AMD has tricked, backstabbed, and possibly bamboozled you...

Remember how we all complained about the $999 MSRP of the 2080 Ti? How if AMD competed, this would have never happened? We also complained about the $699 MSRP of the 2080. An 80-tier card with a $699 price tag was nothing short of outrageous, especially when the previous legendary 1080 Ti was a merely $749.

Enter the 6800XT. This card is meant to compete with the 3080, which is the replacement for the 2080 (not the 2080 Ti). Despite popular belief, its price is similar to its Turing counterpart.

The 6900XT at $999 will compete with...you guessed it, the 3080 Ti which has yet to come out. Not the 3090 with its outrageous 24GB of VRAM and equally outrageous price. The 3080 Ti will quite likely be pretty much even with the 3090 except with less VRAM (probably 20). What's the story there? Well, AMD sits in the exact same price brackets as NVIDIA

3080/6800XT = $699/$649

3080 Ti/6900XT = $999+/$999

But that's not it. The $649 MSRP of the 6800XT is nothing short of a lie. Only the reference model is at that price and AMD has an extremely limited quantity of them. You'll need to get an AIB. So far, we have the prices of two of them. Know what they are?

Sapphire Nitro+ for $770

Powercolor Red Devil for $800

XFX Speedster for $800 as well

Sapphire Nitro+ RGB for a whopping $830

Hardware Unboxed reported that Sapphire and Powercolor REFUSED to disclose the prices of their cards before their reviews went live, and for a good reason. Furthermore, these AIB's claim these are some of the lowest margins they've ever gotten and that they have little control over the pricing.

9:56

Ampere's launch was already pretty bad but somehow, AMD managed to **** up even worse. Their stocks are dreadful and they misled everyone with their prices.

The difference is, 3080's if you manage to find them hover around MSRP. AIB's are a bit more expensive (30-50$) not a ludicrous 120-150 dollars above MSRP.

In short, people championed AMD as the pro-consumer company who looks out for the little guy. Turns out they're just as greedy and profit-driven as NVIDIA. Who would have thought multi-billion corporations didn't give a shit about us and only cared about their profits?

The icing on the cake? The 6800XT is actually slower than the 3080 at ALL resolutions. 3DCenter.org has compiled the data of 17 review sites (that include the likes of Eurogamer, Guru3D, and Techpowerup). Here is the final result:

The 6800XT is not only slower than the 3080 at all resolutions. It has much slower RT. Is a lot worse at productivity and has no features such as DLSS. It wouldn't look this bad if the card were actually cheaper, but it isn't. The $649 reference model doesn't exist. You'll have to settle for AIB models that sell for WAY above the claimed $649.

But hey, at least it has 6GB of extra VRAM, so there's that.

PC gaming is a rip off currently, both companies can go and **** themselves.

I've skipped the 2000 cards and will likely skip over the 3000 cards as well. Ray tracing doesn't seem that impressive. At least not for the time being.

@Random_Matt: PC gaming rips you off with prices for hardware while console gaming rips you off with prices for software.

What an amzing state of the gaming industry.

I don't know why you're surprised. I saw this coming after their CPU launch. $300 for a 6 core CPU? F*** off. And good luck getting it at that price anyway.

I was actually considering a 6800 XT when I saw the MSRP but having seen benchmarks specially with RT and the 'real' price of it I won't be going anywhere near AMD for GPU's.

Seems getting hands on one will be tough so I don't think you'll be paying MSRP will be an option if you have to go through third party sellers who will probably flip these like PS5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles. I wouldn't be throwing a temper tantrum out of them being hard to find. That's a large assertion to back up claiming AMD is as awful as Nvidia, as those are large shoes to fill.

Nvidia tried to wedge their influence in game development through their GameWorks support, in an effort to get developers to use APIs to tank graphics performance on AMD hardware. I am not aware of AMD resorting to such measures.

Nvidia also leveraged their role in supplying hardware for OG Xbox and PS3 to extort both MS and Sony by not dropping price of their supplies during the console lifespan and not surprised neither company wanted anything to do with Nvidia in future consoles. Nintendo hasn't been able to drop Switch prices. I guess one could argue they don't need to on account of it selling so well. But I don't imagine they developed the Switch Mini because they though consumers wanted it as much as they probably had problems bring price down **cough** Nvidia **cough**. It was rumored some months back the next Switch hardware upgrade will use AMD hardware instead, so we will see if that happens then I think it'll be quite telling how partnering with Nvidia was a big mistake for each of the big three.

uhh, the 3080 was selling for $4500 just a few weeks ago, I wonder what the price is now.

