A couple of days ago, AMD officially launched its Big Navi graphics cards based on the RDNA 2 architecture. The red team lifted the review/sales embargo for the AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800XT cards, respectively.
Several reference-design boards were reviewed, and most of the cards also went ‘out of stock’ after the sales embargo was lifted. The situation was just as bad as the RTX 3080 launch just a few months ago.
The scalper bots once again managed to grab the RX 6800 and 6800 XT cards, and now these GPUs are currently selling for around $1000-$1500 on eBay. Many are blaming AMD for this whole situation, saying that it was just another “paper launch”, when technically speaking it wasn’t.
According to one old Twitter post by Frank Azor, AMD’s Chief Architect, the company was confident to provide enough stock on launch day, but unfortunately, things didn’t go according to plan so far.
I look forward to taking your $10 🙂
— Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) September 24, 2020
As reported by Tom’s Hardware, AMD’s subreddit exploded with anger and disappointment at the issues pertaining to the Radeon GPU shortage. Few people reported that their local MicroCenters barely had ten to twelve RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT cards available for purchase, which was just as bad as the RTX 3080 launch.
Now, according to a recent tweet by AMD’s Scott Herkelman, Corporate VP and GM, the MBA (or made by AMD) reference-design GPUs will undergo production runs only until early 2021. After early 2021, only aftermarket/AIB designs will be produced.
Yes, through early 2021. https://t.co/mWg3mALBvA
— Scott Herkelman (@sherkelman) November 18, 2020
Currently, the company will only focus on selling the reference design RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT GPUs, beyond which the company will rely entirely on sales of the custom AIB GPUs. This doesn’t come as a surprise though, since AMD tends to produce MBA or the reference-design GPU SKUs only for the initial few months of the launch.
The custom-designed AIB cards are expected to take over the company’s sales after this initial launch window, next year that is. The AIB partners are now selling the MBA cards with some minor modifications done to the GPU/PCB.
2020 has seen unprecedented demand for new gaming hardware, but neither AMD nor Nvidia are close to satisfying the needs of today’s PC gaming market, and gamers.
Stay tuned for more!
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
MUSIC has always been my passion/roots, but I started gaming “casually” when I was young on Nvidia’s GeForce3 series of cards. I’m by no means an avid or a hardcore gamer though, but I just love stuff related to the PC, Games, and technology in general. I’ve been involved with many indie Metal bands worldwide, and have helped them promote their albums in record labels. I’m a very broad-minded down to earth guy. MUSIC is my inner expression, and soul.
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