AMD Questions Reported/Predicted Elevation of Radeon RX 9070 Series MSRPs

[T0@st]

Yesterday's global launch of Radeon RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 was a relatively successful affair; day one stock was swiftly snapped up. Naturally, buying conditions were not ideal for every customer. Despite a prominent UK retailer's teasing of plentiful supply (pre-launch), online feedback pointed to apparent limited supplies of RDNA 4 cards across European regions. Fresh reports suggest that anticipated fluid price conditions have caused a larger than expected rush at retail; hence the rapid depletion of opening day stock. As reported yesterday, a handful of PC hardware stores have alluded to forthcoming upward shifts in pricing for the lower-end of an all-board partner-built Radeon RX 9070 series graphics card lineup. VideoCardz has highlighted a disgruntled customer's experience with Ebuyer UK. Bran180s—a Radeon subreddit member—managed to snag a baseline MSRP conformant Sapphire PULSE RX 9070 XT model for the ideal launch price (£569.99, including VAT), but the webstore reneged this transaction.

A screenshot was uploaded to Reddit, alongside a short story: "was on the website ready for the launch of the RX 9070 XT, got one straight away and paid no issues. Ebuyer emailed me today to cancel, and now the price is £150 more." The British e-tailer has issued apologies, following the absorption of online criticism (see relevant screenshot below). The "normal price" of Sapphire's basic Pulse card was eventually adjusted to a mere £664.98, but Ebuyer has de-listed this SKU (at the time of writing). Other UK webshops—Scan, AWD-IT, CCL, Box etc.—have similarly implemented price hikes across low, mid and premium card tiers. Australia's Hardware Unboxed managed to extract an official response from AMD—their social media post quoted Frank Azor. The Team Red exec indicated that his team is ready to intervene: "it is inaccurate that $549/$599 MSRP is launch-only pricing. We expect cards to be available from multiple vendors at $549/$599 (excluding region specific tariffs and/or taxes) based on the work we have done with our AIB partners, and more are coming. At the same time, the AIBs have different premium configurations at higher price points and those will also continue."



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[bonehead123]

"Questioned" it.....maybe....

Gonna do anything about it ?

Notta chance in hades, as the etailers would probably ignore any comments that AMD may have, and short of an outright intervention, they have absolutely zero incentive(s) to sell them at the so-called "MSRP" which is now merely a myth in most places

 

[mb194dc]

People have never been dumber than they are now?

Believing the bullshit from retailers with stock to sell...

 

[HTC]

IMO, this is only possible because AMD doesn't have their own cards.

Had they their own cards, AIBs wouldn't manage to raise their prices THAT MUCH, relative to MSRP (barring extraordinary circumstances) because they wouldn't "be able to get away with it", with prospective buyers opting for AMD's card, over AIBs.

Since there's no AMD own cards, AIBs can compete JUST among themselves, instead of ALSO against AMD.

 

[outpt]

msrp isn't that the same thing as a cold day in hell or ice water. As long as there is some thing else to make a bigger buck these corps. are going to price gouge your a$$ to death.

 

[Dimitriman]

IMO, this is only possible because AMD doesn't have their own cards.

Had they their own cards, AIBs wouldn't manage to raise their prices THAT MUCH, relative to MSRP (barring extraordinary circumstances) because they wouldn't "be able to get away with it", with prospective buyers opting for AMD's card, over AIBs.

Since there's no AMD own cards, AIBs can compete JUST among themselves, instead of ALSO against AMD.

Not really, it's also happening to Nvidia despite them having their own cards. Sure, they are vaporware, but the etailers are basically engaging in joint price fixing globally because they learned lots of lessons from the crypto boom and rather than letting scalpers take the cards, they now do the scalping themselves.

 

[chrcoluk]

Apparently what AMD and Nvidia are doing is a breach of UK FCA regulations, I think they have got away with it so far because no one is yet to report it. Basically you cant call it a MSRP if its only at that price for about 30 seconds due to a temporary rebate. Nvidia might be ok on some SKUs because of FE, but is no FE AMD equivalent here.
Reviewers should be confirming with their rep's if its a proper MSRP or a rebate offer, if its the latter or the rep's say "no comment" then there should be a refusal to disclose any claimed MSRP, dont give them that false advertising.

 

[Franzen4Real]

IMO, this is only possible because AMD doesn't have their own cards.

Had they their own cards, AIBs wouldn't manage to raise their prices THAT MUCH, relative to MSRP (barring extraordinary circumstances) because they wouldn't "be able to get away with it", with prospective buyers opting for AMD's card, over AIBs.

