AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Launching For 1080p RDNA2 Gaming At ~$379 USD

[MadeUpName]

All true and valid points. Do you think that for next gen it will be worthwhile to keep the gaming GPUs a bit longer on 7nm rather than the cutting edge node where they are competing for wafers with all the other products?

There is a big fear right now amongst PC gamers (windows and Linux alike) that their hobby is increasingly becoming more expensive and niche, something for the rich. And that the USD 200 mainstream GPU will never again be a thing.

It also seems like GPUs by their very nature take a lot of die size and transistors. So obviously when their is a chip shortage it makes more sense for companies like AMD to prioritize CPUs which are more profitable.

Every one is moving to chiplets for GPUs. AMD just released their first card with them. Intels cards will have them and NVidia next gen will have them. That will improve yields.

[skeevy420]

Yep - I'm still running Kaveri iGPUs and HD 7790's (aka R7 260X).

The only exception is a Radeon VII I picked up from amd.com so I could do ROCm development/test at home.

My 260x died after 6 years of hard use and abuse. Went through 3 PCs with it. Only bought the 580 because it was necessary.

[bridgman]

The rest of us are probably buying every 4-7 years, every 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation, anyways.

Yep - I'm still running Kaveri iGPUs and HD 7790's (aka R7 260X).

The only exception is a Radeon VII I picked up from amd.com so I could do ROCm development/test at home.

[skeevy420]

If moving to a new fab process no longer automatically provides a big increase in price/performance then there's a strong argument for continuing to ship existing products (RX 550, RX 560, RX 5500 XT in our case) rather than creating a new card which would not offer much more in the way of price performance, and possibly less once you included the (increasingly high) cost of designing, taping out and productising a new product.

I don't expect the lower priced cards to go away, but I do expect that new ones might come out ever 2nd or 3rd generation rather than every generation like the higher end cards. This is not an AMD opinion, just my own opinion from looking at the market and thinking about options.

Frankly, that's they way it should be. Let the people with deep pockets chase the Graphics Dragon. If you wanna spend $2500 on your RTX 6090 XT go right ahead. I'm a wait.

The rest of us are probably buying every 4-7 years, every 2nd or 3rd or 4th generation, anyways.

[bridgman]

I saw a John Peddie Research article referenced in the last few weeks where the company suggested that lack of access to reasonably priced graphics cards was harming the PC gaming market. The author(s) suggested that people who would normally get into the space for the first time now could not because the cost was simply too high. (I can't find the report itself, I think it may be paywalled.)

<snip>

Bridgman's point about costs not dropping is a bit beside this point. Whether a 6500 costs less than a 5500, both surely cost less than higher-tier cards.

That's a different market (people building a gaming system for the first time and choosing a discrete GPU rather than an APU) from the one that other posters and I were talking about (people upgrading existing systems), and as you say the key point for that market is being less expensive than higher end cards.

I agree that having less expensive cards available is important, but the question is what technology those cards should use.

If moving to a new fab process no longer automatically provides an automatic increase in price/performance then there's a strong argument for continuing to ship existing products (RX 550, RX 560, RX 5500 XT, GTX 1030, GTX 16xx) rather than creating a new card which would not offer much more in the way of price performance, and would possibly offer less once you included the (increasingly high) cost of designing, taping out and delivering a new product.

I don't expect the lower priced cards to go away, but I do expect that new ones might come out ever 2nd or 3rd generation rather than every generation like the higher end cards. This is not an AMD position, just my own opinion from looking at the market and thinking about options.

Guessing this is the JPR article ?

https://www.jonpeddie.com/store/worl...-report-series

If so then this link includes some extra comments from JPR on top of what the original article contains:

https://www.pcgamer.com/gpu-supply-p...ments-from-jpr

[domih]

I was lucky enough to renew my 10 yo hardware back in 2019 just before the whole market went inflationary cuckoo with COVID-19 supply chain disruptions.

Wks #1 with TR 3960X: 5700 XT (Today on NewEgg from $998 to $2000) MSRP: $400, bought Sapphire Pulse or Nitro for ~ $450
Wks #2 with 3900X: 5700 XT (ditto)
Wks #3 with TR 2950X: RX 590 (Today on NewEgg from $476 to $1400) MSRP: $279, bought Sapphire Pulse or Nitro for ~ $320

Now waiting for Zen 4 or Zen 5 or INTEL if it becomes competitive again :-)

I might upgrade the 3900X to 5950X which is now unbelievably under $799 MSRP there:

https://www.centralcomputer.com/amd-ryzen-9-5950x-3-4-ghz-4-9-ghz-boost-socket-am4-105w-16c-32t-desktop-processor-oem-tray-100-000000059.html

I'm hesitating because of the upcoming 3D cache refresh by end of the year (either go with the new 3D cache SKU or go with an even less costly 5950X at that time).

[Melcar]

Hahaha.

Here I'm still on an old RX 480 8GB gaming on a 1440p 60Hz panel. Have a 6700XT on several wish lists, but those prices man. To be fair, I had a Pitcairn card before this (HD7850) that I also kept as a main card for 3+ years.

[Teggs]

I saw a John Peddie Research article referenced in the last few weeks where the company suggested that lack of access to reasonably priced graphics cards was harming the PC gaming market. The author(s) suggested that people who would normally get into the space for the first time now could not because the cost was simply too high. (I can't find the report itself, I think it may be paywalled.)

I tend to think JPR was correct in their assessment. AMD and Nvidia are harming future sales by choosing to constrict current adoption. Scalping is mostly outside the manufacturers' control, but whether to release mid and low end cards at all is their decision, and the low end of the market is where the largest number of customers is, and a common point to buy in. Instead of only asking themselves 'what part can we sell for the largest margin', both companies need to consider how much they will be selling in years to come if new buyers were turned away for a year or more and found entertainment elsewhere permanently.

I admit self-interest in cards like the 6600 and 6600XT coming out, but I feel for the low end segment as well. If someone likes gaming in the old RX550/560 segment, then good for them, and they should be served in every product generation. We and AMD/Nvidia need 3050/Ti, 6500XT, even 3030 and 6300 parts available or the whole market could shrivel from the bottom up.

Bridgman's point about costs not dropping is a bit beside this point. Whether a 6500 costs less than a 5500, both surely cost less than higher-tier cards.

[bridgman]

a 6600XT in 7nm has 11.1B transistors
a vega64 in 14nm 12,5B transistors

so it should be no problem to put 14-15B transistors on a GPU with GF 12LP+

it should be no problem to put 16GB (or more) LPDDR5X-8533mhz ram on it.

with this it should be easy to be below the price of a 6600XT

The problem is that a Vega64-sized die on 12LP+ would still be pretty expensive - Vega10 was expensive to make for a few reasons (HBM, interposer, large die) but the large die was definitely a contributor. Not sure where the pricing on fast LPDDR5X is today but I don't see the resulting price coming in "easily below the 6600XT", if anything I think it would be a struggle to match the 6600XT's pricing since we would not be able to leverage existing volumes when purchasing the key parts.

Moving Polaris to 12LP+/GDDR5 would be fairly straightforward, in part because it already has the wide memory bus, but moving 6600XT to 12LP+ (presumably with wider bus and more MALL to compensate for slower RAM ?) would be a much larger (and longer) exercise. I don't see it happening before the current shortage passes, and it still would not be a sufficiently good miner to divert demand away from gaming products because the L3 does not help mining as much as it does gaming.

[artivision]

RX-570 4GB Mini-ITX here bought at 170 original release price. Also I updated to Ryzen-1200 cpu when it had just 50. Now they want a kidney.