AMD's Radeon RX 6600 and RX 6600 XT reportedly launching on August 11 with improved availability

[punctualturn]

Well, considering what other cards are selling for, you may as well get the RX 6900XT at MSRP because you're paying pretty much the same price as a much weaker card on the open market. At least in this way, you got performance for your $1000. It still staggers me though, the idea of paying four figures to get a video card. I didn't even pay four figures for my R5-3600X, X370 motherboard and 16GB of DDR4-3200 combined!

I just hope for your sake that you were upgrading from something like an old R9 280X because I'd still be using my R9 Fury if I didn't get the deal I did on my RX 5700XT.

I'm removing my 970gtx and finally ditching nvidia.

To be honest, I do agree that it is simply too much money and this card in particular is a mixed bag, since compared to the 6800rx, its overpriced, but compared to a 3090 is a bargain.

Also, I am going thru some interesting "philosophical things" and lets say, the money spent was justified for all other reasons, besides the upgrade.

 

[Avro Arrow]

That's the trick with just pushing "rumors" it gives them more plausible deniability than random employees just talking trash on twitter like before.

This is just as dishonest mind you, but smarter.

You're right but I don't consider their deniability to be plausible because if they're making statements, the subtext is that they know exactly what they're talking about. You can't be an AMD rep, say that there will be lots of stock and then turn around to say "Oh, I didn't know!" because as an AMD representative, you DO know. Now, it is possible that there was more Radeon stock than GeForce stock initially (it wouldn't be hard to believe that) but the miners and scalpers created an artificial scarcity of product like DeBeers does with diamonds.

Ain't unfettered capitalism grand?

 

[Avro Arrow]

I'm removing my 970gtx and finally ditching nvidia.

To be honest, I do agree that it is simply too much money and this card in particular is a mixed bag, since compared to the 6800rx, its overpriced, but compared to a 3090 is a bargain.

Also, I am going thru some interesting "philosophical things" and lets say, the money spent was justified for all other reasons, besides the upgrade.

I won't question you. You've shown intelligence and sound judgement the whole time that I've (more or less) known you. You managed to snag a card at MSRP and that's a major bonus right now. Beyond that, I'm certain that you have your reasons and that they're good ones.

Upgrading from a GTX 970 is a good reason because the R9 Fury is the weakest card that I would consider tolerable in modern games and it's faster than the GTX 980, let alone the GTX 970. I can't fault you for needing the upgrade and, in fact, I applaud you for making your GTX 970 last this long.

I had to make a few (insignificant) sacrifices when using my R9 Fury while my RX 5700XT was being RMA'd (twice if you can believe it) so I'd imagine that some of the sacrifices that you had to make with the GTX 970 were more than insignificant. You actually NEEDED the upgrade, unlike a lot of fools who just upgrade because their RTX 2080 Ti isn't the king of the hill anymore.

 

[punctualturn]

You've shown intelligence and sound judgement the whole time that I've (more or less) known you.

Thank you!

You have no idea how much good that comment does for me!!

Hint, depending where you are located, check AMD.com every Thursday starting at 10 AM EST and use this script:

Sadly, because of the price, the "easiest one to grab is the 6900.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I haven't seen a Steam Survey for 6+ years. Last one that came up on my gaming system was just after I got a 980Ti.

My brother hasn't seen a Steam Survey since he purchased a 5700XT 2 years ago.

I know two guys with a 6800 and 6800XT, they haven't seen a survey. I have a few guys I game with on the weekends, two of them have new systems with 3080s and they haven't seen any survey, they've had the systems for 6+ months now.

But, I guess the Steam Survey is a great way to find information based on user hardware out there, according to people.

Sorry dude, I got your Steam survey about 2 weeks ago.

On the i5-8400/GTX 1080? Nope. On the R5 2600/5600XT? Nah, what's the point?

I got it on my Intel NUC8i5. Yep, so look out for the Core i5-8259U and Iris Plus 655 to shoot up in the Steam charts!

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I haven't seen a Steam Survey for 6+ years. Last one that came up on my gaming system was just after I got a 980Ti.

My brother hasn't seen a Steam Survey since he purchased a 5700XT 2 years ago.

I know two guys with a 6800 and 6800XT, they haven't seen a survey. I have a few guys I game with on the weekends, two of them have new systems with 3080s and they haven't seen any survey, they've had the systems for 6+ months now.

But, I guess the Steam Survey is a great way to find information based on user hardware out there, according to people.

Nobody claims steam is perfect, but do you have a better source? Do you have ANY source? Instead of trying to be sarcastic about people giving you heat for being a massive whiner, why not find some better sources to measure GPU ownership? I'm sure people are interested in a better source.

