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MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming X & Gaming Z

Doesn't matter; It's getting perilously close to 5700XT pricing, and even the much cheaper 5700 smokes it.

Don't worry, the foolish DIY segment will still snap those overpriced SKUs up. Which is at least 50% of the market by my own observations; the average DIYer is awful at getting their money's worth in hardware.
 
GeForce RTX 2070 Founders Edition: max 203 Watt = one 8-pin power connector
MSI Radeon RX 5600 XT Gaming X: : max 197 Watt = zwo 8-pin power connectors
...something is wrong :cool:

I was curious about the two 8 pins as well. btarunr explained it here in post #3:


"Because many of these premium 5600 XT cards reuse product designs of 5700-series."
 
MSI anticipated that RX 5600 XT would launch into a slot in the GPU market where there was no other competition, so it would be a good seller, especially at under the psychological $300 mark. Based on that they budgeted a certain amount of money to design a number of 5600 XT SKUs, covering the performance range from stock to just below 5700.

Then NVIDIA cut RTX 2060 prices by $30 and suddenly the 5600 XT was no longer competitive. AMD had two options, either cut RX 5600 XT prices in return, or increase the card's performance. Since 5600 margins are apparently quite slim as is, AMD chose to release a new higher-performance BIOS.

That means AMD and its AIBs aren't losing money on every RX 5600 XT sold, but it does mean that AIBs with more 5600 XT SKUs - e.g. MSI - are screwed. Because instead of being able to market cards at various points along the clockspeed (performance) range from 1375MHz/12Gbps to slightly over 1615MHz/14Gbps, they now have to start at the higher value. Which means their new "stock speed" card isn't 10%+ behind their fastest card, it's maybe 3%. Which suddenly means that half the 5600 XT SKUs designed by MSI have cannibalised the other half. Which means the design and testing and marketing time spent by MSI on those now-dead SKUs... is a loss for MSI.

There's no way MSI is going to sit back and just accept that. Over its lifetime, maybe the 5600 XT will sell well enough as a whole to recoup those costs. But... maybe it won't. And MSI is a business, it doesn't exist to break even, it exists to make a profit. So MSI is going to pad its 5600 XT prices to ensure it still makes a profit on these cards, which is probably going to make MSI 5600 XTs sell poorly, which is probably going to make MSI think twice about committing so heavily to buy so many AMD GPUs next time around.

On the flipside, you can bet that MSI and every other AIB is reaching out to NVIDIA in a frantic attempt to acquire defective TU104 chips so that they too can make an "RTX 2060 KO". That card is going to make EVGA filthy stinking rich.

(AIBs like Sapphire can afford to leave their 5600 XT cards at original pricing because they didn't design half-a-dozen SKUs, so they have fewer to write off.)

Honestly, the 2060 price drop was a masterpiece. It's an older card, so AIBs have long ago made back the money they spent to create their 2060 SKUs, so they won't mind too much that it's being price-dropped. It won't cannibalise existing SKUs because they're all old stock that's already been cannibalised by the 2060 SUPER. And of course, it gives NVIDIA-favouring AIBs a SKU that can compete with the RX 5600 XT, so they can make more sales.

Honestly it's a massive win-win for NVIDIA and its partners, and a lose-lose for AMD and its partners.



... another win for NVIDIA, and loss for AMD.


apparently Nvidia has to pay more money than AMD.
 
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this will break the digital signature in the bios and the driver will no longer load
I run a modded bios on a rx580 - the driver since about the December release no longer check for the signed signature apparently. I no longer have to use atikmdag-patcher-1.4.7 to fix it after installing.
 
The OC BIOS provided by AMD made lower-end models pointless and higher-end looking silly.

It's an awful move by AMD. AIBs won't forget this.

Also, ASUS and MSI are huge, global sellers. So maybe where you live Sapphire is available and you'll get one of those 20 samples they'll make.
But for many there won't be a choice. They'll go to a store and it'll be filled with MSI/ASUS available instantly. Simple as that.
I have to admit AMD made a bad move with this and it was completely unnecessary. They should have simply dropped the price and that's it. But yes AIB's will forgive this,

As for Sapphire in relation to ASUS and MSI, Sapphire sells a ton of cards due to there consistency in quality. I like ASUS too, but they messed up a couple of 5700XT releases where the memory chips never had proper contact with the cooler. Or something like that, and they didn't even pull them off the shelves or give people replacements. They just discounted them knowing they would crash while gaming All The Time!!!
 
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