080/1440p gaming GPU in the world and it costs 33% less than 3090. But in reality they wanna brand uncut 80CU dies as 'Instinct' professional GPUs and sell it to data centers and prosumers for $3K price tag, hence no real availability for gamers. A cheap, yet very effective marketing move. Reviews are up, more or less praising 'non existent' reference 5900XT. AMD just reached millions of PC enthusiasts by gifting a few GPUs to most popular review sites and YT influencers. They get clicks, AMD gets positive tech media exposure and DIY PC builders get F...ed.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

So now the joke is completed...
Not only they made a paper launch (and I’d like to have a word with that Frank Azor and his $10... ridiculous ), beating even the very bad Nvidia launch.
They fooled us with MSRP about a product never sold and already “discontinued” (well, you can’t really discontinue a product that doesn’t actually exists, can you ?).
Not to speak about underwhelming RT performance and inconsistent general performance ...

I had very high expectations about AMD this time, but they messed things up pretty bad.

Not really, if you read the article, you would see that AMD will continue to sell the chip to AID partners, there should be more bottom line in selling just the chips over manufacturing an entire card with a known low profit margin.