AMD pledges to re-stock Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT reference cards this quarter
The launch of the Radeon RX 6000 series went much like the RTX 30 series. Stock vanished from retailers almost instantly, only for thousands of cards to appear on marketplaces like eBay at vastly increased prices. There is more of a sting to AMD's stock issues though, arguably, as it urged its partners to deter resellers from flipping large quantities of its RDNA 2 cards at higher prices than MSRP. Inevitably, that plan failed and AMD now feels that supply shortages will affect the RX 6000 series, albeit not exclusively, until the second half of this year.
With that in mind, AMD has now stated that it plans to extend production of reference design cards to have stock ready 'in the first quarter of 2021'. The quote, reproduced by BabelTechReviews from an interview conducted with Ritche Corpus,
Head Of Gaming and Professional Software Worldwide at AMD, is as follows:
Based on the response to our AMD Radeon RX 6800 Series and Radeon RX 6900 XT reference design graphics cards, we are extending production to make them available to as many gamers as possible on AMD.com at SEP. Additional reference cards are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2021.
Corpus added that AMD remains supportive of its partners developing custom RX 6000 series cards, although he would not 'comment on unannounced products'. It is unclear how AMD will 'continue supporting' its partners if it manufacturers a new run of reference cards, mind you.
Ultimately, a few more reference design cards hitting the market will do little to improve AMD's woeful stock situation of the RX 6000 series. We suspect that resellers will snap up any cards that AMD sells at MSRP anyway, defeating the point of the exercise really.
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