Who's getting a RX6000 Series Card?

Yep... i know the pro and cons of both camps but still i can't make up my mind. hahaha

 

I was wondering I installed GeForce drivers and only got the experience. No old control panel. So I guess I need to choose that now. Still funny. nV Inspector I would need to get separately. Graoh. Anyway 6800 xt here on Friday can throw this 3060 ti away then.

 

Sell it to some fellow gamer

 

I'm a bit of an AMD fanboy, my original intention or plan was to get a 6800XT, preferably from PowerColor or Spphire, but the state of the price gouge here in my neck of the woods is just.....nuts/crazy/mad/outta-this-world/insert expletive(s). I'd paid the equivalent of 850USD for my Sapphire Nitro+ RX6800 (can just about get a top end AIB RX6800XT). Do I regret getting it at that price? Perhaps, to some extent, but then, there's hardly any 6800/6800XT available to buy even IF you can afford to buy one at the inflated price.

All this had got me thinking about the RX6900XT. I can buy one from the US (XFX Speedster MERC319 RX 6900XT), with import fees (it's the local tax levied on items above a certain price range), it'd cost me 1197USD (that's 198USD (>100USD for import fees + xxUSD for premium cooling) more for import fees and 3rd party cooling premium pricing). So, looking at it from that perspective, the RX 6900XT does look like a more 'reasonably' priced flagship AMD card as there're some AIB RX6800 XT's and RTX3080's that come close to this price range of 1.2k USD here in my neck of the woods.

Since I have my niece and brother living in Canada, I figured that should I have to RMA the card sometime along the way, I can send the card to the US and, after RMA, the repaired/replacement card can be sent to them instead, and they can then sent it back to me in my neck of the woods.

Well, with that in mind, I've gone ahead with the pre-order of the MERC319 RX 6900XT.....looking forward to the day it comes in January or February next year.....hopefully, January (or earlier!).

 

rename the thread in "who's finding a rx6000 card?"
in south europe the cards do not exists, neither 1000+€

 

Some of the GPU's are going out now but it looks like there's a bit of a uncertainty still and the 6800XT's and 6900's are in very limited supply so it's shifted from December to January and now February and a few sites listing March.
(Well the 6800 non-XT is also limited but less so than the others.)

One of the local forums here had some info as well and the situation is pretty tough with little to no availability, increased shipping fees and slow handling cited as reasons for this situation and I think there's been some selling or something on the side before general retail availability?

Around a 1000$ for the 6800XT and 1500$ for the 6900XT add one or two hundred for some of the custom designs, cheaper than the 3080 and 3090 but still above the expected price level.

EDIT: Some stores are now also opening up for pre-orders on the 6000 series though not all of them have a good listing for how much is backed up with existing pre-orders.

5000 series CPU's are also slowly coming in mostly the 5600 and 5800 from what I can see and there's quite a few pre-orders for these so if it's the same on the GPU side it's going to be a while before there's any better availability let alone anything that won't be immediately snagged by automated scripts and such.
(Might be why at least Webhallen was promoting their stock through the SweClockers community trying to ensure at least some of the initial batch wasn't just going to be disappearing immediately upon putting up for purchase? https://www.sweclockers.com/forum/post/18815580/ )


Not that much better for the NVIDIA side either, more is arriving but the popularity means everything but the 3090's sell out almost instantly and even these are slowly going even at a price level of 2000$ or higher.


EDIT:
Although to be a bit fair while the pricing is higher it is still keeping close to the recommended set pricing though the 25% VAT is what then makes a bigger divider.
800 Euro or Dollar roughly for the 6800XT or the 3080 and there's that 25 and suddenly it's 1000 reference models at a bit of a cheaper price a hundred, hundred and fifty or so I think but those are no longer available.


Will vary depending on store though and if it's a custom design or reference.

 

Managed to snag a ref 6900 xt from powercolor, at almost 1200$ but still,i feel lucky haha,i had a 3080 tuf reserved and on its way next week but as soon as i saw that 6900 xt in stock my brain went full auto(idiot) mode and threw cash at the monitor. Though it wasn't that much more expensive than i would have payed for that 3080 so not gonna regret it that much.

 

Damn, PowerColor RX 6900XT Red Devil LE turned up on Amazon US, previously listed as 'Unavailable', and I couldn't help myself, hit the 'Buy' tab without a moment's hesitation. Now, I've got to play the waiting game, will take the Red Devil or the MERC319, whichever ships first.

 

I am somewhat amazed how the GPU market has become like the hifi audio market. GPUs are in the same price range as some hi-end headphones and DACs, and amps. We'll be needing to borrow that catch-phrase from Head-Fi:

"Welcome to PC Gaming. Sorry about your wallet."

