AMD Radeon RX 9070 GPUs at MSRP will disappear after early shipments, retailers say

Daniel Sims

Daniel Sims

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Recap: The launch of AMD's Radeon RX 9070 graphics card has dashed hopes that Team Red might escape the inflated prices and weak supply that have plagued Nvidia over the past few weeks. Although listings for the new GPUs at the company's MSRP still exist, retailers globally confirmed that they will evaporate soon.

Retail sources have told multiple outlets that AMD's new Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards will only be available at MSRP during early shipments. Afterward, premiums from board partners will dominate, potentially diminishing or eliminating the lineup's value advantage over Nvidia's midrange RTX 50 series products, which face similar availability problems.

Overclock3D, Inet, and Overclockers all report that the cards currently available at MSRP only maintain those prices because AMD sold its launch stock to retailers at a discount. Once the promotion ends, sellers expect prices to spike worldwide. They also say costs won't revert when new stock arrives.

Graphic cards going for MSRP have become increasingly rare in recent years, but the launch of Nvidia's RTX 50 series, which started in January, has been particularly disastrous. A Taiwan earthquake and the Chinese New Year holiday depressed the company's manufacturing capacity for the first quarter of 2025, causing supply to disappear instantly on launch day. Most of what's available is over $100 above MSRP, hundreds of dollars over in some cases.

More positive news initially surrounded AMD, with reports saying the RX 9070 line's stocks are healthier. Additionally, reviews confirmed that they usually match or outperform Team Green's RTX 5070 duo at similar prices with more VRAM. The company has even closed the gap in ray tracing and image reconstruction after lagging behind its rival for several years.

Also Read: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Review Overpromised, Underdelivered

Unfortunately, neither company can escape stocking and pricing struggles. The new mid-range GPUs from AMD and Nvidia are now sold out, with many partner variants listed at $150 or $200 above MSRP. Nvidia's supply will reportedly improve in late March when the RTX 5070 Founder's Edition arrives, but it's unclear how much improvement we'll see.

Looming 20-percent tariffs against imported goods from China might worsen the situation for GPUs and other electronics that source components from the country. Corie Barry, the CEO of prominent PC retailer Best Buy, recently remarked that customers should expect price hikes soon.

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AMD Radeon RX 9070 GPUs at MSRP will disappear after early shipments, retailers say

 
NumberNine said:
Straight to ebay. See how many actually show up in the steam survey next year.
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Well presumably the scalpers will eventually sell them to someone who plans on gaming with it, that's how they make their money. Frankly for high demand items like this I think retail stores would be better off selling them in an auction format, at least for the first few weeks. That would make scalping a lot less viable, make the store more money, and at least those who really want a card right away would not have to buy from a scalper.
 
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I hate to say it, but every article on this is dead wrong about stocking. I've tried to by my cards on launch day the last the last 3 generations. Stood in line at Microcenter attempted to buy online, etc. I wasn't looking for MSRP, but I'd have taken ANY card at that time. It took me 5 months to buy an OC XFX 7900 XTX at list price (not base MSRP), and that was luck from Best Buy online. Nvida had 10 5090's this time on launch day, and less that 80 (I don't remember the exact number) 5080's, and they were sold out within seconds, Same with 5070ti and 5070. AMD has a launch of two cards, and I can drive down to Micorcenter and buy either the 9070xt or 9070 at MSRP, with several OC models also still in stock.

While it may not be 10's of thousands of cards at every retailer, I would think, given that they have to now supply both AMD AND Nvidia users that need upgrades, that this was one of the best launches I can remember. Not perfect, or what people seem to expect, but damn good considering the last few rounds.

As for pricing, is it fair to blame AMD for Nvida's lack of cards and AIB interest in making money while the sun shines, considering the largest maker of graphics cards with an 80% or better market share is MIA?
 
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LOL Straight to scalper prices here in New Zealand
Last Gen mid Range Powercolor Red Devil RX7800XT $849
This Gen mid Range Powercolor Red Devil RX9070XT $1499

And to top it off NO freakin stock available they had 1 in stock at time of sale
 
Athlonite69 said:
LOL Straight to scalper prices here in New Zealand
Last Gen mid Range Powercolor Red Devil RX7800XT $849
This Gen mid Range Powercolor Red Devil RX9070XT $1499

And to top it off NO freakin stock available they had 1 in stock at time of sale
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But part of that is the already worthless NZ dollar is now a lot more worthless, like the Australian Peso.
 
SRB said:
As for pricing, is it fair to blame AMD for Nvida's lack of cards and AIB interest in making money while the sun shines, considering the largest maker of graphics cards with an 80% or better market share is MIA?
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-Preach. If Nvidia had launched in any number, AMD's initial shipment of cards would have probably stuck around for a few months.

Only reason 9070 series is flying off the shelves is they seem to be the only game in town right now. Even older gen cards seem to have completely dried up.

Logistics and supply chains don't turn on a dime, manufacturing and validation isn't instant. It's months between a chip being fabbed and a usable card sitting on store shelves.

Normally Nvidia would be absorbing all this demand but they completely flubbed the timing with Blackwell (in terms of drawing down Ada and ramping up Blackwell) and now store shelves look like the butcher shop in Soviet Russia.
 
How many of these are being use for mining? Is that still the main driver of the market?
 
psycros said:
How many of these are being use for mining? Is that still the main driver of the market?
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Mining isn't the thing anymore. The cause of high prices is simply lack of production. An order of magnitude or two more money can be made turning wafers into AI components. Heck, AMD makes a whole lot more per wafer making Ryzen CPUs than Radeon GPUs. Until AI isn't a thing anymore there simply aren't enough fabs on earth to make all of the chips needed.
 