Since there's no AMD own cards, AIBs can compete JUST among themselves, instead of ALSO against AMD.

Over multiple generations of GPU releases, nVidia Founders Editions and their AIB's have proven this to be false time and time again. Not only that, but one AIB (evga) completely exited the GPU market due to nVidia's FE cards.

Apparently what AMD and Nvidia are doing is a breach of UK FCA regulations, I think they have got away with it so far because no one is yet to report it.

it is not AMD or nVidia setting AIB prices, or the price that the retail shops are scalping them for. This is all happening downstream.

 

[chrcoluk]

Over multiple generations of GPU releases, nVidia Founders Editions and their AIB's have proven this to be false time and time again. Not only that, but one AIB (evga) completely exited the GPU market due to nVidia's FE cards.


it is not AMD or nVidia setting AIB prices, or the price that the retail shops are scalping them for. This is all happening downstream.

The rebate to allow launch price was directly from AMD. Likewise for Nvidia AIB cards rebate came directly from Nvidia. Also FE proves that if they wanted to, prices could be locked in. Who do you think provides MSRP information to reviewers (who are basically advertisers).

 

[remekra]

Everyday I hope more and more that AIBs will cease to exist and GPUs will only be sold by AMD and Nvidia directly or through certified resellers.
MSRP doesn't exist since 2020.

 

[Daven]

The GPU market has become super corrupt. The only good advice is to not participate. We might be seeing the beginning of the end of PC gaming if this keeps up.

On a side note, I feel like a lot of this is happening because the role of the GPU has expanded to much more than gaming. AI, crypto, video encoding/decoding, rendering, etc. are probably most at fault for making GPUs so much more susceptible to bad retail/AIB/manufacturer behavior due to the popularity of these tasks. I feel it is time to start splitting out some of the functionality to accelerator cards like in the old days.

Everyday I hope more and more that AIBs will cease to exist and GPUs will only be sold by AMD and Nvidia directly or through certified resellers.
MSRP doesn't exist since 2020.

This could be solved better by making GPUs socketable like CPUs. This requires just a reimagining of the motherboard: two sockets with their own pools of RAM. Then we just buy a pinned up GPU with no cooler offered directly from the GPU manufacturer. Cooling solutions would be bought separately.

Just imagine an X3D CPU coming in a PCB with soldered RAM and cooler sold by an AIB. The prices would be ridiculously out of control. By decoupling the cooler, RAM and PCB, you remove a lot (not all) of these shady shenanigans by offering a socketable bare GPU.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I remember for 30-series launch, EVGA had an MSRP model for every Nvidia GPU (I think all the AIBs were required to). Those MSRP models had almost no allocation at all, which we were able to track and confirm with queue positions.

This is even worse than that where there are literally no MSRP models, but specific models that were sold at MSRP on launch day as a promo-price. Best Buy even put a count-down timer on their page for that sku saying "deal ends in 16 hours" with the price of that 9070XT going up $130 after that. Of course, there was only inventory for about 10 seconds, but the counter remained through the day. AMD saying it wasn't launch-day pricing is a flat-out lie.

 

[_roman_]

1000 pieces. That's nothing.

When people are paying 879€ for a rx9070xt than the price was too low in the first place. Or the supply of cards was too low. It seems even 1000€ per card was sold.

Have fun comparing that list - prices and product names are an universal language. It does not matter it's a german based site:

Verfügbarkeit und Preise: Hier gibt es AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT und RX 9070 zu kaufen

Wir informieren, wo es AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT und Radeon RX 9070 zu welchem Preis ab Lager zu kaufen gibt.

www.computerbase.de

 

[Daven]

1000 pieces. That's nothing.

What's even more fun is thinking about all those Nvidia customers who pretend that there is no other GPU solution outside of Nvidia and then they read of AMD and Intel GPUs being just as hot and unavailable. It must blow their minds wondering what they are missing. That and the fact many Nvidia customers have an AMD CPU and AMD chipset while making online posts about bad AMD GPU drivers. The irony is just as fun as watching all those Radeons and Arcs go constantly out of stock for way over MSRP. It's fun until I realize that this will never end and then I cry myself to sleep at night.

 

[Athena]

Everyday I hope more and more that AIBs will cease to exist and GPUs will only be sold by AMD and Nvidia directly or through certified resellers.
MSRP doesn't exist since 2020.