 

Well at least the desktop GPU pricing has a upper limit around 3000 US Dollar / Euro much as that helps, compared to the high fidelity audio world although things do get more closely matched when looking at products aimed at the professional market I suppose.
...399 - 499 high-end really good GPU prices would be amazing though. Ha ha.

EDIT: Some of the 3090's here going for really high prices, 6900's once actually available might also see a shift above 1500 Euro but that won't happen until February or so next year it seems.

Well the situation is what it is, makes it interesting to see what's going to happen next year for availability and if pricing is going to change at all or not.

3070's were in stock for a while yesterday so more cards are coming in even if only the 3090's actually last any longer due to the already high cost of these.

Wonder where the 6800's and 6900's are though there's almost nothing after that initial batch came in.

AMD cannot pay the shipping taxes the Nordic countries are setting ha ha, well might be more about the rest of the EU as a bigger market overall plus any actual products in stock would be eligible for shipping to the rest of the EU so I likely miss some of the drops entirely before they've gone.

From the sounds of it from some retailers the shipping situation is one of the bigger holdups though so once that improves and the postal service stops stomping the packages or botching store and home/service point deliveries it's going to get better.


Not a SE only issue though found a postal worker on ResEra explaining that sometimes they accidentally stepped on packages during handling well I can certainly believe that judging by how Post Nord here has managed a few things ha ha.




EDIT: Hmm interesting.

A batch of 6800's were available, 600 Euro well why not.
6800 XT's at 15 - 20% faster but they're also over 900 Euro.

 

The store im talking to (its a small one) sold 2 6900 this week, 1200€ each.

 

I'm in the market for a decent 6800. Sapphire or Asus.
But at €850+? Yeah, no thanks. That RX 480 4Gb will have to do for now.
That's Belgian region checked on Pricewatch.

 

If anyone wonders, look at laptop prices. 8GB ram + quad core + 120/240GB SSD. Those things are now 50% more expensive than half a year ago.
Which is funny considering NAND/memory prices.

 

A small batch of 6800XT's and 6900XT's arrived at ProShop earlier today.

Pricing is still a problem though, think it was 17 Asus 6800XT's and a smaller stock of Asus 6900XT's at 1400 Euro for the 6900 and 1100 Euro for the 6800.
Stock is slowly coming in though but in very small quantities.

3070's and 3080's should start refreshing too although it's very hard to find a 3080 in stock and the 3070's while larger batches also sell out very fast.

EDIT: Asus tends to be on the upper end of pricing for some reason though whether it's the ROG brand or not Strix and such.
Interesting that the reference cards (Founders for NVIDIA) are holding up price wise to AMD's recommended although with VAT here in Europe so a bit extra but still well below the custom card prices.


EDIT: And it seems Komplett got about 40 GPU's in yesterday, sold out now though.
Looks like a few Sapphire ones are coming in next, bit lower priced than the Asus ones too.
(Not quite a match pricing wise compared to a 3080 but close.)

 

Anybody paying more than $725 for any 6800 series card is an idiot. I'm sorry but it has to be said.

 

Or they just need a new GPU and they dont give a F about pricing.

 

If its 6800xt i would say its fine but for 6800 its too much.

 

With the low availability I can see that being the case if it doesn't get too expensive (Though even then some might pick it up anyway.) problem as I see it lies with the lower availability and the uncertainty about restocking of new cards against NVIDIA's Ampere series short of the 3090 which is still in a price class of it's own.
(1600 - 2000 Euro depending on the model last I checked.)

It's tough to recommend the 6800 or 6800 XT when a 3070 is far more affordable until the pricing stabilizes or somewhat normalizes on a higher average or something for both AMD and NVIDIA.
Reference pricing is also problematic with the 6900XT reference being cheaper than the 6800XT customs currently though few reference model GPU's exist it's one reason I jumped on the MSI 6800 I am now using.

6800XT also varying from 900 to 1100 Euro currently or more for some of the custom models places it in a unfavorable price point against the 3080 though due to that GPU's popularity it too has a pretty wide range and availability at least here has been almost null.
(Stock is coming in though so there's an advantage over the uncertainty about AMD's 6000 series cards and when these will be restocked just that it's so incredibly popular any availability goes within minutes.)

Looking forward to seeing AMD and NVIDIA GPU availability really improve and hopefully also bringing down the prices but there are some of the customs that have a MSRP that's already a fair bit higher than reference so I don't expect too much and if it does change it's going to take a while for it to lower down to more reasonable pricing levels.


EDIT: A even higher base price for the next GPU launch would also be a really bad outcome but one that I am somewhat expecting will happen.

