After the way Nvidia’s RTX 50-series ended up being called a “paper launch,” many breathed a sigh of relief when AMD’s RX 9000 series appeared on the shelves in much larger quantities. However, once this initial shipment is sold, AMD could face the same problem as the rest of the best graphics cards: Price hikes, price hikes everywhere.
The cards officially hit the shelves yesterday, and many were spotted far above the recommended list price (MSRP), with some overclocked models priced at up to $250 more than the $600 starting price. However, AMD spoke several times about working with its partners to ensure wide availability at MSRP, and indeed, many retailers had some models up for sale. Those MSRP cards were only around for a short time, though, and they might never come back, according to retailers.
As spotted by VideoCardz, two popular European retailers both say that the price of AMD’s latest GPUs will go up once the MSRP models all sell out. Inet.se, a Swedish retail chain, says that only the first shipment of cards will be sold at MSRP.
There appears to be some difference between different manufacturers, as the retailer only received one shipment of Asus and Sapphire GPUs, and customers can buy those cards until they’re all sold out. The retailer already has a second shipment of PowerColor waiting, though, and those cards will already be sold at a markup once the initial batch is all gone.
Meanwhile, Overclockers UK reveals that it has thousands of various RX 9070 XT cards in stock, but at some point, the prices will increase. “MSRP is capped in quantity of a few hundred, so prices will jump once those are sold through,” said the retailer. “Re-stocks and pricing are unknown going forward; nobody really knows what April will bring.”
While frustrating, this isn’t unusual. If this is true for all retailers — which we don’t know for a fact — it simply means that AMD went out of its way to ensure availability at MSRP, but not forever. The GPU market is in a rough state right now, with most new GPUs constantly sold out, so price increases are, unfortunately, not unexpected.
As of right now, checking some of the most popular U.S. retailers reveals that this launch had been largely successful for AMD. The RX 9000 series is sold out at Newegg and Amazon.
