Gamers aren't rushing to buy AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT despite better availability

[Roddybabes]

When you have a whole 2 3070tis to sell, it's not hard to surpass that number.

[HEADING=2]AMD’s Radeon RX 6500 XT is the Bestselling GPU in Germany[/HEADING]

AMD's Radeon RX 6500 XT is the Bestselling GPU in Germany | Hardware Times

AMD’s newly launched Radeon RX 6500 XT was panned by reviewers and enthusiasts alike. However, in today’s market, anything sells, as long as it’s available that is. We’re seeing a similar trend with the 6500 XT. The Week 3 sales figures from Mindfactory (Germany’s largest retailer) show that it...

www.hardwaretimes.com

The 'real world' 3070ti number was 190 units, so not a bad showing.

If you want to talk numbers, the 280 6500 XTs sold was 32.7% of all Radeon cards sold that week; this gives the 6500 XT mindshare - which, after all, is what AMD desperately needs after the beatdown it got from the media. If AMD can't gain sufficient mindshare at the top of the graphics card market, why not start at the entry level with available cards and build the mindshare from there.

When one considers the 6500 XT die size:107mm2, that would be 500 chips per 300mm wafer at 90% yield. If 500 wafer starts per month is assumed, that would be 250K chips. If it takes 3 months to manufacture, that's 2.25M in the first year and 3M thereafter, which would certainly feed the supply-side beast. If a 2022 15M unit volume is assumed, that 3M would be 20% of that amount and is around what AMD's discrete graphics market share is today. So not a bad strategy to not only gain mindshare, but increase marketshare as well.

When we look at the 3050 and its humongous 276mm2 die, its manufacturing numbers for the same wafer starts and yield would be clearly less: 936K for the first year and 1.248M thereafter - so AMD's volume for its entry level card would be 2.4x greater.

Because the 3050 die is so big, does anybody seriously believe that Nvidia would prioritize production to compete with AMD? I really don't think so as the graphics giant could make far more profit by selling those dies for higher margin cards, which is Nvidia's typical playbook. So, this explains in today's market why the 3050 is sold out and the 6050 XT isn't.

Mindfactory's week 3 sales were also of interest from a marketshare and revenue standpoint:
AMD: 855 units sold, 44.53%, ASP: 715.84 (Euro)
Nvidia: 1065, 55.47%, ASP: 885.82

If AMD's Mindfactory market share was replicated for the world, its discrete graphics yearly revenue would be - this assumes a 15M unit volume: $5.33B, which would be 55% of its 2020 full year revenue. Let's not forget that Ryzen sales first took off at Mindfactory first before the rest of the world followed; so, it will be intersting to see if the same thing happens to Radeon.

If AMD's plan is to flood the market with lower cost entry-level graphics cards that enthusiasts embrace and adopt, AMD would have put in motion the mindshare plan that ultimately resurrects Radeon for future product glory.

 

[Angelscry]

Expensive price for a unworthy performance. Stay away from these cards.

 

[Watzupken]

The RX 6500 XT has been available since its launch date, but none of the models is close to MSRP. The cheapest model I can find in my location is the Sapphire Pulse which is round about 265 USD. While I can say that AMD finally addressed the issue of low or no GPUs at an affordable price for sale, but to me, the RX 6500 XT is really like throwing a bone to gamers. The fact that they stripped almost every meaningful feature on it, cut the VRAM to 4GB and with gaming performance barely better than the previous gen, is a very poor product. They are probably better off just rebranding the RX 5500 XT as the RX 6500 XT, which should see better feature and more consistent performance.

 

[TechZel]

The RX 6500 XT has been available since its launch date, but none of the models is close to MSRP. The cheapest model I can find in my location is the Sapphire Pulse which is round about 265 USD. While I can say that AMD finally addressed the issue of low or no GPUs at an affordable price for sale, but to me, the RX 6500 XT is really like throwing a bone to gamers. The fact that they stripped almost every meaningful feature on it, cut the VRAM to 4GB and with gaming performance barely better than the previous gen, is a very poor product. They are probably better off just rebranding the RX 5500 XT as the RX 6500 XT, which should see better feature and more consistent performance.

