*** The AMD RDNA 4 Rumour Mill ***

[ChosenName]

I think this is the bit people don't understand. There's no point in AMD going all out and producing 10million gpus when they don't know how the market will react to them. That's a crazy business risk.

They built a good number without risking major financial loss.

Exactly - imagine for a moment that the initial reviews would have been scathing from a performance / thermals / etc. perspective - having significant investment in inventory that may not be sold or sold for negligible profit would not look so clever at that point.

 

[Sargatanas2511]

Exactly - imagine for a moment that the initial reviews would have been scathing from a performance / thermals / etc. perspective - having significant investment in inventory that may not be sold or sold for negligible profit would not look so clever at that point.

Even if they are incredibly well received, Nvidia are so much larger than AMD that if they caught wind that AMD were heavily financially invested then they could force their prices lower and potentially snuff out AMD entirely in the GPU space. Nvidia could afford a loss on consumer GPUs for a year to try to push out their competition.

 

[RavenXXX2]

9070XT competing with the 4090.

 

[Bidley]

Exactly - imagine for a moment that the initial reviews would have been scathing from a performance / thermals / etc. perspective - having significant investment in inventory that may not be sold or sold for negligible profit would not look so clever at that point.

Exactly.

Linus had a (rare) good take on this. Imagine you're Sapphire or Powercolor or Asus or whatever. Each card has a BOM, they cost them money to make. Let's say each $599 card costs $400 to manufacture. That would make it $4m to make 10'000 which would probably be enough(?) to saturate the world market on release.

Why would you, in January 2025, put up $4m to make a ton of Radeon cards that nobody buys?

As has been said before, AMD have 10% market share and are being expected to service, what, 60% of the GPU market right now? And they're still doing a better job than Nvidia.

You can criticise AMD for a lot of things, but not being able to conjure GPUs out of thin air, or get the time machine (that some members on here seem to have) aren't them.

 

[gpuerrilla]

TLDR summary:
The 9070 XT holds its own in a 55-game benchmark at 1440p and 4K, averaging 5% slower overall... a 20% cost advantage, translating to 15% better value, though real-world pricing ($750 vs. $900) narrows this to 12%, with availability favoring AMD; across the board, its performance is close enough to the 5070 Ti that a 15% price cut would make it a strong recommendation, bolstered by AMD’s improved FSR 4TEC upscaling and competitive ray tracing, despite Nvidia’s edge in DLSS 4 and certain RT-heavy titles.

 

[humbug]

@mmj_uk

https://twitter.com/x/status/1897668346298220588

 

[mmj_uk]

Exactly - imagine for a moment that the initial reviews would have been scathing from a performance / thermals / etc. perspective - having significant investment in inventory that may not be sold or sold for negligible profit would not look so clever at that point.

Come on, AMD and their partners would have known they had a highly competitive product that would sell like hotcakes, they aren't stupid. Even if they were there's no reason why they can't send products to reviewers 3 months ahead of launch to gauge interest and give themselves time to build up an inventory, if the reviews flopped that hard they wouldn't even need to build up an inventory.

People are just making up excuses for corporate greed, they aren't stupid they know exactly what they are doing. Scarcity makes something appear more valuable so some companies have discovered that creating an artificial scarcity creates more demand and profit because people are willing to pay more. They simply don't care about all of the scalping that occurs because it's still money to them and the warranty will be void in most cases as they usually aren't transferable which is again a benefit to them.

If AMD had replaced the 7900 series the 9070 XT would have probably have been priced closer to the 7800XT that it replaced. It's no wonder they ditched the high end when people are forking out insane amounts for mid-range replacements.

 

[humbug]

Come on, AMD and their partners would have known they had a highly competitive product that would sell like hotcakes, they aren't stupid. Even if they were there's no reason why they can't send products to reviewers 3 months ahead of launch to gauge interest and give themselves time to build up an inventory, if the reviews flopped that hard they wouldn't even need to build up an inventory.

People are just making up excuses for corporate greed, they aren't stupid they know exactly what they are doing. Scarcity makes something appear more valuable so some companies have discovered that creating an artificial scarcity creates more demand and profit because people are willing to pay more. They simply don't care about all of the scalping that occurs because it's still money to them and the warranty will be void in most cases as they usually aren't transferable which is again a benefit to them.

If AMD had replaced the 7900 series the 9070 XT would have probably have been priced closer to the 7800XT that it replaced. It's no wonder they ditched the high end when people are forking out insane amounts for mid-range replacements.

There's always an Nvidia option, right?

 

[cyclonus10]

There's always an Nvidia option, right?

Can I interest you in a fire hazard for the measly price of £2000+

 

[Freddie1980]

@mmj_uk

https://twitter.com/x/status/1897668346298220588

The demand for the RX9000 series sounds insane, other then maybe the RX6000 launch the demand for RDNA 4 based GPU's is probably at any point since AMD purchased ATI:

AMD says it's sold over 200,000 Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards since launch

At the AI PC summit in Beijing, AMD claimed that its board partners have shipped more than 200,000 of its Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070...

www.techspot.com

At the AI PC summit in Beijing, AMD claimed that its board partners have shipped more than 200,000 of its Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT graphics cards since their launch earlier this month. The company added that it has almost exhausted its entire global supply and sold out its inventory.

200k cards gone in almost 24 hours.

