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AMD Radeon RX 6800 series facing limited availability

AMD representatives bragged that the Radeon RX 6000 would not be a paper launch. Some cards were sold, so technically they were available, but only for the chosen ones. AMD Red Team Plus members were given a preorder link before the embargo was even lifted. Reviewers and influencers had no issues obtaining the samples for the review, in fact, those were shipped weeks in advance, so it all looked great, till the actual launch happened.

The number of Radeon RX 6800 reference shipped to retailers was not great, but it wasn’t bad either. One thing was clear, it was certainly a lower number of cards at launch than the NVIDIA RTX 30 series. A week later, everyone expected custom cards to be available in greater numbers, but unfortunately, that was not the case.

It appears that more cards were shipped to reviewers than to actual customers. Users reported that not a single store in their country would even receive a custom card at launch. To make things worse, they were unable to confirm when would such shipments even begin.

Custom cards are not cheap

Possibly the most underwhelming part of this launch is how far AMD suggested retail price is off from the actual retail pricing. Custom cards are seeing an increase from 81 to even 251 USD. It is rumored that margins on the new Radeon RX 6000 series are really low, hence only now we are seeing the true cost of Big Navi. Hopefully, the prices will be toned down a little as more shipments arrive: