AMD Radeon RX 6000 Graphics Cards Are Becoming Difficult To Sell, AIBs Ready Big Price Cuts To Get Rid of Inventory
A report from graphics card channel dealers published by MyDrivers states that ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI are having a difficult time trying to convince retailers and distributors to buy Radeon RX 6000 series cards for sale in the consumer segment. The reason is just like NVIDIA’s GPUs which saw a huge price jump during the mining boom but pricing has now plummeted heavily. AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card prices have plummeted even worse than NVIDIA’s GPUs & there is little to no demand for gaming cards right now. In its most recent earnings (Q2 2022), AMD confirmed that their discrete gaming graphics side has seen a decline and while the revenue of the division increased by 32%, it was mostly due to strong growth in the semi-custom business which includes console SOCs for Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation platforms. As a result, AMD-exclusive AIB partners, such as Sapphire, have already officially announced a drop in prices for their premium Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards. It is reported by ITHome that the Sapphire Radeon RX 6700 XT has dropped to a price of 2999 Yuan (originally priced at 3699 Yuan). That’s almost a 20% drop in price ($543 US vs $440 US). The manufacturer has also planned similar price reductions on the rest of its high-end and also, lower-end products. Gaming graphics declined in the quarter as macro conditions impacted discretionary spending. While we expect the gaming graphics market to be down in the third quarter, we remain focused on executing our GPU roadmap, including launching our high-end RDNA three GPUs later this year. I would say that as we entered this year, we were coming off of a very strong 2021 for consumer graphics where gaming demand was very high, we have seen a slowdown here in the second quarter, and we expect that is somewhat due to sort of demand now – sort of the supply now and more supply versus demand, as well as some of the macro issues as it relates to consumer spending. AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su However, these are manufacturer-specific price cuts. On the retailer side of things, we can already see AMD’s graphics card prices being lowered almost every day. As of writing this piece, an ASRock Radeon RX 6700 XT Challenger graphics card is already on sale for $395.99 US, that’s almost a $100 US reduction from its original MSRP. The Radeon RX 6600 that had an MSRP of $329 US can now be bought for as little as $259.99 US and even the new Radeon RX 6650 XT which launched at $399 US just a few months ago has dropped down to $349.99 US. You can also get up to an $80 US savings on the MSI Radeon RX 6750 XT which is currently retailing for $469.99 US (down from $549.99 US). The thing is that these AMD Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards are priced lower than their rivaling NVIDIA GPUs. The RX 6600 series was made to compete with the RTX 3060 series & you can already see a $100-$150 US price difference here. The RTX 3060 series starts at $350 US while the RX 6600 series starts at $260 US. The same is the case with the RX 6700 series which now starts below $480 US but its competition, the RTX 3070 is still selling for $550 US and above. The major price difference in the same segment is once again pointing out that while NVIDIA GPUs are still in demand (albeit much lower than last year), the Radeon side has fallen drastically. Finally, there’s also a new deal on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card. An MSI Ventus 3X OC variant is currently going for a low price of $844.99 US after rebate, that’s a 30% drop in price vs the MSRP ($1199 US). As I mentioned earlier this week, the AMD Radeon & NVIDIA GeForce GPU prices will continue to drop across the board and there are also some major price cuts expected by the end of this month so don’t be shocked if those RTX 3090s drop below $1000 US in a few weeks.