For this current generation though NVIDIA has a few additional models readied like a 20 GB variant of the 3080 and possibly also the 3080Ti so that might be two separate entries there and AMD's going to have the mid-range segment covered for but in March somewhere I think it was mentioned with the 6700 likely going to be the replacement for the 5700 GPU.
Could change, higher-clocked 2560 core GPU or perhaps more cores and still a clock speed boost and then well if it's 256-bit that's 8 GB GDDR6 as the most likely.

Price for that also being important, 300$ or 400$ or what it might be.
And will it compete with the 3060 or 3050 and what these could be priced at.
(3060 getting a 12 GB variant could also see prices changed around from NVIDIA.)



Well that write-up done with.

RDNA2 / Navi20 it's a good GPU but it's tough to compete against NVIDIA and the availability and pricing is a big problem when it matches between the 6800 / 3070 and 6800XT / 3080 cards.
6900XT is a bit expensive though less than the 3090 but it's also not that much faster than a 3080 making that an attractive alternative.
(True for the 3080 against the 3090 too, more so with the 20 GB model or depending on pricing the 3080 Ti possibly having extra RAM if desired and a bit faster performance over the regular 3080 as well.)

A bit lower and it'd be a good recommendation especially if ray tracing isn't a priority or important factor in the GPU upgrade decision and what to go for but there's a bunch of other features too giving Ampere a bit of a edge and yeah currently it's mostly the low availability helping AMD as buyers go by what's available.

Assuming the info from some of the third party vendors is also solid AMD's cut here and pricing is complicating matters when they can sell these limited availability reference GPU's for much lower than the other partners can and thus the extra 200$ or so difference and other modifiers like VAT here on top.


EDIT: Should take a quick check on some other European countries as well and pricing along with availability, hearing Germany is getting stock regularly as well through Mind Factory and some other bigger retailers.
Then difficult as the price situation and also the VAT is here in the Nordic countries it's also even worse in other parts of the world.

Wonder how this is going to settle, presumably availability will improve in a few months but pricing might not change too much or take a longer time to come down if it ever does recover before the next round of hardware launches.

 

So, today I did my usual look for 6800 (XT).
Czech Republic got few ASUS Strix LC cards for $1070 (w/o tax), So it is almost at its designated price.
And we got Red Devils for $1150 (w/o tax).

Can't say I am thrilled for those prices. Maybe if they were 6900 XT I could bend from pure despair caused by waiting for new toy.
But I have my limits and I simply do not want something that's not worth its asking price.

 

My pre-order of the XFX MERC319 RX 6900 XT had gotten postponed, I'd lowered my CC limit due to the fact that I don't travel so I don't need a higher limit, so when Amazon tried to bill me, it was unsuccessful. The thing that ticked me off was, they'd not contactted me to have the issue cleared up.

A simple online adjustment would have cleared it up almost immediately, so my order was pushed back to a later batch (those who had ordered at the same time as me are already receiving their XFX reference and MERC 319 RX 6900 XT's. Can't tell you how ticked off I am with Amazon for failing me!

Anyway, I'd canceled my preorder, didn't want to wait for a postponed batch that I'd have no idea when would be available, so when a Sapphire Nitro+ RX 6900 XT became available (BNIB, still sealed in the delivery package), I dropped my Amazon XFX preorder and snagged the Sapphire card instead. It wasn't cheap, about 1350USD, but unlike the Amazon cards, this is a local set with local warranty. The XFX MERC319 would have cost me about 1190USD (including 'import fee' which is the GST), but should I have any issue with the card, I'd have to RMA it and have the RMA'ed card sent to my niece in Canada. She could then forward the card to me.....a fair bit of hassle, and shipping cost.

I replaced my Nitro+ RX 6800 with the Nitro+ RX 6900 XT about 10 days ago. Proof's in the pudding....


A comparison of the two cards, the angle's bad, so don't let it fool you, they looked to be the size size and weigh about the same too. Oh yeah, the RX 6900 XT is at the back...


I've since sold the RX 6800, got a buyer who'd collected it from me the very next day (after I'd replaced it with the 6900XT). The card is a beast, I've been replaying some of my fave games, like Serious Sam 4 and Gears of War 5 and Hivebusters, awesome to see >100fps at 3840x1080, max ingame setting. Oh yeah, with my mobo and the latest F31 BIOS, worked on beta F31q as well, I'd gotten SAM to work so, I guess that's a plus as well.

In all honesty, I'd have been just as happy with an XFX/PowerColor/Sapphire non-reference RX 6800 XT, but they're always, ALWAYS, out of stock!