AMD’s RDNA 3 graphics cards will be available next month, but if the grapevine is correct, they’ll be hard to find online or in stores.
As tagged by @harukaze5719 on Twitter, Quasarzone (QSZ) has dropped some information on stock levels for the RX 7900 models, and we’ll naturally need to spruce this up with a couple of pinches.
Additionally, they also shared their RX 7900-series inventory. Early stocks are extremely low, according to QSZ.We can see the end of the AIB model for Q4.3/nDecember 2, 2022
Worryingly, Quasarzone predicts that initial inventory levels for the RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX will be “extremely low,” and of course, using the word “extremely low” is worrisome.
It sounds like there will be very few units on the shelves, at least when the new RDNA 3 GPUs launch on December 13th.
There’s a twist here though, because as @harukaze5719 articulates, this likely refers to reference boards – built to AMD’s baseline specs – while more powerful custom boards from 3rd party card makers won’t be available until late December Will appear. Those (higher-performance) models may arrive at higher stock levels, however, but that’s just an educated guess from a Twitter leaker.
Of course, as we’ve already pointed out, this whole set of rumors needs to be treated with extreme caution.
Part of the reason we need to be cautious about this new rumor is that, in recent times, we’ve heard more positive noises that AMD will launch a large number of RDNA 3 graphics cards immediately.
So, for direct contradiction, in theory the red team is now looking at extremely Low inventory levels feel like a stretch. However, it’s possible that, as we mentioned above, the first few days, or possibly a week, of the RX 7900 XT and 7900 XTX GPUs being on the market may see scarce stock (scalpers undoubtedly have a field day and make things more bad) – but by the end of the year, there could be a substantial increase in stock (possibly with third-party custom RDNA 3 boards, as mentioned).
This fits with other speculation we’ve seen recently that custom RDNA 3 cards might not arrive until a few weeks after the reference board is released (in general, anyway).
But if there are much more third-party custom models than reference models, that in itself opens up another possibility. That said, according to another recent rumor, the custom work will be an expensive graphics card, and “significantly more expensive” than the reference board.
If true, it could mean we’re seeing a lot of inventory priced at much higher prices than AMD’s MSRP, which would deal another blow to gamers looking for new cutting-edge graphics cards — Nvidia’s RTX 4090 and 4080, GPUs are already there, very expensive. Even at Team Red’s recommended prices, the 7900 XT and XTX aren’t all that affordable, of course ($899 and $999 in the US).
In this case, we have to hope the rumormongers are wrong, but as always, only time will tell. Let’s hope we don’t want the rumored upcoming RTX 4070 Ti to have to come to the rescue in terms of pricing, because we don’t believe that’s going to happen either.