There are lots of people that got the cards at MSRP, the problem is that there is limited supply, and the only fix for that is have more fabs come online to make them. TSMC is booked up to 2028/29 with just current orders, and Nvidia / Apple / Qualcomm and all the rest are using the same fab. AMD can't switch to more GPUs than CPUs instantly, that takes many months and they can't predict the future, so AMD is going with their cash cow first, Epyc, then Ryzen, then instinct, and finally, consumer GPUs, in that order, it's the only thing they can do to stay in business

Nvidia and Apple are taking up most of the wafer orders, so that leaves limited wafers for everyone else, so this whole pricing thing won't go away until more fabs are built and that takes hundreds of billions of $


AMD & Nvidia need AIBs, it makes things less expensive for everyone, even if it don't seem like it now, they need competition between them all to keep prices in check.

It's the same reason why AMD don't make motherboards, and need AIB, it's so much more expensive if they did it all themselves

AIBs don't really control what resellers sell the items for either, that is up to them

This could be solved better by making GPUs socketable like CPUs. This requires just a reimagining of the motherboard: two sockets with their own pools of RAM. Then we just buy a pinned up GPU with no cooler offered directly from the GPU manufacturer. Cooling solutions would be bought separately.

while on paper it sounds good, in practice, it would be a nightmare of compatibility, and performance would greatly suffer

the socket type would basically have to change every major iteration of the GPU, and then we have the RAM changes and the power delivery circuitry and the list goes on and on

It's nothing like CPUs, where they can live on the same socket for quite some time (assuming the rest of the motherboard is compatible as well, like there are some mobos out there that even if it did have the correct socket, the power delivery options those have would throttle down the CPU if it even worked at all)

there was an attempt to do this on laptops with the MXM socketed GPUs, but that is still basically a custom motherboard that you can only do so much before you run into severe limitations

 

[DeeJay1001]

The GPU market has been screwed up for over 5 years now. I think it may just be time to admit, it's never going to be okay, these things will be limited, scalped, price gouged, and un-available forever. Really makes me not even care anymore.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Even the B580 isn’t available at MSRP. What’s left in stock are the retailers that want way too much for it. How long has that card been out now? You’d think Intel would be pumping out as many of these as possible right now.

 

[ratirt]

First listing of the 9070 XT's in Norway

Not great but considering all, not bad either. Still a bit too much and not much different from what 7900XTX is selling for.
The price difference should have been much bigger.

 

[john_]

AMD does have reasons to push it's AIB to keep profit margins down and keep selling models at MSRP. On the contrary to Nvidia, that push prices up the last 12+ years, if AMD wants to get market share and start seeing consumers looking at AMD in a positive way, they have to restrain their partners. RX 9070 series is a success but can turn to a huge let down if AMD doesn't insist on keeping prices down. If they let their AIBs go wild, like what in my opinion Nvidia does, Nvidia could drop pricing suddenly and unrestrained the GPU supply, flood the market with 5000 cards at prices close to that MSRP that most of us call FAKE and turn around the narrative in a positive way for them. AMD rushing to drop prices after such a possible move from Nvidia will make them(AMD) look even worst.

Even the B580 isn’t available at MSRP. What’s left in stock are the retailers that want way too much for it. How long has that card been out now? You’d think Intel would be pumping out as many of these as possible right now.

Intel will become a major player in the GPU market IF they fix their manufacturing. If they does that, they would have plenty of capacity and much higher profit margin.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

AMD does have reasons to push it's AIB to keep profit margins down and keep selling models at MSRP. On the contrary to Nvidia, that push prices up the last 12+ years, if AMD wants to get market share and start seeing consumers looking at AMD in a positive way, they have to restrain their partners. RX 9070 series is a success but can turn to a huge let down if AMD doesn't insist on keeping prices down. If they let their AIBs go wild, like what in my opinion Nvidia does, Nvidia could drop pricing suddenly and unrestrained the GPU supply, flood the market with 5000 cards at prices close to that MSRP that most of us call FAKE and turn around the narrative in a positive way for them. AMD rushing to drop prices after such a possible move from Nvidia will make them(AMD) look even worst.


Intel will become a major player in the GPU market IF they fix their manufacturing. If they does that, they would have plenty of capacity and much higher profit margin.

Yeah, because they aren’t making their own GPUs, they are just another company in line fighting for Fab space.

 

[HOkay]

I had the same experience from Ebuyer! Except the card was MSRP when I clicked add to basket, then it jumped to £664.98 in my basket, but I thought screw it I'm still getting it anyway. Then this morning I got that same email with the same, won't get them at that price anymore, type of wording. So I guess that base MSRP card will now be more than £95 over MSRP when it comes back in stock? I suspect Ebuyer has goofed hard on this one. It's a shame, I've always had good experiences with Ebuyer ever since buying my first ever build parts from them about 20 years ago!

 

[Divide Overflow]

How odd. No article questioning the increases over MSRP over Nvidia or even Intel GPUs? Just the one calling out AMD.

