If AMD wanted to enforce MSRP availability, they could.
They are not the "good guys" here. They are taking advantage of the same scummy scalping practices that Nvidia is. In other words, they're doing what they have been doing for 15 years - ride Nvidia's coat tails to an incredibly underwhelming 2nd place "we're the knock off brand and proud of it!" market position.
$600 is not a real price for the 9070 XT, the 9070 XT sucks anywhere north of that price, and both of those realities are 100% on AMD.
No AMD thread is complete without the Crysis 2 copium
The literally thousands of us who have gotten them for $600 (and in my case an overclocked model for $600!) are the proof that $600 IS a avery real price for the 8070 XT.
Meanwhile, Micro Center keeps restocking them and STILL hasn't raised the prices of 4 of the 9070XT models from 4 different manufacturers. They did raise the price of the two overclocked models that they were selling at that price (the Asus Prime OC and the Gigabyte Gaming OC), but those were always supposed to be >$700, as OC models of any card on the market are more than the vanilla MSRP. But they sold thousands of them for $600 - including one of the Gigabytes to me - and are still selling tons at $600.
Also, the thousands of people who CHOSE better, more expensive models clearly disagree with your statement that they suck at more than that price. Over half the people in my MicroCenter CHOSE the more expensive models, even with tons of $600 cards still in stock.
A baby step at best. A $100 discount on the 7900 XTX with better upscaling and RT at the cost of 8GB less VRAM and a tiny hit to raster performance. Very hard to call that a win, and it's going to do nothing to further AMD's market position. In other words, it sucks.
Sometimes I don't think people on tech forums get the big picture here. The fact that people on tech forums can craft long winded arguments to prove that AMD's offering is in fact a bit better than Nvidia's garbage offerings does. not. matter. If AMD is going to produce a product that meaningfully helps their brand and market share, it needs to be so blindingly obvious that it's better than anything Nvidia has that actual consumers who don't listen to Moore's Law is Dead podcasts - i.e. 90% of customers - will consider buying it. AMD is close to that with a $600 price point. They are way off base at $750+
Except that it was exactly those people who chose to stand in line for hours upon hours on Thursday. And then when they got in the store, they had no idea which model they wanted. That's what backed up the line so tremendously at most stores. Again, the majority of people in the store chose more expensive models, while $600 ones were still available. The first models to sell out were $750+.
If it was hardcore enthusiasts buying, they would have known exactly what model they wanted and would have been out of the store in minutes.
You can tell us over and over until you're blue in the face what you think people aren't going to buy. But the people actually buying them are proving you wrong. The fact that you can craft long winded arguments to try to prove that people won't do what THEY ARE ACTUALLY DOING is what doesn't matter.
I think this is completely backwards.
If AMD wants market share and to become relevant as a GPU maker, they need to make extremely aggressive moves and sell their GPUs at the lowest price possible, even if that means making less than desired profits in the short term. This means they provide GPUs to AIBs at a cost where the AIBs can sell at MSRP and make profit. And it means they use their leverage as the GPU provider to prevent bad behavior from AIBs.
They are doing neither of these things. And I guarantee you they are not going above 10% market share with $750+ 9070 XTs.
It's hilarious that you think that you understand how to run their business better than they do. And that you think that they can just strongarm their partners and remain partners with them.
Again, the fact that they have managed to sell out of these cards at these prices WORLDWIDE proves you wrong. They've sold literally every card they've made. They've won over tens of thousands of Nvidia fanboys with this launch. They literally can't do better than that. Selling the same number of a product at less money is not the definition of success.