 

[defaultluser]

I don't get the "improved availability" part of the story. I only say that because right now there are hundreds and hundreds of AMD cards available online through Newegg or at MicroCenter stores, but no one is buying them because of the absolutely f'ing horrendous prices they are marked up at.

6700XT cards - priced at nearly a grand (if you're lucky you might find some closer to the $900 range).
3070 cards are priced between $700-800 at MC and 3070Ti cards are priced around $800-850 at MC. But these cards from Nvidia don't stay in stock long.

6800 cards are in the $1100+ range and the 6800XT cards are priced at $1300+
Nvidia 3080 cards are priced at $900-1000.

6900XT cards are priced at $2100+
Nvidia 3090 cards are priced at $1700+

Getting your hands on a Nvidia card isn't as hard as it used to be, so people are still waiting with their money and grabbing them since they come in much cheaper than AMD's equivalent cards. HelI, you can probably find some of the AMD cards on ebay at scalper prices, lower than when is offered at retail prices.

RTX 3060 cards are selling in the $300-400 range. If AMD's 6600XT can't come within spitting distance of the 3060 performance and it is priced over $300, they won't sell either.

I love the fact that AMD has come into the batter's box and is swinging with Nvidia, but these prices need to come down fast and hard so they are priced correctly along side Nvidia cards right now. AMD just isn't moving off the shelves due to the much higher prices and it's a shame. I would have loved to get a 6700XT if it was priced around that $500 mark it should be at, not the nearly $1000 they sell for now at retail.

Yeah, Nvidia has taken direct attempts to segment the market, while AMD has taken the lazy way out (just massively raised prices beyond reason, which means nobody buys the cards!)

It's a lot harder to move anywhere near as much volume as Nvidia when your initial msrp is that much higher!

The worst part: because these are official AMD prices , the market is a lot less elastic than the third-party-resellers can be. I expect it to take months after wide availability before AMD is willing to do price cuts, (also, such massive official price cuts means a lot of rebates required in the channel.)

 

[Dimitriid]

You're right but I don't consider their deniability to be plausible because if they're making statements, the subtext is that they know exactly what they're talking about. You can't be an AMD rep, say that there will be lots of stock and then turn around to say "Oh, I didn't know!" because as an AMD representative, you DO know. Now, it is possible that there was more Radeon stock than GeForce stock initially (it wouldn't be hard to believe that) but the miners and scalpers created an artificial scarcity of product like DeBeers does with diamonds.

Ain't unfettered capitalism grand?

What I mean is that they could say "We actually never promised there will be lots of stock to go around, that was just a rumor"

My point is that AMD still wants people to hold on hopes there will be lots of stock at launch, but instead of committing to it they just pass it around to a rumor website so they can still get the same excitement from people but without actually committing and then failing to deliver.

My suspicion is almost always than any accurate rumors that run fairly close to release dates (couple months like this case) it's actually not a rumor at all and just the company's marketing team trying to get some interest in their upcoming launches while also being able to make outrageous promises the actual engineers (Or in this case, board partners and forge) can't possibly deliver on. It still gets you talking about an upcoming product under manipulative, false pretense of "leaked info"

 

[HardReset]

Nobody claims steam is perfect, but do you have a better source? Do you have ANY source? Instead of trying to be sarcastic about people giving you heat for being a massive whiner, why not find some better sources to measure GPU ownership? I'm sure people are interested in a better source.

We don't have better sources. However poor source like Steam survey does not become good even if there are no better alternatives. Just accept that there are not good or reliable sources for GPU ownership at this time.

Fact is that Steam survey is unreliable and very bad source, that has been proven many times. It stays bad and unreliable despite no other good sources are available.

 

[HardReset]

Yeah, Nvidia has taken direct attempts to segment the market, while AMD has taken the lazy way out (just massively raised prices beyond reason, which means nobody buys the cards!)

It's a lot harder to move anywhere near as much volume as Nvidia when your initial msrp is that much higher!

Current cards are expensive because other reasons than AMD.

AMD does good work putting high enough MSRP. Most important reason for current situation is Nvidia putting way too low MSRP for 6000-series launch cards. So be thankful that AMD at least tries to resolve availability issues.

 

[defaultluser]

Current cards are expensive because other reasons than AMD.

AMD does good work putting high enough MSRP. Most important reason for current situation is Nvidia putting way too low MSRP for 6000-series launch cards. So be thankful that AMD at least tries to resolve availability issues.

if you have prices so high, then nobody can buy the (neither scalpers, who can only justifuy a 50% maximum markup, nor real people.) That means only miners can afford the things.

