Sapphire Radeon RX 7700 XT Pure

[Denver]

IMO we shouldn't be using MSRPs to compare anything these days; Their relevance went out of the window back in 2017 with the first ETH mining boom. There have been different EXTERNAL factors to the GPU market that impacted price wildly since 2017, and unlike the relative stability of GPU pricing for the two decades before that, the last 6 years have seen three major events that have caused price swings of insane magnitude. It was normal (I didn't say it was a good idea) to buy and sell RX 5700 cards for over $1000 for the best part of a year in 2020. That had a 2019 MSRP of $349. Same deal for 3080 and 3090 cards - their MSRP was meaninglessly low, and then briefly made sense in comparison to the actual selling prices earlier this year - two years too late for the MSRP to mean anything.

An MSRP is only valid as a snapshot of the market pricing at that point in time. A 6800 at $580 ETH-boom pricing today is a rip-off, nobody would touch it, and it would get left on shelves, making its launch MSRP invalid in the current market.

The current sale price of a brand new 6800 is $430 because that is what people are willing to pay for them. At $470 this 7700XT is just 6% cheaper than several decent 7800XT cards, which are 15-20% faster and have better performance/Watt. 6% isn't enough of a discount to make anyone even blink, If they can afford the $20 premium over the 7700XT base model, they can definitely afford to just get a 7800XT in the first place!

In your mind, is it realistic to compare a new product with a sustainable profit margin with another being sold at a loss? This is the same as saying that if Tesla announces a Tesla Model 2 today for $25k, it's a horrible price because there's a neighbor selling another pre-owned EVs for 10k.

This is not sustainable, because the benefits of a new manufacturing process no longer keep up with the increased production costs, and also the only memories with a major advance in terms of bandwidth per watt is the GDDR6X. If you sell on with thin margins now, tomorrow you won't be able to afford R&D and the hundreds of millions to develop a chip in the best lithography. A single wrong move costs billions.

When this mess ends the only basis will be the MSRP. If you are going to sell a product at a loss, in my opinion it is better to stop selling it.

 

[Chrispy_]

In your mind, is it realistic to compare a new product with a sustainable profit margin with another being sold at a loss? This is the same as saying that if Tesla announces a Tesla Model 2 today for $25k, it's a horrible price because there's a neighbor selling another pre-owned EVs for 10k.

This is not sustainable, because the benefits of a new manufacturing process no longer keep up with the increased production costs, and also the only memories with a major advance in terms of bandwidth per watt is the GDDR6X. If you sell on with thin margins now, tomorrow you won't be able to afford R&D and the hundreds of millions to develop a chip in the best lithography. A single wrong move costs billions.

When this mess ends the only basis will be the MSRP. If you are going to sell a product at a loss, in my opinion it is better to stop selling it.

The RX7600 is a good example of a GPU that with an "undecided" MSRP all the way up to review embargos lifting. A few channels, GN, HUB, MLID all talked to their AIB and AMD reps and the $279 RX7600 would have been comfortably profitable even with a $225 MSRP. It was priced as high as possible to maximise profit given the (lack of) competition in the market.

If that's not proof that companies are just out to milk as much money from customers as possible, then just use common sense; Companies aren't here for any other reason than to make money.

There's also more to discounted GPUs than just meeting the manufacturing and distribution costs. The discounts on 6950XT for example are the result of overproduction of that product relative to market demand. Producing in larger quantities allows for greater economies of scale and lower per-unit production costs. Don't feel sorry for a big corporation over their mistakes. If they overproduce products, then that's their loss and your gain.

 

[AnotherReader]

The RX7600 is a good example of a GPU that with an "undecided" MSRP all the way up to review embargos lifting. A few channels, GN, HUB, MLID all talked to their AIB and AMD reps and the $279 RX7600 would have been comfortably profitable even with a $225 MSRP. It was priced as high as possible to maximise profit given the (lack of) competition in the market.

If that's not proof that companies are just out to milk as much money from customers as possible, then just use common sense; Companies aren't here for any other reason than to make money.

There's also more to discounted GPUs than just meeting the manufacturing and distribution costs. The discounts on 6950XT for example are the result of overproduction of that product relative to market demand. Producing in larger quantities allows for greater economies of scale and lower per-unit production costs. Don't feel sorry for a big corporation over their mistakes. If they overproduce products, then that's their loss and your gain.

I doubt that AMD is selling the 6800 XT or the 6950 XT at a loss. The 6800 XT can use defective dies so yield is high. Assuming 98 dies per wafer and $9346 for each N7 wafer, we get a cost to AIBs of roughly $191 with a gross margin of 50% for AMD. Let's call it $200 even though N7 wafers should be a bit cheaper than that figure by now. R&D costs have been paid off by now so they don't need to be considered. GDDR6 is likely to be only about $50 for 16 GB. The combined cost of the VRMs, cooler, fans, and PCB should be under $100. Test and packaging costs should be well under $25 too. The cost of a 6800 XT for partners like Sapphire should be around $350 to $400. That leaves plenty of margin even at a final sale price of $500.

The 7700 XT should be even cheaper as the die on the expensive process is fairly small and the yields for the MCDs should be very high. However, they have to factor in the R&D costs so the cards will naturally be priced higher than a simple BOM analysis would indicate.

 

[Denver]

The RX7600 is a good example of a GPU that with an "undecided" MSRP all the way up to review embargos lifting. A few channels, GN, HUB, MLID all talked to their AIB and AMD reps and the $279 RX7600 would have been comfortably profitable even with a $225 MSRP. It was priced as high as possible to maximise profit given the (lack of) competition in the market.

If that's not proof that companies are just out to milk as much money from customers as possible, then just use common sense; Companies aren't here for any other reason than to make money.

There's also more to discounted GPUs than just meeting the manufacturing and distribution costs. The discounts on 6950XT for example are the result of overproduction of that product relative to market demand. Producing in larger quantities allows for greater economies of scale and lower per-unit production costs. Don't feel sorry for a big corporation over their mistakes. If they overproduce products, then that's their loss and your gain.

One of the reasons for keeping the price a little higher than it should be is to clear the rest of the stock of old GPUs, there are many more 6600 and 6600XT GPUs on the market than 6900xt/6950XT (they have already disappeared in many countries). I'm unsure if AMD employs this strategy, but Nvidia has historically provided financial incentives to partner stores and AIBs to lower prices on older generation GPUs, aiding in inventory clearance. Given the current circumstances, it might be more cost-effective to keep the price slightly elevated as a strategic move.

I want to clarify that I'm not sympathizing with company X/Y in this regard. Instead, I'm presenting an analysis of the market situation from an investor and business perspective. A glance at AMD's declining profits over consecutive quarters suggests that there is limited room to decrease profit margins without adversely impacting the company's ability to remain competitive. The primary factor that could potentially drive the development of more affordable GPUs would be increased competition from Samsung, which could challenge the dominance of TSMC in the semiconductor manufacturing industry.

 

[Notda004]

7800XT Pure review? The 7800XT pure pricing isnt as ridiculous of a premium for the white being one of the cheapest options in the 7800XT lineup. Curious if the more powerful card pushes the cooler to hard since it seems to be a bit poor on cooling. If the temps are acceptable on the 7800XT it would still be fine for a white themed build. Literally NO ONE has a review on the 7800XT Pure anywhere so if Techpower up could be the first that would be awesome!