An AMD rep earned a round of laughter after making a small joke during a round table event when he commented about the current lack of inventory. AMD managed to hit the ball out of the park with its latest Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070XT GPU launch. It had previously said its focus for the RNDA 4-based GPUs would be to compete at the mid-level graphics card tier with the aim of producing lower-cost products and Team Red has definitely come out swinging with both fists. AMD’s Japan marketing manager Yoshiaki Sato joined board partner reps from ASRock, GIGABYTE, PowerColor, Sapphire, and voice actress Ms. Saki Suzuki at a spring product launch event in Japan’s popular Akihabara shopping district.
While AMD has absolutely received praise for its ability to get products to stores with the Radeon RX 9000 series launch, inventory has already begun to dry up. AMD’s board partners all shared similar concerns of being unable to produce more graphics cards to which Mr. Sato quipped, “AMD isn’t used to selling graphics cards…”, causing the room to erupt in laughter. Mr. Sato added on a positive note that “Radeon’s sales share in Japan has reached 45%, and we are at our peak now.”
Representatives from ASRock and ASUS kept things rolling with their own statements. Mr. Haraguchi (ASRock) replied that how AMD needs to aim higher for a 70% market share since it has typically been a minority in the consumer market, to which Mr. Ichikawa of ASUS added “We’ve never been the ruling party!” causing the room to once again burst out with laughter. While AMD is working towards producing more GPUs for its board partners an ongoing concern will be what prices the next batches arrive at.
To MSRP or not to MSRP?
MSRP has become a hot topic with the latest generation of graphics cards from AMD and NVIDIA. AMD has set an attractive $549 MSRP for its RX 9070 and then $599 for the flagship RX 9070XT. Both GPUs have been shown to compete very favorably with RTX 50 series GPUs that cost more. However, something both companies have had great difficulty in doing is producing enough GPUs at a low enough cost for board partners to offer graphics cards at MSRP. It has become a new norm for board partners to raise, or at least stop offering, products at MSRP not long after product launch, sometimes in as little as a week of release. Previously some partners claimed NVIDIA’s pricing recommendations were akin to “charity“.
Both companies have stated record high shipments, although AMD has better managed to visibly prove its claims with pallets of products being seen at various storefronts. Those looking for the lowest-priced RTX 50 series cards have slim to zero options as they try to scrounge for a Founders Edition model or one of the very few MSRP partner models and while there appear to be more Radeon 9000 series cards at the manufacturer’s recommended price those too have disappeared. AMD has also chosen not to release its “Made by AMD”, in-house graphics cards this time around. One theory that’s been suggested is that neither GPU manufacturer can produce their GPUs at low enough costs to support high enough profit margins. Regardless, inventory remains scarce at MSRP levels and the concept of value continues to reach mythical proportions.