This is the part people seem to be misunderstanding. They didn't "strip down" the die of features. It's an entry level laptop GPU meant to supplement an APU which already has encoding, so it never had that feature in the first place, it never needed much PCIe bandwidth and it certainly didn't need 4 video outputs. AMD doesn't have a DGPU die designed for this segment (but neither does Nvidia) and with the time and cost involved in designing a new die it would be totally pointless for them to have done so at this point. Intel's Arc would definitely be out by the time they got it into production, and more than likely so would Lovelace and RDNA 3. As for creating the 6500 XT as a refresh of the 5500 XT (or even 5600 XT) - in order to do that without cannibilising wafers from other (more profitable) products it would have required booking even more capacity on TSMC's 7nm process something like two years in advance. If AMD had that kind of crystal ball they would have pre-purchased every single 7nm wafer TSMC could give them for the entire pandemic period.

Basically this is the only possible die that they could use to create a budget DGPU SKU and that means they had to accept the weaknesses that come with it.

But people seem to like to continue to play pretend that Nvidia was actually ever going to produce their 276mm^2 + 8GB card for a $250 MSRP in 2022 (or at all really, because as if they would sacrifice 3060 production for it) and use that to beat AMD around the head. Which is exactly what Nvidia wanted.

 

[NightAntilli]

Hopefully this is a lesson Lisa and AMD take to heart: Play stupid games, win stupid prices.

This is for AMD. nVidia gets the "play stupid games, win the best prices" result.

I am glad that AMD got kicked in the nuts for this one. Really stupid idea!

We'll see how hard they get kicked in the nuts in reality, meaning, how many sales of this card will be generated.

 

[HardReset]

If AMD had that kind of crystal ball they would have pre-purchased every single 7nm wafer TSMC could give them for the entire pandemic period.

Um, they basically did it. GlobalFoundries, that was supposed to deliver AMD most of AMD's 7nm production, cancelled process 27. August 2018. Even before that AMD secured 7nm capacity for Epyc chiplet and Radeon VII cards (everything AMD was allowed to buy). After that AMD bought everything available.

Problem: there is not enough 7nm capacity available.

 

[Roddybabes]

Mindfactory week 4 sale figure

Nvidia Units 1815 = 70.35%
Radeon Units 765 = 29.65%

Radeon Top 5 Selling Brand Line
RX 6600 = 170 units
RX 6500XT = 170 units.
RX 6900XT = 120 units.
RX 6700XT = 100 units.
RX 6600XT = 100 units.

Nvidia Top 5 Selling Brand Lines
RTX 3060 = 410 units.
RTX 3060 TI = 290 units.
RTX 3070 = 265 units.
RTX 3070 TI = 220 units.
GTX 1650 = 130 units.

Thanks for that data update.

We will need a few more weeks of data or even months before we know what the real trends are. It's going to be real interesting!

 

[Homerlovesbeer]

The card is a waste of silicon that can barely hang with the older entry-level cards it would replace, so its not surprising.

Yep it's a piece of garbage.

 

[jdwii]

The RX 6500 XT has been available since its launch date, but none of the models is close to MSRP. The cheapest model I can find in my location is the Sapphire Pulse which is round about 265 USD. While I can say that AMD finally addressed the issue of low or no GPUs at an affordable price for sale, but to me, the RX 6500 XT is really like throwing a bone to gamers. The fact that they stripped almost every meaningful feature on it, cut the VRAM to 4GB and with gaming performance barely better than the previous gen, is a very poor product. They are probably better off just rebranding the RX 5500 XT as the RX 6500 XT, which should see better feature and more consistent performance.

