Fake MSRP: AMD's Radeon 9070 XT $600 Launch Price Was a Fantasy

[Trunks0]

Have we forgotten what MSRP stands for? Or at least what the S stands for? Unless the price is stipulated in the AIB contract they're free to set whatever price they want.

And as long as there's so many suckers willing to pay the inflated prices there's no reason at all for the AIBs to pay any attention to what the MSRP is. Why would you charge $500 for a product when it'll sell out at $750, $1000, or even $1500? This is exactly why people keep scalping the cards as well.

Have a little self control. Stop buying overpriced cards. If they can't sell at the inflated prices they'll drop the prices until the cards sell, or they'll have no sales until they do.

Same applies to the retailers. Both are elements that AMD can't really control directly, and attempting to do so would be illegal (price fixing). AMD could go back to what ATi used to do, make a self branded card and sell it directly on the website... but even then it doesn't entirely help. You can see how that has generally worked out for nVidia's self branded and sold cards.

 

[Axeia]

They are not good for AI, so they are pretty much only for gaming.

They don't run CUDA based stuff, but there's some AI stuff that that runs great on AMD hardware. Deepseek for one iirc.

 

[shabzbrah123]

Yo tim just a quick note, probably best practice to word "a review of the 9070xt benchmarking 50+ games" more deliberately. Probably a bit of a conflict of interest to frame it as like, just some review that exists on the internet, and not one done by your colleague

Dont really mean any derision or anything by it just genuine constructive feedback . Very appreciative of you and steve's work since getting back into PC gaming )

 

[amghwk]

Latest games are not worth playing anyway, except for new gen kids who always want something new, nevermind the games are me-too sequels or another remake or another 3rd person action or another pubg clone - basically they suck.

Why spend so much for bloated graphics card prices and play so-so, meh games?

For the rest of us, let's just enjoy the times when the games were genuinely good, with our current graphics cards.

 

[godrilla]

Yo they are practically giving away arrow lake

 

[XP Jay]

TL; DR: The article is more like a hit piece than actual journalism. Much like 5070Ti (which is spared the criticism), upon examination of actual real prices, AMD’s 9070XT pricing in North America is also around 10% over MSRP.

I would neither use Newegg nor Amazon for Canadian pricing on video cards.
I’m saying this because I can physically go out and get a CAD 949.00 9070XT at a Canada Computers or Best Buy store. Sure enough, I can also go out and pick up a CAD 1089.00 5070Ti as well.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Canada Computers had a pretty healthy supply of 9070XT cards selling at CAD 889 ($635.59 or 6% under MSRP) Those were, from what I observed, a second shipment sometime around mid March and a third one in April. We’ll see what the May prices will end up being but as far as I can tell Canada Computers will still have 9070XT cards selling for roughly around CAD 880.00. ($630 or 6-10% over MSRP)

Conversely, in the US Micro Center sells the cheapest 9070XT for $659.99 (10% over MSRP) and the cheapest 5070Ti for $824.99 (also 10% over MSRP)

With Nvidia finally waking up we can hopefully have some competition, as no one in their right mind will pick up the higher priced cards from both brands which will remain unsold on the shelves.

But what I wonder about is why the focus on 9070XT, especially one based on scalping, not real pricing. From what I can gather, both the 9070XT and the 5070Ti are available to the average gamer for roughly around 10% or less over MSRP, at least in North America.

So why the negative focus on AMD only? Nvidia threatened to draw you over hot coals on the way to the court or something?

Yes Canada Computers and also Memory Express have 9070 XTs for less than $1000 Cdn. and are the goto for more Canadians. Newegg are ok but sometimes don't seem to care to compete on price. Best Buy is hit and miss with PC parts in stock on anything I find. NCIX is missed. Edit: Linus used to work at NCIX!

 

[PaladinNH]

You can always turn textures down from insane to high. You can't juice AMD cards with better RT or DLSS.

And after testing, KCD2 is only using 10GB, Experimental (highest) textures. DLSS4 Performance, decent FR (~90), no FG.

 

[AlDim000]

Why are you reporting Canadian prices by using an American online retailer which ships from American warehouses?
Also, you are making conclusions based on the highest available Sapphire Nitro+ 9070XT card at $1100 when there are Gigabyte OC Gaming cards readily available at $950 (~680 USD) at both Memory Express and Canada Computers stores.
This is total nonsense and shoddy journalism.

 

[AlDim000]

Checking pcpartpicker canada, your "facts" seem to be way off. Cheapest 9070xt is 999$, 5070 is 789.

You purchased your for 620 because amd offered rebates the first week to pretend that their MSRP is lower than it actually is.

This is false. There is stock readily available for the Gigabyte OC Gaming at $950 (and a couple of other cards in that general price range). Nobody cares what PCPartPicker shows, go check the retailers yourself lol.

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Yes, I didn't get into the whole AI thing, and the excess of cards I referred to happened a lot more often before crypto. Having said that, there is one more thing that the author mentions, and without realizing it, put his finger on a HUGE problem that the tech press created: DLSS, Multi frame gen, etc. If you'll note the author automatically gives Nvida a cushion of a higher price to make AMD look worse due to these "improvements". Nvida gives everyone slight core count upgrades and then plugs their exclusive software as the reason the cards are better. And with the press help, it worked great. At least AMD is trying to work out some actual new hardware instead of the smaller, faster, bigger same thing we've been doing a la Intel.

But software can make a difference. Multiframe is crap but upscaling has gotten good. AMD caught up on the software side this gen but unfortunately not on the implemented in games side.

Some press does fall over themselves to tout the latest "improvements" regardless of if they are useful or even work, but thankfully some of the bigger independent channels do not. Just look at the "previews" for 5060s which mostly are breathless hype fests, but then HW unboxed and Gamers Nexus are calling them out.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Techspot really needs to get off Nvidia's ****.