US retailer, Microcenter, has decided to limit all AMD Radeon RX 6800-series graphics card sales to in-store only, with no online sales being available due to the high demand. The retailer has also stated in a forum post (via Videocardz) that stock "will be extremely limited at launch" though it is expecting additional shipments at stores throughout the day.
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The AMD RX 6800-series graphics cards are launching today, going on sale at 9am Eastern (6am Pacfic, 2pm UK ), and will likely be sold out by five minutes past 9. Even so, if you're after one of the new Big Navi GPUs, we'll be scouring the net to find the best places to buy an RX 6800/XT card.
It is worth noting that retailers and manufacturers across the globe are already out there trying to temper expectations after the Nvidia RTX 30-series launches, AMD Ryzen CPU release, and next-gen console orders, were blink-and-you'll-miss-it affairs.
An Asus Nordic representative reportedly warned there would be low stock levels of the RX 6800, and especially the RX 6800 XT, on the day of release, with them likely "to be gone in a few minutes." All this despite AMD's Frank Azor trying to remain bullish in his Twitter assertions that it wouldn't be like the Ampere graphics card launches at all.
It's potentially looking a little healthier in the UK, however, with Overclockers having stated in its own forum that it would have more than 35 units of each model ready to roll. Though if that's 35 unit of the RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT those 70 cards are going to vanish pretty swiftly, but if it is more than 35 of each manufacturer's reference cards (Sapphire, Asus, MSI, etc.) then that's a fair chunk of new GPUs.
Still, the fact that Microcenter is limiting all Radeon sales to in-store only means that we're getting some old-school images popping up on r/Amd showing people actually queuing up outside shut stores. Which would be fine in any other, non-pandemic times but just feels a little uncomfortable right now.
Though I am in the UK where we're not really allowed outside at the moment, so maybe I'm just jealous.