 

[humbug]

Can I interest you in a fire hazard for the measly price of £2000+

The demand for the RX9000 series sounds insane, other then maybe the RX6000 launch the demand for RDNA 4 based GPU's is probably at any point since AMD purchased ATI:

AMD says it's sold over 200,000 Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards since launch

At the AI PC summit in Beijing, AMD claimed that its board partners have shipped more than 200,000 of its Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070...

www.techspot.com

200k cards gone in almost 24 hours.

In 24 hours, yes that's insane given that the entire Gaming dGPU sales for everyone, including Nvidia was 34.7 million in 2024.

 

[gpuerrilla]

Can I interest you in a fire hazard for the measly price of £2000+

Which you can be in the queue for an unknown amount of time...

 

[humbug]

I'm sorry, its difficult to resist....

 

[mmj_uk]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if AMD announce a successor to the 7900 series in a few months time and the 9070 XT ends up at the 7800 XT price point where it always belonged, you've all have been played big time if they do.

 

[Sargatanas2511]

I wouldn't be at all surprised if AMD announce a successor to the 7900 series in a few months time and the 9070 XT ends up at the 7800 XT price point where it always belonged, you've all have been played big time if they do.

Not sure why you have to find flaws in everything, even percieved ones that have no evidence of actually happening.

Just accept what we have and move on.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

I'm sorry, its difficult to resist....

I'm not going to lie, I'd still have preferred an Nvidia card. Perhaps not the 5090 given the power cable issue and price, but if I could've got a decent 5080 for around £1000 then I would've been very tempted by that. Or similarly a decent 5070Ti for around £800. But that's not the case at the minute and who knows if it will be.
So I'll make do with a 9070 XT for now and probably wait for next gen (if there is one and everyone hasn't abandoned consumer cards in favour of AI products).

 

[t2na]

I'm not going to lie, I'd still have preferred an Nvidia card. Perhaps not the 5090 given the power cable issue and price, but if I could've got a decent 5080 for around £1000 then I would've been very tempted by that. Or similarly a decent 5070Ti for around £800. But that's not the case at the minute and who knows if it will be.
So I'll make do with a 9070 XT for now and probably wait for next gen (if there is one and everyone hasn't abandoned consumer cards in favour of AI products).

What was your reasoning behind preferring an Nvidia card? I was the same initially, I wanted a 5070Ti so I could get access to DLSS and Reflex 2 again - but Anti Lag 2 is really impressing me and from the few games I've played using FSR4 (Horizon & Space Marine 2) is definitely as good, if not better than the previous DLSS CNN model (obviously the newer transformer model is another step up from there).

Same situation regarding price too, I couldn't find a 5070Ti to start with - and then the only ones available were around the 850-900 quid mark.

 

[humbug]

I'm not going to lie, I'd still have preferred an Nvidia card. Perhaps not the 5090 given the power cable issue and price, but if I could've got a decent 5080 for around £1000 then I would've been very tempted by that. Or similarly a decent 5070Ti for around £800. But that's not the case at the minute and who knows if it will be.
So I'll make do with a 9070 XT for now and probably wait for next gen (if there is one and everyone hasn't abandoned consumer cards in favour of AI products).

Are you listening to what you're saying? you think the 5080 is reasonably priced at £1000, the 5070 Ti at £800, a ##70 class GPU, £800.

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

What was your reasoning behind preferring an Nvidia card? I was the same initially, I wanted a 5070Ti so I could get access to DLSS and Reflex 2 again - but Anti Lag 2 is really impressing me and from the few games I've played using FSR4 (Horizon & Space Marine 2) is definitely as good, if not better than the previous DLSS CNN model (obviously the newer transformer model is another step up from there).

Same situation regarding price too, I couldn't find a 5070Ti to start with - and then the only ones available were around the 850-900 quid mark.

Well, I started at the 5090 and mostly just because that's a beast (regardless of if the uplift is as good as we'd have liked, it's still the best).
But once that was out the 5080 seemed like the next best thing. Sure a little disappointing it wasn't closer to the 5090 and was still behind the 4090 but other than that, except for a few outliers, nothing was as good. It was half the price of the 5090 too, so while still expensive it was better value. When it comes to the 5070Ti and 9070 XT I appreciate it's pretty close but I feel Nvidia and Nvidia technologies are just slightly better supported. I don't use upscaling much if at all currently but if I did, while FSR4 seems to have closed the gap in quality the fact people have to use Optiscaler to get FSR support in games that use DLSS shows that currently there's better DLSS support. RT also seems to be better especially with things that use RTX implementation. Plus any apps that use GPU acceleration seem to be more compatible with Nvidia tech. In the past, from what I recall, I've had less issues with my Nvidia cards than my AMD ones, so that also leads me to favour Nvidia a bit.

the fact you've mentioned FSR4 I take it you have a 9070 or 9070 XT? Any buyer's remorse?

 

[GoogalyMoogaly]

Are you listening to what you're saying? you think the 5080 is reasonably priced at £1000, the 5070 Ti at £800, a ##70 class GPU, £800.

Sure, all GPUs are rubbish prices, but we are where we are. I remember when a pint was £1 and petrol was less than £1/litre, so while I'm going to grumble I'm not going to refuse to buy them. And yeah, I might see diesel at £1.40/litre and think "Oh, that's not bad" given the prices these days, while realising that it's more expensive than it used to be.