The broken mining cards by Nvidia at-least force scalpers to reduce the prices they can charge for the things. When combined with seasonal falls in mining demand (like NOW, ) could mean several months of MSRP-priced Nvidia cards before AMD ever gets around to these price cuts.

When the AMD pries already start that high, then only buyers will be ETH miners buying direct (and thanks to falling Crypto prices, those sales have dried-up for AMD and left shelves full of stock)!

I mean, just loookl at this: multiple Microccenter stores with at least fifty a AMD video card just sitting on shelves (just a few selection, but arfoungd 3/4 of stores show the pattern)

\https://www.microcenter.com/category/4294966937/video-cards?storeid=065

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Graphics Cards : Micro Center

Microcenter.com has the best deals on the latest Nvidia Graphics Cards & AMD Graphics Cards and more available at your local Micro Center Computer Store!

www.microcenter.com

Now notice that the prices of these cards havn't falllen in the last two weeks (because those are offical MSRP), while the availaibility of GDDR5 cardds from Nvidia (both GT 1030 and GTX 1050 Ti) has already massively-improved.

We will see Turing cards show- up within a month ofr two, at 50% markup, while AMD will continue holding things back (at 2x launch msrp)

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Nobody claims steam is perfect, but do you have a better source? Do you have ANY source? Instead of trying to be sarcastic about people giving you heat for being a massive whiner, why not find some better sources to measure GPU ownership? I'm sure people are interested in a better source.

No one said a good source was available, but when people come around and say there are no AMD cards out there because Steam said so....that's just stupid.

No one knows how well the Steam Survey is handled.
No one knows how much info Steam actually shares.
No one knows anything other than what Steam shows.

Stupid "news" stories come out from game and tech sites that seem to think Steam is a live and die by source when no one has any idea if the info is reliable.

A few recent examples of news stories out there using Steam provided info:
Windows 7 gains users
Intel regains CPU market share
Cyberpunk 2077 user base down based on Steam

You need to question the validity of these stories and why they're not asking proper questions or pointing out glaring issues, such as:
Why are Win 7 users up?
Why does it look like Intel GPU market share is up?
Why a single player game hasn't retained max user base it had at launch?

No logical questions were asked by the writers. Just half-as$ed info was put up in the stories and people ran with it.

A lot of places don't follow the who/what/when/where/why/how method of writing anymore. Just find some info, say it's true and write about it without doing any leg work.

So, you're more than welcome to derive your conclusions based on a survey handled by Steam, but without any kind of data points provided to the population on how the survey is handled means it's not a reliable source of info to go by. Using Steam as a method to say that AMD GPUs don't show up on Steam survey means no one uses them is just stupid.

 

[HardReset]

if you have prices so high, then nobody can buy the (neither scalpers, who can only justifuy a 50% maximum markup, nor real people.) That means only miners can afford the things.

The broken mining cards by Nvidia at-least force scalpers to reduce the prices they can charge for the things. When combined with seasonal falls in mining demand (like NOW, ) could mean several months of MSRP-priced Nvidia cards before AMD ever gets around to these price cuts.

When the AMD pries already start that high, then only buyers will be ETH miners buying direct(and thanks to falling Crypto prices, those sales have dried-up for AMD and left shelves full of stock)!

Nvidia started this whole thing pricing 3000-series way too low. Good chance for both scalpers and miners.

Like I said, AMD has almost nothing to do with high prices. Stores keep prices high, not AMD. Your theory is just wrong.

I mean, just loookl at this: multiple Microccenter stores with at least fifty a AMD video card just sitting on shelves (just a few selection, but arfoungd 3/4 of stores show the pattern)

Now notice that the prices of these cards havn't falllen in the last two weeks (because those are offical MSRP), while the availaibility of GDDR5 cardds from Nvidia (both GT 1030 and GTX 1050 Ti) has already massively-improved.

We will see Turing cards show- up within a month ofr two, at 50% markup, while AMD will continue holding things back (at 2x launch msrp)

And? Microcenter prices AMD cards too high. It's not AMD that determine prices but Microcenter. Blame Microcenter for that, not AMD. Unless you can prove AMD charges retailers around two times MSRP, you're blaming wrong.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Nvidia started this whole thing pricing 3000-series way too low. Good chance for both scalpers and miners.

Like I said, AMD has almost nothing to do with high prices. Stores keep prices high, not AMD. Your theory is just wrong.


And? Microcenter prices AMD cards too high. It's not AMD that determine prices but Microcenter. Blame Microcenter for that, not AMD. Unless you can prove AMD charges retailers around two times MSRP, you're blaming wrong.

