AMD pokes fun at Nvidia’s supply issues, implies it won’t have the same problem

By Chuong Nguyen September 25, 2020

AMD is looking to woo frustrated Team Green gamers to its side once the company launches the Radeon RX 6000 series graphics cards in October. The company is making its move with gamers who have been frustrated by rival Nvidia’s launch of the GeForce RTX 3080 flagship and the ultra-premium GeForce RTX 3090.

Both cards have proven to be quite popular due to the powerful performance of the new Ampere architecture, but limited inventory and a pre-order snafu that saw scalpers snap up an already limited supply to sell them on third-party sites for an absurd profit have resulted in many irate shoppers.

One shopper had turned to Twitter to vent his frustration at the situation. Using an expletive, @AndreElijah said that he is unable to do his work in the near future because he was not able to pick up a GeForce RTX 3090. He also made a $10 bet that the situation with AMD’s upcoming Radeon launch won’t be much different. However, Frank Azor, AMD chief architect of gaming solutions, took the comment in jest while implying that the company will have plenty of inventory of its ray tracing-capable GPU, unlike Nvidia.

“I look forward to taking your $10,” Azor responded to the bet, adding a smiley face at the end.

AMD is rumored to deliver high-end GPUs with its 6000 series, which will allow the company to take on its rival in the high-end graphics market. The 6000 series, based on the company’s RDNA 2 microarchitecture, will also bring ray-tracing capabilities to AMD for the first time, and a high-end GPU will allow AMD to take on Nvidia’s RTX 3080 and 3090. The same architecture will be powering next-generation consoles as well, including Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5, so the fight between Nvidia and AMD will be very interesting for gamers.

I look forward to taking your $10 :)

— Frank Azor (@AzorFrank) September 24, 2020

While AMD has not come out and stated that its next-generation GPU won’t be constrained by supply issues, Azor’s comment certainly hinted that this won’t be the case.

The next-gen Radeon GPU will be using an improved 7nm FinFET node made by TSMC, so we expect good yields for the silicon given that AMD had already been using a 7nm node for many of its products.

On the other hand, rival Nvidia is using an entirely new 8N manufacturing process to fabricate its silicon, so yields of the new part may not have been all too great. This could have affected inventory and supply of the final GeForce cards. According to Tom’s Hardware, AMD could reach yields of around 65% for its silicon, which is a good number. It’s still too early to know how many gamers eager to have the latest silicon inside their rigs will be willing to make the switch to Team Red.

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