We're talking about AIB partner prices, not scalpers.

Alot of the PC hardware options are quite poor now. It is a truly truly awful time to try and build a good PC.

Thank god i managed to get my current PC working again. i have no urge to get new parts now.

AMD have certainly messed up the 6000 series launch. even suggesting that one should pay more for a 6800XT compared to a 3080 is laughable. its a good GPU but not that good.

but its kind of a moot point at the moment since anyone looking for a good GPU now is going to be paying truly stupid money for one unless they are really lucky. the CPU situation is not as bad (its really the ryzen 5000 series which is limited).

Covid, console launch, Cyberpunk and some other things....its all just created the perfect s*&t storm.

Scalper prices? $1000, the same as the 6800XT.

AMD releasing both Radeon 6000 & Ryzen 5000 biggest issue is pricing. AMD really went all in with price increase as they were always meant to be budget friendly was until now. I mean, seeing AMD finally competing is good and all but they really jack the price on 6000 series while Nvidia at least learn there mistakes with the RTX 2000 series pricing.

If you don't like it, don't buy it, I don't.

@davillain-: How did NVIDIA learn from their mistakes? Ampere has the same prices as Turing.

I'm not a hermit, so i'm good :)

You're tricking, backstabbing, and bamboozling yourself.

People acting like you need the latest and greatest in order to have a decent PC need a reality check. 1000 and 2000 series are still perfectly viable. Hell I gave my old 980 to a friend and it runs everything out there, and runs it fairly well.

It's like going shopping for a sports car and being convinced the only smart option is a $900,000 Bugatti. You don't need it. There's Camaros, Corvettes, Supras, Challengers, Mustangs, Porsches, and so on...all viable, all fun, all good purchases that are no where near the max.

Lmao

6900 XT butturt is gonna be epic

3090 is such a fail GPU

Have a very simple rule over the years of never paying more than £250 for a card. It has served me well.

Seems you're already butthurt enough for everyone.

You named yourself after AMD's architecture. Who's butthurt?

@mrbojangles25: Your answer has nothing to do with the thread.

Sure it does.

@mrbojangles25: No, it doesn’t. How is it even remotely related to the OP?

Haha OK you got me.

With that said, on the topic:

my personal feelings are that AMD sort of missed the mark. I have this feeling that if AMD could match 80-90% of the performance of Nvidia, but offer their product at 60-70% the cost, then that would be the winning formula.

But offering a slightly inferior product at almost the same price is just not going to get it done. It's a shame, I like AMD. They offer generally good products, I want them to be successful.

This is the correct answer, plus the fanboys who lap up these absurd prices. The thing is, even if any of these cards were acquirable at MSRPs they'd still be rip-offs. Fans and tech reviewers were gushing about how the 3070 was such a good deal because it matched the 2-year old obscenely overpriced 2080 ti. A mid-range card, receiving accolades for "only" costing $500.

Terrible times to be building new PC's, indeed.

if you're not into gimmics like raytracing, amd offers 100% of the performance of nvidia, actually 100%+. Raytracing s still a gimmick, its just hyped like its the next physx. In a few years, nobody will say anything about raytracing, because it will just become one of the standard options in games.

AMD offered a very compelling product, 100% of the performance with 6gb extra DDR6 ram. If you don't care about raytracing so much, you can just go with the radeon and not notice any real difference.

@blaznwiipspman1: yeah I really do not care that much about ray tracing. Looks good in still screens, don't really notice it that much in motion.

@mrbojangles25: That and it's incredibly taxing for what you're getting.

DLSS made a big difference. But yes, still taxing. Definitely not worth the tradeoff.

Ray tracing is a funny thing really. Its a pretty hard sell because when its done well, people shouldnt realise it's being used at all. Everything should just look correct.

From an art direction perspective, if someone points at something and goes "oooooh ray tracing....cool" then it's not good.

but yes i agree. it is very very taxing. DLSS definitely helps but that comes with its own trade offs.

@Juub1990: The RTX 3070 for $500 is what the 2080Ti price should have been but Nvidia got really greedy despite RT is was expensive. I love Nvidia but I'm not crazy paying that tax increase, it's why I settle for 2070 instead. What I'm saying is, both 3080 & 3070 are price right for the right performance this time around. The only problem is the 3090 price tag but that's subjective how anyone feels about it.

Agree, RT when implemented correctly should not stand out like a sore thumb, it should just make the scene look more realistic and believable.

