The Radeon RX 6800, RX 6800 XT, and RX 6900 XT ‘Big Navi’ cards are coming soon, filling in a huge gap at the top end of AMD’s graphics card line. But the story’s far from complete: Here’s what we’re most excited to learn.
Nvidia struggling to keep up with orders on its GeForce RTX 3080 and RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics cards. Cards from third-party makers sold through for weeks. eBay scalpers licking their chops. The launch of Nvidia’s RTX 30 Series GPUs has revealed some stellar silicon, but the buying experience has been anything but smooth. With its decloaking of the first three Radeon RX 6000 Series « Big Navi » cards on Oct.28, AMD looks seriously well-armed on the high-end gaming graphics front for the first time in many years. Based on initial specs and claims, come mid-November AMD could be primed to compete hard with Nvidia in the arena for PC gamers’ hearts and minds…at least, folks playing at 1440p and 4K. AMD put down its GeForce challenge at a virtual keynote. It was a dense 25 minutes long, and you can catch up with it here, I’ll wait……but even after two views and some judicious emails to certain PC component makers, I was still left with some questions after AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su exited the stage.1. The Radeon RX 6000 Cards: Will You Actually Be Able to Buy ‘Em? This first question on everyone’s mind is the right one to be asking, given Nvidia’s current state of supply despair. So far, there is no concrete indication, one way or the other, as to how the supply situation for the Radeon RX 6000 Series will shake out. This isn’t just a paper launch, by all indications; cards will, at least in some quantity, make their way to consumers on launch day, but just how many remains to be seen. Rumors have been swirling around supply-side issues facing GPU production since long before Nvidia even announced the GeForce RTX 30 Series, with battles for foundry space with semiconductor contractors (a previously dry and inside-baseball kind of subject) suddenly becoming more mainstream news. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang originally stated most of the « Ampere » generation of cards would be produced on a 7nm process at TSMC; as it turns out, these initial Ampere cards are using an 8nm process via Samsung fabs. Image: AMD Atop that, so far, keeping up with demand for the first two Founders Edition cards, not to mention RTX 3070 and 3080 third-party cards, continues to be a thorn in Nvidia’s paw…so where does that leave rival AMD? Unconfirmed reports out of the China Times have suggested that TSMC might have open space at its foundries after complications arose around its contract with China-based tech manufacturer Huawei, though again it should be stressed that nothing about TSMC being bottlenecked on supply for AMD’s needs has been confirmed. In a beat, to answer whether or not you’ll have a decent shot of getting an RX 6000 Series card after launch: We have no idea. AMD didn’t take the opportunity to jab at Nvidia about supply issues at any point during its presentation (of course, being careful to refer to the graphics giant simply as « the competition »). Mum’s the word from AMD, from TSMC, and from any suppliers in between on the prospect of extended, consistent availability of reference or third-party RX 6000 Series either on the day of launch or the weeks and months after.