It's not just retailers keeping prices artificially inflated.

Look at the price for the 1660 Super on Zotac's ebay site - $499.99! Holy crap. Last week the same card was priced $529.99 on their ebay site

A card that's 50% slower than a RTX 3060 and selling for the same amount. Everyone knows that the 1660 Super isn't worth $500, but even AIB are trying to pawn this overpriced card off on someone just dumb enough to think this is all they can get their hands on so they'll spend that $500 on a card that should be priced around $150 based on its performance and age (the card is almost 2 years old now).

The overpricing is coming from every direction. It now comes down to how stupid or how desperate a person is. Hopefully most folks can hold off for a bit and find newer gen cards closer to MSRP.

 

[punctualturn]

Nvidia started this whole thing pricing 3000-series way too low

I seem to recall that they actually bumped the MSRP of the RTX2K series to some really ridiculous levels because they knew that AMD didnt had anything to compete with them.

And talking about that, that was really weird how they knew that AMD wasnt going to have a good GPU for pretty much a whole year.

 

[Dimitrios]

I haven't seen a Steam Survey for 6+ years. Last one that came up on my gaming system was just after I got a 980Ti.

My brother hasn't seen a Steam Survey since he purchased a 5700XT 2 years ago.

I know two guys with a 6800 and 6800XT, they haven't seen a survey. I have a few guys I game with on the weekends, two of them have new systems with 3080s and they haven't seen any survey, they've had the systems for 6+ months now.

But, I guess the Steam Survey is a great way to find information based on user hardware out there, according to people.

Same here, been about 5-6 years since STEAM surveyed me. Mind you I went through like 3-4 Video cards in that time frame.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

I put my credit card in the freezer, next to the frozen OJ. I'm going to wait this one out a bit more. I'm looking forward to a reasonable price for a reasonable card.

 

[quadibloc]

Where I live, a major local computer store has the other AMD video cards in stock at MSRP on a continuous basis. Every now and then, they get some Nvidia cards that sell out the morning they're put on the shelves, on the other hand.
So AMD seems to be past the shortage, but this is not yet the case for Nvidia.

 

[Avro Arrow]

What I mean is that they could say "We actually never promised there will be lots of stock to go around, that was just a rumor"

My point is that AMD still wants people to hold on hopes there will be lots of stock at launch, but instead of committing to it they just pass it around to a rumor website so they can still get the same excitement from people but without actually committing and then failing to deliver.

My suspicion is almost always than any accurate rumors that run fairly close to release dates (couple months like this case) it's actually not a rumor at all and just the company's marketing team trying to get some interest in their upcoming launches while also being able to make outrageous promises the actual engineers (Or in this case, board partners and forge) can't possibly deliver on. It still gets you talking about an upcoming product under manipulative, false pretense of "leaked info"

I understand what you said but this wasn't a rumour. I was having trouble finding what I was referring to but I finally did:
"In a recent tweet, a VR developer called Andre Elijah expressed his disappointment that he was unable to acquire an Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics card. Within this tweet, Andre bet $10 that AMD's RDNA 2 series of graphics cards would 'be a paper launch too.' In response, AMD's Frank Azor said this: 'I look forward to taking your $10'"
Source: overclock3d.net

Frank Azor is Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions at AMD. If HE says something, it can no longer be considered "Just a rumour" because someone like him would be "in the know" when it comes to Radeon products. He single-handedly destroyed their plausible deniability with that tweet. AMD couldn't say "Oh it was just a rumour" when one of their high-level managers said the exact opposite. I was just pointing out that AMD didn't do that for the RDNA2 launch, they just lied through their teeth and that really pissed me off. That's what I was trying to convey. I wasn't disagreeing with you because in general, unless you know who to take your info from, they could easily "leak" a bunch of misinformation.

I personally believe that as long as the rumour source that you're getting your info from has been reliable in the past, you should be ok.

I would personally recommend RedGamingTech, GamerMeld, Moore's Law is Dead, I'm a Mac or Not an Apple Fan because even with "plausible deniability", if their sources lie to them, they'll stop using those sources.

As good as they are though, I would definitely recommend AdoredTV above all the others. Jim's the best investigative tech journalist that I've seen since Charlie Demerjian. It appeared that he had quit and was gone for a good six months or so which really sucked. He did come back though and it sure was great to hear that familiar Scotsman's brogue say "Alright guys, how's it goin'" again after so long.

I started watching him a few months before the release of Zen and I've been blown away by his predictions and market analysis in every video that he has ever made. When he makes a statement about something, I don't consider it to be a rumour. If he says something, you don't have to take it with a grain of salt because he never speculates. If he's not 100% sure, he won't say anything at all.