AMD said in their press conference that the reference model for the GPUs are going to be available later.
 
mcnabney said:
Mining isn't the thing anymore. The cause of high prices is simply lack of production. An order of magnitude or two more money can be made turning wafers into AI components. Heck, AMD makes a whole lot more per wafer making Ryzen CPUs than Radeon GPUs. Until AI isn't a thing anymore there simply aren't enough fabs on earth to make all of the chips needed.
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Mining, AI, whatever, still in high demand.

We are back in 2021.
 
GodisanAtheist said:
-Preach. If Nvidia had launched in any number, AMD's initial shipment of cards would have probably stuck around for a few months.

Only reason 9070 series is flying off the shelves is they seem to be the only game in town right now. Even older gen cards seem to have completely dried up.

Logistics and supply chains don't turn on a dime, manufacturing and validation isn't instant. It's months between a chip being fabbed and a usable card sitting on store shelves.

Normally Nvidia would be absorbing all this demand but they completely flubbed the timing with Blackwell (in terms of drawing down Ada and ramping up Blackwell) and now store shelves look like the butcher shop in Soviet Russia.
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At the same time, they are not bad GPUs at all, so it is adding to the scale.
 
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This GPU segment looks more like a segment which chips manufacturers would rather ignore. There's lots more money to be made elsewhere and it shows.
Like it or not this is Capitalism folks. The 800 pound AI gorilla will eat most of the limited wafer allocation leaving us the peel, crumbs and scraps to argue and fight over.
Market law will not work here, we are in a segment which fell by the wayside first on the wake of crypto then now in the AI gold rush.
 
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BogdanR said:
This GPU segment looks more like a segment which chips manufacturers would rather ignore. There's lots more money to be made elsewhere and it shows.
Like it or not this is Capitalism folks. The 800 pound AI gorilla will eat most of the limited wafer allocation leaving us the peel, crumbs and scraps to argue and fight over.
Market law will not work here, we are in a segment which fell by the wayside first on the wake of crypto then now in the AI gold rush.
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The problem with that is that the companies don't get to decide what kind of products their customers want. nVidia received a ton of cancellations for their blackwell chips and I'm fairly they're still making ADA chips for the hyperscalers and AI workloads. But They can't just "decide" that we want to make this product at this price and people are going to buy whatever they make. nVidia tried going the route with Blackwell of Limiting supply to inflate the price and that's not the correct approach. All the companies need to make products people want and can afford. The 9070 is going to sit on shelves once the tariffs go into effect, people. We're about to have an enter generation of GPUs that can't do 4k60 selling for $800-900. AMD is not going to gain marketshare if the market rate of their cards are $800 and above. $600 was a bit of a push, but inflation and yadda yadda. The 5070 is just a garbage card no matter how you look at it and the 5070ti is selling in the 900-1000 bracket.
 
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The Canadian stock at MSRP or close had evaporated in minutes. The whole Canada Computer country wide stock was woefully inadequate. So much for AMD's "ample stock".

This launch is largely as successful as Nvidia's launch. A small bunch of people got a card and that was it. AMD says that was it for the MSRP stock. no more. So yes, another paper launch as far as the gaming community as large is concerned.

I used to think a successful launch meant pretty much everyone who wanted the product would be able to get one at the advertised launch price. Yea... I'm that old.
 
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BogdanR said:
The Canadian stock at MSRP or close had evaporated in minutes. The whole Canada Computer country wide stock was woefully inadequate. So much for AMD's "ample stock".

This launch is largely as successful as Nvidia's launch. A small bunch of people got a card and that was it. AMD says that was it for the MSRP stock. no more. So yes, another paper launch as far as the gaming community as large is concerned.

I used to think a successful launch meant pretty much everyone who wanted the product would be able to get one at the advertised launch price. Yea... I'm that old.
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Well you have to keep in mind, we're now 4 generations into RTX. There are lots of nVidia users who's 30 series cards cards are running out of VRAM, the GPU is still plenty powerful but there are also lots of people who have been holding out for an upgrade for many years. I know a few people with 20 series cards who are hesitant to upgrade because their prices are bad and they aren't paying $1000 for a 5070ti to just get 16GB of VRAM with 16GB likely becoming obsolete in the next few years.

There are lots of people who have put off upgrading because of the current market. I remember paying almost $450 for my 6700XT when my 1080ti died. I was looking at the 9070XT half way just accepting I'm gonna have to bite a $600 bullet, but it looks like these cards are going to be selling for $800 and with Tariffs, I think they will easily go into 900 range.

People are looking at the market and saying 'this is nonsense.' I don't mind spending money, but the value has to be there. I don't think AMD could really have done anything differently, they had been building up supply in stores for months now, someone said that they started shipping cards to retailers back in December and leaked photos would suggest that they have been building up inventory for months.

It's just that the whole market is nonsense right now and people are holding onto their cards longer and longer. For me, enthusiasts would upgrade basically every generation, I know I did that for years with the slightly less involved people upgrading every other generation. We are now in a situation where people haven't upgraded in 2-3 generations. I see lots of comments saying things like "if my 3080 wasn't running out of VRAM I'd skip another generation"
 
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yRaz said:
I don't think AMD could really have done anything differently, they had been building up supply in stores for months now, someone said that they started shipping cards to retailers back in December and leaked photos would suggest that they have been building up inventory for months.
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By all accounts there wasn't enough supply because the stock was not all that high to begin with. At least in Canada it wasn't. The stores here only had a handful of 9070XT on hand at MSRP and another "larger" handful selling at various higher prices, topping at $860 (there are still 6 cards available at that price Canada wide at Canada Computers).
With a handful of 5070Ti still available at around $875 I don't think those leftover cards will sell at all, not with a $15 difference.
For all intents and purposes, the 9070XT landed with a bit of a thud in Canada.
 
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