That would have been better for us until we look at individual cost of components

They can't make a 5500XT for $200 in today's market I'm not defending the card I'm simply stating the facts

 

[Nobina]

People complained there were no GPUs in stock. AMD made sure to fix that problem.

I think I'd rather overpay for an RTX 3070 than pay $300 for what is another RX 570.

 

[Alfatawi Mendel]

Where I live - The 6500xt can be had for £210. The competitors are the inferior NV 1650. £210 - £240, and 1050ti...£200 - £240.
You can step up to the 1660 for £375 - ish, but that is a 6gb card

There's a lot of comments about "Waste of sand" etc. But if the 6500xt is a waste of sand - what does that make the Nvidia offerings?
The 6500xt performs at the top of its price-bracket, so whats not to like - in this crazy GPU market?
I think the tech press have got it wrong with the 6500xt...much like they did with the 6600xt

 

[HardReset]

Where I live - The 6500xt can be had for £210. The competitors are the inferior NV 1650. £210 - £240, and 1050ti...£200 - £240.
You can step up to the 1660 for £375 - ish, but that is a 6gb card

There's a lot of comments about "Waste of sand" etc. But if the 6500xt is a waste of sand - what does that make the Nvidia offerings?
The 6500xt performs at the top of its price-bracket, so whats not to like - in this crazy GPU market?
I think the tech press have got it wrong with the 6500xt...much like they did with the 6600xt

You should understand that most of those comments come from Nvidia fanboys or people that cannot see big picture.

Also worth to consider TS staff basically said this card should not have been released. Source https://www.techspot.com/community/...-core-ddr4-vs-ddr5.273372/page-2#post-1943326

 

[NightAntilli]

Where I live - The 6500xt can be had for £210. The competitors are the inferior NV 1650. £210 - £240, and 1050ti...£200 - £240.
You can step up to the 1660 for £375 - ish, but that is a 6gb card

There's a lot of comments about "Waste of sand" etc. But if the 6500xt is a waste of sand - what does that make the Nvidia offerings?
The 6500xt performs at the top of its price-bracket, so whats not to like - in this crazy GPU market?
I think the tech press have got it wrong with the 6500xt...much like they did with the 6600xt

AMD is judged based on its market price while nVidia is judged on its MSRP.

 

[Nobina]

Where I live - The 6500xt can be had for £210. The competitors are the inferior NV 1650. £210 - £240, and 1050ti...£200 - £240.
You can step up to the 1660 for £375 - ish, but that is a 6gb card

There's a lot of comments about "Waste of sand" etc. But if the 6500xt is a waste of sand - what does that make the Nvidia offerings?
The 6500xt performs at the top of its price-bracket, so whats not to like - in this crazy GPU market?
I think the tech press have got it wrong with the 6500xt...much like they did with the 6600xt

It depends on where you live. From your perspective, it makes sense to buy the RX 6500 XT due to the price but the price can vary. Where I live it's $470.

 

[ZedRM]

Both gamers and cryptocurrency miners hate AMD's latest budget card

Can't win them all. And the RX6500 is still better than all of the IGP offerings made by AMD & Intel. So there is that.

 

[TeddyBertrand]

The very existence of RTX3050 is to tell customers that 6500XT is not good enough. What a 3050 or 6500XT can do, is basically available with a 1060 or 1660, isn't it?

 

[manbearboar]

The 6500xt performs at the top of its price-bracket, so whats not to like - in this crazy GPU market?
I think the tech press have got it wrong with the 6500xt...much like they did with the 6600xt

Yeah, tech press went fully delusional with 6500.
You can't see the prices of 1650 and 1650S in 6500 review cause techspot inly decided to include used prices.

 

[itano]

For the most part, AMD cards - specifically the Red Devils - have sat on Microcenter's shelves, practically ignored since December 2020. I think everyone buying has gotten it in their minds that they want Nvidia cards - most likely because of the perceived superiority and the documented driver update regularity.

Most likely because we are stuck in green thanks to G-Sync
But thankfully DLSS is useful on some games.