 

[nguyen]

LOL so it's basically bait and switch tactic, people will come to stores for those elusive 600usd 9070XT, only to come out with 800usd 9070XT because of sunk cost fallacy.

In my country the 9070 are selling for the same price as 4070 Super and 9070 XT = 4070 Ti Super (we still have plenty of rtx4000 stocks left), not sure the 10% higher perf on the 9070/XT are worth it considering DLSS4 is still superior and more widely available than FSR4

 

[nRag3]

I don't understand why AMD/NVidia don't mandate that a certain percentage of cards released per AIB in each series is an MSRP model? Am I way off in thinking that an MSRP base model would be the highest selling sku in terms of units per card type if quantities were a non-issue? Its like Honda selling the civic and dealers having way more stock of the SI and Type R trims versus the base model.

 

[alwayssts]

reviewers (who are basically advertisers).

When people say the real real quiet part out loud. I think some of them don't even know that themselves. Most do, and how they handle that? Well...It varies.

Know what I'm sayin'? YES? Cool.

What's even more fun is thinking about all those Nvidia customers who pretend that there is no other GPU solution outside of Nvidia and then they read of AMD and Intel GPUs being just as hot and unavailable. It must blow their minds wondering what they are missing. That and the fact many Nvidia customers have an AMD CPU and AMD chipset while making online posts about bad AMD GPU drivers. The irony is just as fun as watching all those Radeons and Arcs go constantly out of stock for way over MSRP. It's fun until I realize that this will never end and then I cry myself to sleep at night.

Welcome to the real real, world. It is a very sad, unfortunate, place where marketing has completely saturated many peoples' perception of reality. I really am doing my best over here to quell it!

But it's tough, man. How do you fight the marketing disguised as facts and/or entertaining (which should not be equally respected, but often are) opinions some hold so dear?

How to not appear simply batting for the opposite team in any given situation (to those that are brainwashed and/or paid and/or reliant for other reasons on that adversarial actual brand loyalty)?

It is extremely difficult. Breaking this cycle, once they have transpired, takes nothing short of an act of god (or in the case of Intel, severe internal meltdown). Even the current Blackwell issues have minimal effect.

They should, but they don't. That is how bad it is. In many different ways both scrupulous and unscrupulous.

All you can do is call it like you see it, try to teach the new generation to not fall into the trap many have; to think for themselves; search for and understand the actual truth the best they can.

Most don't want to as that requires more effort than being fed things through their entertainment, which is actually often disguised marketing, which effects their understanding more than most even know.

Point is: I feel your pain. Just know I see it too, and you are not alone.

The GPU market has been screwed up for over 5 years now. I think it may just be time to admit, it's never going to be okay, these things will be limited, scalped, price gouged, and un-available forever. Really makes me not even care anymore.

IMO, I feel supply/demand has been perfected to a degree to maximize margin for parters, and this may be what you are trying to imply.
It allows maximum profit from AIBs/retailers that feed off attrition/availability. OTOH though, it does allow for less older product to stay on the market (which makes sense but bad for deal hunters).
I personally believe nVIDIA heavily contributes to this trend, while AMD does generally does not (to as large of a degree).

(Yet; hopefully ever; but they have changed some of their tactics to be more like nVIDIA over the years so you never know). If that changes, I will call them on it as well, and in some ways will do exactly that.
I do think part of delaying these parts was to starve the market, but I don't feel supply (as much as they can help it) will be constrained on the level nVIDIA has chosen to go about it.

This is why, at least in the current situation, people should be thoughtful of where they place blame. AMD clearly spent a lot of time (and even delayed the products) to work out rebates/whatever to keep the prices low. If retailers and AIBs set awful premiums to capitalize on the situation, which is largely due to lack of competition in a similar price bracket due to what nVIDIA does, I do not feel that is their fault given I don't think AMD is charging more for the chips, nor do I feel they are withholding supply. That's just my view of things currently, and the truth may not be quite as clear as it develops.

I don't understand why AMD/NVidia don't mandate that a certain percentage of cards released per AIB in each series is an MSRP model? Am I way off in thinking that an MSRP base model would be the highest selling sku in terms of units per card type if quantities were a non-issue? Its like Honda selling the civic and dealers having way more stock of the SI and Type R trims versus the base model.

I don't think this is an unfair question, but obviously you could understand why they don't. For nVIDIA, it's about everyone making as much money as possible. For AMD, to keep their partners happy.

I do feel something like this would greatly help AMD, but they also have to have cards across the stack desirable-enough to make it work. I think they are *trying* with this launch, to the best of their ability.