AIB RX 6800/6800 XT Launch A Mess, Almost No Stock

[Random_Person1234]

Summary

Today is the release date for the RX 6800 and 6800 XT AIB cards, there was almost no stock. The cards sold out instantly on Newegg. Coupled with this, there were also very few reviews. According to the videocardz.com review roundup, there were only 18 reviews for various AIB 6800/6800 XT cards (the AIB RTX 3080s had approx. 60-70 reviews).

 

Quotes

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I'm not the only reviewer without a card it seems, as it is more common than I thought with a trickle of cards making it into the hands of reviewers.

But it's not only the lack of cards for reviewers, it's the fact that they are not available to buy anywhere right now -- and there's an even bigger reason for that: some reviewers aren't even being provided with final pricing for the custom Radeon RX 6800 XT. It's hard to write your final thoughts and recommendations without pricing.

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Hi there

We shall be launching cards around 2pm to browse, but we won't be taking any orders online or via the phones sorry.

Reasoning is simply due to lack of stock and were unwilling to allow a crazy backorder situation to build up on a product that we see very little stock incoming on this year.

Any stock that does come in, we shall give a heads up on the forum before making available to order, but that is very unlikely to happen this week, more like next week.

So in short today all you can do is window shop.

Sorry guys but we get so much flak when you guys are waiting on your orders and when I have gone and ordered 50,000 units and might struggle to see a few hundred cards this side of Christmas, it is ourselves who get the blame and the negative reviews, but as we do not manufacturer the product it is out of our control and considering that we can literally take 1000+ orders per minute on these new GPU launches which then causes havoc we have to take measures to stop this happening.

As such the product won't be available to order from OcUK today, when we feel we have adequate stock to make product available to order we shall do so and announce that date/time only on our forum.

My thoughts

Between Microcenter and Overclockers UK saying they have zero stock on launch day, and Newegg selling out instantly, this quite literally may have been a paper launch. I did not think that AMD could possibly have a worse launch than the RTX 3000 series. Also, the prices are pretty high in my opinion. The cheapest AIB RX 6800XT with a price listed on Newegg, the Sapphire Nitro+, is $70 more than the RTX 3080 MSRP for about the same performance, and less features. There's also the Asus TUF RX 6800 (non-XT), which looks like a standard AIB card, except that it's $30 more than the RX 6800XT MSRP.

 

Sources

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/76444/custom-radeon-rx-6800-launch-big-mess-way-less-units-than-ampere/index.html

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34266351

https://twitter.com/microcenter/status/1331597737779978243

 

[SFFDesigns]

Honestly, the 3080 launch was quite a bit better. Two days after the 3080 launch, Zotac had a restock big enough that I got a card in my cart. That's not to say it was a good launch at all, but still much better than no cards lol. The pricing of these AIB cards is also pretty bad, I wouldn't pay this much for "trading-blows" with 3080 performance but with worse raytracing. I'm going to go back to what Linus said in the Radeon VII review. AMD needs to beat Nvidia's pricing, not match it (this is worse than matching tbh). If these cards were around $675 or so, they would be a good value imo. 

[poochyena]

Its the first big GPU upgrade in years, everyone is at home and need a new PC upgrade, holiday shopping, and cryptocurrencies are seeing a big rise. Its no surprise they are all selling out quick

[Guest]

I haven't seen a single card in Germany. It doesn't seem like anyone even has websites up for them. For the 30-series every website listed them as "out of stock", but I can't find any AMD card that even went up for sale? They don't seem to exist at all.

[Random_Person1234]

4 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Its the first big GPU upgrade in years, everyone is at home and need a new PC upgrade, holiday shopping, and cryptocurrencies are seeing a big rise. Its no surprise they are all selling out quick

For the RX 6800XT AIB cards, I think it's that they don't have any cards, not that they're selling out quickly.

[Blademaster91]

Both Nvidia and AMD launches have been really bad, it's not like you can get a card from either brand.

A lot of people are stuck at home, the RTX 2000 series wasn't much of an upgrade for anyone with a GTX 1000 series card, and AMD hasn't competed on the high end in a long time. The AMD launch could be worse because they're also making GPU's for the PS5, Xbox series S & series X.

[spartaman64]

its a big disappointment but i guess we still have to see what their restocking rate is

[StDragon]

Blame COVID-19. Not a whole lot you can do staying home. 2021 will be a year a whole lot of people jump into PC building. Question is, will there be good gaming content to make it worthwhile of an experience? There are a lot of titles in production behind schedule for obvious reasons.

[williamcll]

Asus DID say the supplies are going to be in trouble.

[LordVetinari]

CCL and Scan also had 0 stock for launch day. I imagine Box and other retailers are the same. 

 

It's not that supply was poor, it's non existent. 

 

You can't lay that entirely at covids door.

[porina]

19 minutes ago, LordVetinari said:

CCL and Scan also had 0 stock for launch day. I imagine Box and other retailers are the same. 

 

It's not that supply was poor, it's non existent. 

 

You can't lay that entirely at covids door.

I've been looking at Scan throughout the day, but not at the moment of launch. They don't even list 6800 series on the filter now. They are still updating their 30 series pre-order backlog and stock movement numbers.

 

It would be interesting if they or any other major seller would list units shipped of Ampere and Navi cards so we can cut through the BS and see what is actually getting out there.

[LordVetinari]

18 minutes ago, porina said:

I've been looking at Scan throughout the day, but not at the moment of launch. They don't even list 6800 series on the filter now. They are still updating their 30 series pre-order backlog and stock movement numbers.