I feel once devs move on from their new toy of RT, it will come into its own and really begin to compliment graphics nicely.

or you can just use dlss without enabling ray tracing, wild huh and spare the "uh its just upscaling 1080p"

@howmakewood: I'm amazed how many people call it "just upscaling"

But it is upscaling. It being the best upscaler doesn't make it less of an upscaler.

PC gamers getting ripped off lol. I just recently watched a PC builder build a Lian Li gaming PC, $2100 for an RTX 2070. Imagine paying $2100 for garbage performance. And that was in Ameriland where everything is cheap. We'd probably have to pay €2500+ for that PC, which has less performance than a €399 PS5.

The 2070 is garbage performance, since when? And how the hell is the 2070 a weaker performer than the PS5? What the hell are you on?

@Mozelleple112: I have an RTX 2070 and you say it's garbage and yet weaker than the average PS5? Whatever drugs you are taking, stop using them.

@Pedro: for $2k I'd expect something about 3 times faster than a PS5.

@davillain-: underwhelming af, I wouldn't go for any less than the RTX 3080

I agree. The choice of video card for the price is off putting. I am not sure where the rest of the money is being spent.

Recently?... 2100?... RTX 2070?... Sorry sweetheart no one believes your nonsense.

Even when the RTX 2070 launched you can build a PC around it for $1000, its a $499 GPU mate.

$2100... I paid that for my 2080 Ti build 1 year ago. LMAO.

Stop it you fanboys are joke.

Show us that video?...

@Grey_Eyed_Elf: Couple that with the fact that you can get a RTX 3080 system for $49 more from Alienware. 😐

I'm pretty happy with my Core I5 9400 F + 16 GB RAm + Amd RX 570 combo at the moment, if anything I'd rather increase it's storage size than performance. Right now it holds an advertised 4.25 TB, (Using 2-1 TB 3.5 inch SSD's, 1 2 TB hhd, and a 256 gb m.2 nvme Drive.) I'd kind of like to increase that by a few TB's.

That being said, if I was to build a new system, I'd probably build something with a Ryzen 7 second or third gen along with the best graphics card I could get for about $250 and any good 6 Sata port motherboard that isn't Gigabyte.

Yeah Nvidia has tried to over exert their power in the past which has led to bad PR. Meanwhile AMD/ATI simply just provided competitively priced GPUs and tried to make open source graphical features that try to run fairly on all hardware. That won AMD the right to be seen as pro consumer brand that can do no wrong.

That's why we're not seeing AMD get flak for the exact same things people are giving Nvidia flak for. I see tech youtubers everywhere heavily criticize Nvidia for how they handled the Ampere launch yet are staying quiet about RDNA 2's equally bad launch. They were all boasting about how RDNA 2 has kicked Ampere's butt when they got they benchmarks on rasterization in AMD optimized games and then went quiet once the 3rd party benchmarks came out and the ray tracing benchmarks showed how pitifully behind they were while charging the same price.

Not to mention AMD still has no answer to Nvidia's DLSS. I see the AMD fanboys trying to damage control it saying that DLSS is not groundbreaking and AI upscaling can be done on almost anything and that Nvidia is just trying to push their failure of AI processors onto gamers.

@fedor said:

The funny part is AMD did a similar thing with the Vega 64/56 launch...

Once the launch 64/56 cards sold out you couldn't get a $499 64 anywhere unless it was a bundle with a monitor... when you buy them as standalone it was $599.

Rumour is that they cost too much to make and AMD are selling the reference cards at close to break even prices which explains why MSRP are $100 more.

They do this to skew review on launch because reviews base performance on price and by having a $100 cheaper card it makes price to performance drastically better.

People are very forgetful and I never understood the love for AMD when they have done this twice already just to look good in reviews.

6800 and XT are worse than 3080 and 3070 when it comes to price/performance... A lot worse:

Blue 6800XT represents the fake MSRP of cards you can't buy... and the Green is the cheapest AIB card.

It's interesting that after AMD achieved higher frequencies, like Intel, their prices also rose, like Intel. Perhaps Intel wasn't price gouging like we thought they were. Lol

Although, I just picked up a 10850KA + Aorus Master board for 640 bucks, which is a hell of a deal.

Yeah I was surprised at those AIB prices.

Price doesn't even matter. They're all out of stock so F them

@Grey_Eyed_Elf: https://youtu.be/YFA2IW-Rn5A

That was easy. $2100 for a system weaker than a $399. Where I live that's a €2700 PC that is weaker than a €399 PS5.