Hey AMD, here’s an idea: Ramp up your manufacturing, make an RX 9050, MSRP $350, flood the market with them, win the GPU game.
The limiting factor is TSMC, AMD can’t just “ramp up” anything. The only way they can make more gaming stuff, is by cutting down their server and workstation divisions, which won’t happen.
Is it really down to TSMC being unable to keep up? It seems plausible but I didn’t notice anything in the video to support it. Are there other sources that point to it as the problem?
Edit — for circumstantial evidence I did find this: https://wccftech.com/tsmc-reaches-100-percent-utilization-5nm-3nm-supply/
Sources similar to yours, and I think that’s been the case for years: https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20250109PD237/tsmc-54nm-3nm-capacity-2025.html https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/tsmcs-arizona-chip-fab-production-is-sold-out-through-late-2027
TSMC is also basically the only supplier, which is a reason the US and EU push so much for their own production lines, although it looks like the US wants to stop theirs.
NVIDIA used Samsung for one generation, people are saying because of the deal they got, but went back to TSMC, apparently because of yield issues.
Intel was behind schedule for a long time, and even used TSMC for their current line up, but I think their new 18A process is supposed to come this year, who knows how that will turn out.
For NVIDIA specifically I’ve also heard that the HBM chips for the high-end AI cards are also a bottleneck, otherwise we might get even fewer consumer GPUs, but I never followed up on that.
TSMC is the only manufacturer capable of 4nm fabs. So, yes?
Just call it out for what it is. These companies have purposely stopped making the previous generation of cards so that they can charge us insane amounts of money for the next generation of cards. Both AMD and ShitVidia are doing this by design.
msrp is just a suggested price. it means nothing.
Yeah. It literally stands for “manufacturer suggested retail price”. It’s the price at which they think you should be able to sell a reasonable volume based on the wholesale cost plus markup. But retailers can set their price higher or lower as they see fit.
Retailers say they can’t offer the card at MSRP, unless AMD subsidize them.
Either the card just cost too much to make, meaning MSRP should be higher, or someone in the supply chain is greedy (everywhere).
I don’t necessarily think that’s what retailers are saying.
What happened is that AMD has already sold a lot of cards before they even finalized the MSRP, then AMD offers a rebate if they announce a different MSRP than the planned MSRP. This is apparently pretty standard practice.
The actual issue occurred due to a series of smaller issues:
- AMD announced an MSRP that was significantly lower than their expected MSRP, which led to significant negotiations for what the rebate should be. It appears that not all of the already-bought stock is covered by the current rebate. Piecing together clues from AMD and AIB’s, it sounds like negotiations are still ongoing, so the current rebate is likely a patchwork fix for day 1 pricing.
- AMD did not have a reference model, which serves to force AIB’s from pricing their cards too high above MSRP
- Rumor has it that AMD prioritized stock for physical stores over online stores, possibly for marketing/PR reasons.
- Nvidia made next to no cards this generation, causing significantly higher demand for AMD’s cards than anticipated
Rebates are definitely normal, but as for your first point, I honestly believe AMD were just going to give them for the launch, and thought they could get away with it. AMDs marketing is so bad, that this makes the most sense to me.
Even a Reference Model wouldn’t have mattered, in this case, because to me, it looks like AMD wanted to be too much like NVIDIA and set the price for the chips too high (which they sell to the partners to make the GPUs). That’s why AMD needs rebates to get the cards actually to MSRP.
As for your third point, it looks like they didn’t just prioritize brick and mortar stores, but only those in the US (see all the posts about Micro Center stock). Another genius move by AMD marketing?
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