 

It would be interesting if they or any other major seller would list units shipped of Ampere and Navi cards so we can cut through the BS and see what is actually getting out there.

Overclockers on their forum sort of gives some obviscated numbers weekly. It's roughly equivalent to what Scan are getting although potentially across different models.

 

Sad thing is I can see Nvidia turning this around buy the end of the year and maybe clearing the pre order backlog, but AMD have stuffed this so badly that I don't think they will recover until next year. 

 

The only thing in their favour right now is that lots of retailers learnt and didn't accept pre orders for the cards that they will have to honour/work through when stock actually lands.

[RejZoR]

I'm suspecting I won't be able to buy Ryzen 5000 or Radeon RX 6000 even in spring 2021... If this will be dragging any longer I won't even upgrade at all.

[WereCat]

The cards in stores are already reserved for friends and family by employees so that's why there is "no stock". 

[illegalwater]

Wow, I can't believe they managed to have even less stock than Nvidia, I thought they'd at least match them. What an embarrassment.

 

Related: AMD needs to clean house at Radeon's marketing department already. "It won't be a paper lunch :)" is on the same level as "Poor Volta", these clowns in the marketing department are masters at owning themselves. Their head of marketing, Frank Azor, going on Twitter and bragging about getting an 6800 XT on launch day was profoundly tone deaf too.

[porina]

23 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

I'm suspecting I won't be able to buy Ryzen 5000 or Radeon RX 6000 even in spring 2021... If this will be dragging any longer I won't even upgrade at all.

I'm sure you can get a Ryzen 5000 and Radeon 6000... just before the Ryzen 6000 and Radeon 7000 launch, and the cycle repeats once again...

 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Gonna slum it with my last gen recently purchased used 2080Ti for now... I've pretty much given up any expectation of getting what I want of latest gen this year.

[RejZoR]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I'm sure you can get a Ryzen 5000 and Radeon 6000... just before the Ryzen 6000 and Radeon 7000 launch, and the cycle repeats once again...

 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Gonna slum it with my last gen recently purchased used 2080Ti for now... I've pretty much given up any expectation of getting what I want of latest gen this year.

Which is why I'd then not upgrade at all because that would be stupid, buying last gen just before next gen comes out.

[ne0tic]

The RTX 3080 launch in Sweden was so much better than this and even that were bad... 

[Deli]

3 hours ago, Blademaster91 said:

Both Nvidia and AMD launches have been really bad, it's not like you can get a card from either brand.

A lot of people are stuck at home, the RTX 2000 series wasn't much of an upgrade for anyone with a GTX 1000 series card, and AMD hasn't competed on the high end in a long time. The AMD launch could be worse because they're also making GPU's for the PS5, Xbox series S & series X.

It isn't like AMD find out they have to launch PS5, Xbox and RX6000 two weeks ago. They know this months ago. Bad planning is inexcusable.

[Spotty]

That's disappointing to see. Nvidia's low stock levels handed AMD a great opportunity to steal some of Nvidia's customers away but seems like AMD fumbled. AMD already did the hard work of designing a competitive product all they needed to do was get stock on shelves. 

 

If this is how poor stock levels of the 6800/6800XT are then there's really not much hope for the upcoming 6900XT launch. 

 

It's now a race to see who can get stock on shelves first; Nvidia with Samsung's supposedly poor 8nm yields or AMD who is stuck pumping out silicon for the consoles to meet their demand. I can see Nvidia working things out in the next few months, Samsung improving yields, maybe even releasing a Super variant of cards that are a cut down version of the bigger chips which they can get better yields of to help supply. The problem I see for AMD is I don't see the demand for the consoles dropping at all over the next few months and I'm not sure what moves AMD can pull here to get product on shelves.

 

Hopefully at least one of them can get stock on shelves soon. People have computers to build.

[Arika]

Give the man his money, Frank.

 

 

I would say it makes AMD look worse given he was saying:

 

 

what did you learn from and adapt from?

[-rascal-]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

I'm suspecting I won't be able to buy Ryzen 5000 or Radeon RX 6000 even in spring 2021... If this will be dragging any longer I won't even upgrade at all.

 

I was surprised, but a friend of mine (local to me)  was able to a hold of a Ryzen 5800X on launch day.

Apparently, he just called MemoryExpress the day before (and reserved one?), and picked it up at the local store the next morning.

Already swapped, and running in his water cooled system... *shrugs*

[Deli]

18 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

 

I was surprised, but a friend of mine (local to me)  was able to a hold of a Ryzen 6800X on launch day.

Apparently, he just called MemoryExpress the day before (and reserved one?), and picked it up at the local store the next morning.

Already swapped, and running in his water cooled system... *shrugs*

It seems most of Europe gets zero stock since 18th Nov launch day. Shops here never have any 6800XT/6800 listed for pre-order. Your friend is a lucky guy.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, ne0tic said:

The RTX 3080 launch in Sweden was so much better than this and even that were bad... 

From what I've heard, webbhallen was the only store that got any cards whatsoever, and that stock was extremely limited too. 

 

inet flat out came out and said that the MSRP AMD set was lower than the bulk price from a distributor too. So if a Swedish retailer wants to sell the cards at the MSRP they will literally lose money. 

That might not apply to the US but it probably applies to other countries as well. So my guess is that AMD set the MSRP very low and their own prices very high, not leaving a whole lot of margins to the others in the supply chain. 

[tim0901]

9 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

flat out came out and said that the MSRP AMD set was lower than the bulk price from a distributor too. So if a Swedish retailer wants to sell the cards at the MSRP they will literally lose money.

Not doubting you but can you supply a source for this? That's just insane...