They were supposed to allow AMD to thumb its nose at its long-time competitor, NVIDIA. They are the Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards, and the " nose dive" may not be immediate.
After a complicated Ampere / RDNA 2 generation for both AMD and NVIDIA, many gamers were hoping to finally find a calmer graphics card market, with more immediate availability and slightly less crazy prices. Last October, NVIDIA was the first to introduce and market its ultra-high-end model, the GeForce RTX 4090. Alas, the price is at the level of the stratospheric performance of the beast and if the MSRP of the American company is set at 1,969 euros for the Founders Edition model, one must generally spend more than 2,100, or even more than 2,200 euros for the smallest of partner cards.
Even more embarrassing, the second Ada Lovelace generation card launched by NVIDIA - the GeForce RTX 4080 - is not cheap enough to satisfy enthusiasts. Indeed, while its starting MSRP was 1,459 euros and NVIDIA has just reduced it to 1,399 euros, the card often exceeds 1,500, even 1,600 euros. To make matters worse, supplies of either solution are sporadic. From a strictly accounting point of view, we obviously understand NVIDIA's objective: to sell off the large stocks of previous generation GPUs. NVIDIA has agreed to reduce the prices a little, but in order not to put its partners in difficulty, it can't decently sell them off. In fact, it is more or less obliged to keep the prices of its GeForce RTX 4000s high: the RTX 3000s should not be depreciated too quickly.
This is an insoluble circle for NVIDIA, but it should make AMD happy. The latter does not have the same problem of very large stocks of previous generation GPUs. The RDNA 2 cards sold quite well, but the demand and the inherent production were nothing like NVIDIA's levels. On November 4, when announcing the RDNA 3 cards, CEO Lisa Su had a field day withthe $899 and $999 price tags for the Radeon RX 7900XT and its big sister, the Radeon RX 7900XTX, respectively. On paper, the former is a little less powerful than the GeForce RTX 4080, while the latter should match or even slightly outperform the NVIDIA card. With much better prices, we could say that AMD was able to make an impression.
As we get closer to the December 13 launch date, things seem to be trickier than expected for AMD. First of all, there was the information that on December 13, only cards directly produced by AMD, the MBA for Made by AMD, would be available. The products of partner companies would finally be available only between 10 and 15 days after the first launch. In the meantime, a rumor from Chinese manufacturers and resellers suggests that the prices of these partner cards will not be at all at the level of AMD's MSRP: we are talking about something around 1 600 dollars. Of course, this is just a rumor, but it still hinders AMD's communication.
Recently, it is Igor's Lab that quotes " reliable " sources to indicate that even on the side of AMD, the launch should be complicated. Indeed, according to the site, there is talk of a total of 10,000 RX 7900XT cards and 10,000 RX 7900XTX cards for the entire EMEA region, that is, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Even worse, Igor's Lab says that 3,000 of each of the two cards are reserved for the German market alone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's going to be hard to get your hands on an MBA card in other countries in the region.
Finally, to make matters worse, the manufacturing of the partner models seems to run into various technical and logistical problems. For example, Igor's Lab mentions " an exclusive partner " who will probably not be able to meet the dates initially planned for the launch of its products. We can reasonably assume that it is the manufacturer Sapphire and therefore consider an availability at the end of the year. Another manufacturer, this time non-exclusive, could be forced to market its cards only at the beginning of next year. The world of graphics cards is anything but a long, quiet river.
