AMD’s new RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT graphics cards went on sale Tuesday morning, but they sold out in a flash. Some retailers only had cards in stock for a few minutes, and although there are a few stragglers, it’s clear AMD’s latest graphics cards are popular.
If you were hoping to score the RX 7900 XTX, you’re out of luck. It’s sold out at every retailer I checked, including AMD’s own website. I queued on AMD’s website for an hour to buy a card, but only the weaker RX 7900 XT was still in stock. It sold out during the course of writing this article. As you can read in our RX 7900 XTX versus RX 7900 XT comparison, the XTX model is a clear favorite.
Limited stock online means one thing: scalpers. On eBay, some sellers are asking as much as $1,500 for the RX 7900 XT, a $600 markup over list price, while the RX 7900 XTX climbs up to $1,800, $800 more than list price. At the time of writing, only two of these listings have actually sold. Don’t be tempted to join them, as I don’t expect AMD’s new cards to be sold out for long.
AMD has reportedly prepared for the launch with over 200,000 cards for the rest of the year. It’s unlikely all of those cards have already sold out — some retailers, such as Best Buy and Micro Center, usually reserve some inventory for in-store sales.
The launch is a far cry from what Nvidia experienced with its RTX 4080. As you can read in my RTX 4080 review, it’s great a GPU that’s just too expensive. Weeks after launch, you can still find models in stock at list price through major retailers. When I pitted the RX 7900 XTX against the RTX 4080, the reason why was clear: AMD’s new card simply offers a better value for most gamers.
AMD might prompt Nvidia to drop the price of the RTX 4080, which rumors say could happen in mid-December. If the sold inventory is anything to go by, AMD is certainly putting pressure on Team Green. Reports say Nvidia has only shipped 30,000 RTX 4080 cards, compared to 130,000 RTX 4090s (and that card runs $1,600 or more!).
The next few months are sure to be hotly competitive between AMD and Nvidia as the companies duke it out for the best graphics cards. I’m focused on the first half of 2023, where we’ll hopefully see more affordable RDNA 3 and Ada Lovelace GPUs.
