AMD’s RDNA 2 high-end graphics card supply is finally dwindling to nothing, four years after launch. TheRX 6950 XTandRX 6900 XTare now virtually impossible to find at the $600-$650 price point, while the RX 6800 XT can only be found at$560 in a single ASRockmodel. AMD’s RX 6800 is the only higher-end RDNA 2 GPU left that is still being sold at competitive prices, and that’s only thanks to two XFX variants priced under $400.TheRX 6950 XTandRX 6900 XTare the biggest offenders, where there is clear evidence that stock has dried up. This process has been going on for half a year, perhaps more, with the least expensive 6900 XT and 6950 XT cards bouncing between $550 and $750 or more. A few months ago, you could find RX 6950 XT variants for as low as $580. But today, the lowest price you’re able to find a RX 6900 XT is $699, and $779 for an RX 6950 XT.In a normal GPU cycle, this should have happened shortly after theRX 7000-seriesdebut — companies don’t want their new product to face stiff competition from existing parts. But in the post-pandemic (and post-Ethereum mining) world of late 2022 and early 2023, there was a glut of high-end Navi 21 GPUs still hanging about. Around the time the RX 7000-series launched, AMD dropped the price of the RX 6900/6950 XT GPUs to make way for the more performantRX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XTthat would be taking their spots.The intent was clearly to sell off the existing parts as quickly as possible, and AMD even held off launching the lower tier RDNA 3 parts for quite a while. The Navi 32-basedRX 7800 XTandRX 7700 XTdidn’t arrive until September 2023, nine months after the Navi 31 parts launched. Similarly, theRX 7900 GREwas a China exclusive for about a year.
You can check ourGPU benchmarks hierarchyto see how the various GPUs rank, but the short summary is that most of the newer RX 7000-series GPUs now offer better values than their competing RX 6000-series counterparts — at least where such comparisons make sense. There’s no newer replacement for theRX 6500 XTorRX 6400, AMD’sRX 6800 XT, or even the vanillaRX 6600. But everything above that level has a newer option.For Navi 23 GPUs, the newer RX 7600 at $260 takes on the RX 6650 XT andRX 6600 XTat $221 and $240, respectively. It’s not significantly faster than the 6650 XT in general, though it does offer AV1 encoding support as well as DisplayPort 2.1. The 6600 XT was supposed to be discontinued when theRX 6650 XTlaunched nearly two years ago, but it keeps hanging around.Stepping up to the mid-tier Navi 22 offerings, there’s only a single source (Best Buy) for the RX 6700 10GB, and we’ve seen that card go out of stock on a regular basis. RX 6700 XT was also supposed to be discontinued when theRX 6750 XTcame out, again suggesting there hasn’t been much demand for the older 6x00 variants in the past two years. Even so, prices on the 6750/6700 XT have crept up since late last year by $30. The newer RX 7700 XT is also around 25% faster than the 6750 XT, with newer features, for 20% more money if you’re wondering.Finally, the high-end Navi 21 GPUs largely appear to be gone at this point. You can still find theRX 6800for $375, but theRX 7700 XT at $395is 5% faster and arguably makes more sense now. XFX has the SWFT 319 and 319 Core for reasonably competitive prices, but the next two cards are the QICK 319 Black and PowerColor Red Dragon OC at $530–$560, with almost no other models around. The 6800 XT, 6900 XT, and 6950 XT are, as noted above, priced far too high to warrant consideration now, with the 6950 XT basically matching the newerRX 7900 GREon performance while offering less features, 80W higher power draw, and costing over $200 extra.There are still some straggler GPUs in the midrange and budget areas, but it’s safe to say that RDNA 2 inventory is finally disappearing for good, probably much to AMD’s delight. There are now rumblings of RDNA 4, naturally, which could come out late this year or early next year. Perhaps we’ll see a repeat of this cycle, with RDNA 3 supplies lasting long past their ‘expiration date.’ Depending on when the next generation parts are slated to launch, AMD may already be halting production on the current generation — to avoid running into these same issues next year.For now, AMD’s higher-end RX 7000-series graphics cards, particularly theRX 7900 GREandRX 7900 XT, are selling at competitive prices and offer solid high-end performance. As noted in ourRTX 4070 vs RX 7900 GRE faceoff, however, Nvidia has a much stronger set of features and extras, and the recentSteam Hardware Surveydoesn’t show much in the way of AMD’s latest generation GPUs.
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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.