He was actually the first to "leak" that EPYC Genoa would have up to 128 cores when everyone else said no more than 64 and some actually argued with him about it.

However, just as I'd always previously seen when another expert disagreed with him, Jim was right, they were wrong and life went on as usual.

 

[Dimitriid]

@Avro Arrow: Oh ok, yes I do know the incident you're referencing with AMD basically "misjudging" but more likely flat out lying about availability for the 6000 series.

It's just that this time around I haven't seen official claims for the 6600 availability and only this rumor so it makes me think they learned the wrong lesson: lie about availability, just don't do it *directly* so it cannot be pointed out to any AMD employee in any kind of official capacity.

Hope that explains it

 

[Avro Arrow]

Current cards are expensive because other reasons than AMD.

AMD does good work putting high enough MSRP. Most important reason for current situation is Nvidia putting way too low MSRP for 6000-series launch cards. So be thankful that AMD at least tries to resolve availability issues.

I agree with you to a point. Having the MSRP too low like nVidia did really does encourage scalpers. However, it wouldn't have mattered either way what with the perfect storm of miners combined with the silicon shortage being involved. If supply wasn't so limited, there would be no scalpers regardless. I hope that AMD's higher MSRP on the RX 6600-series cards gives the scalpers pause.

Nvidia started this whole thing pricing 3000-series way too low. Good chance for both scalpers and miners.

Like I said, AMD has almost nothing to do with high prices. Stores keep prices high, not AMD. Your theory is just wrong.


And? Microcenter prices AMD cards too high. It's not AMD that determine prices but Microcenter. Blame Microcenter for that, not AMD. Unless you can prove AMD charges retailers around two times MSRP, you're blaming wrong.

Agreed. The street price of tech is determined by the wholesalers and retailers, not the manufacturers. We saw this exact same phenomenon back in 2017 when an RX 580 cost around $550USD because Polaris was apparently spectacular at mining due to its great power-efficiency. I figure that's how I was able to get an R9 Fury for so cheap (~$325USD). They were fast as hell (definitely faster than the RX 580) but boy, did they ever love to guzzle the juice! That made them quite unsuitable for mining. Maybe that's the key, stop making the cards so damn power-efficient!

It's not just retailers keeping prices artificially inflated.

Look at the price for the 1660 Super on Zotac's ebay site - $499.99! Holy crap. Last week the same card was priced $529.99 on their ebay site

We're talking about AMD here though and Zotac doesn't make Radeon cards. Even if we include the nVidia side though, just because Zotac is charging an arm and a leg doesn't mean that nVidia charged them more than regular price for their silicon. Maybe Zotac just got greedy. Also, using their eBay seller isn't the best example because MSi's eBay seller was caught scalping cards last year, remember?

Now if another board partner that has an impeccable track record was doing the same thing, like EVGA for instance, THEN we could look at nVidia. Since we're talking about AMD here, we'd have to look at XFX or Sapphire (assuming that they sell direct) because those are to AMD what Zotac and EVGA are to nVidia.

In any case, the only thing that increases the profits for the chipmakers is sales volume. Neither AMD nor nVidia (or Intel for that matter) get more money if a retailer triples the price of a product because the wholesale price had been set long before the retailer received their inventory.

That's just the truth of the matter.

 

[Avro Arrow]

@Avro Arrow: Oh ok, yes I do know the incident you're referencing with AMD basically "misjudging" but more likely flat out lying about availability for the 6000 series.

It's just that this time around I haven't seen official claims for the 6600 availability and only this rumor so it makes me think they learned the wrong lesson: lie about availability, just don't do it *directly* so it cannot be pointed out to any AMD employee in any kind of official capacity.

Hope that explains it

It most definitely does. I just hope that the lesson that they've learnt is the common sense mantra of "Under-promise and over-deliver" because that's what they had been doing up to that point. AMD had exceeded every claim that they'd made about the performance of Ryzen generations and the performance difference between RDNA1 and RDNA2.

They were doing so well and then Frank Azor had to go and shoot his mouth off. I'd like to think that maybe he wasn't anticipating the looming mining craze because around time, it was only a rumour and nVidia was blamed for low inventory with the idea that the yields on Samsung's silicon just wasn't up to snuff. Then we found out that the mining craze was far more than just a rumour. However, I have no evidence to support this except that AMD seemed to have smartened up when it came to their marketing-speak over the last five years and everyone was praising them for it.

Going back to doing what one's customers have been very vocal about hating just doesn't seem to be congruent with the AMD we now know with Lisa Su leading the way. It's more like the AMD we knew during the FX age.