Chinese graphics card maker claims RX 9070 supply will be 'stable' from April while AMD commits to more MSRP graphics cards though admits it's something 'we don't directly control'

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It's true that it's not all under AMD's control, but that isn't by accident...

Yeston RX 9070
(Image credit: Yeston)

"What can AMD do to ensure availability at close to MSRP as you can get it?" That was the question put to AMD's David McAfee regarding the company's new Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT graphics cards. We'll come to his answer momentarily, but to provide a little context, Chinese graphics card maker Yeston reckons supply of AMD's new GPUs will become more stable "after April".

While supplies of AMD's new GPUs haven't been as awful as those of Nvidia's RTX 50-series graphics cards, they still sold out fast. Since launch day, restocking has been sporadic and pricing has tended to be well above MSRP.

That's the context for the question above, posed by Hot Hardware. And the answer? In reality, McAfee doesn't have too many revelations to share. "Priority number one is restocking all of our partners," he says.

"We want to make sure that users are able to buy cards at prices that they expect to see in the market. We're doing everything we can to make that happen. And make sure that both retailers and etailers as well as our board partners are doing their part to help ensure there's plenty of supply at those prices points.

"As we refill from what happened last week, you'll see more supply coming across not just the opening price points but across the entire range."

On the face of it, that ties in, albeit not absolutely specifically, with AIB partner Yeston's expectations for supply normalising after April (for the record, Yeston only sells directly into the Chinese market). Hopefully that will prove the case. In the meantime, there are two further take-aways from McAfee's responses.

First, RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT launches were a smash hit. "It has been a pretty amazing couple of weeks," McAfee says. "The launch of RDNA 4 was a milestone event for our graphics business. The demand was very, very, very strong all around the world."

The second is a recognition of how the graphics card market works. "There are pieces of the graphics business that are far more complicated when it comes to putting product in the market," he explains.

Long story short, while AMD sells CPUs directly into the market, with GPUs it supplies a chip to graphics card makers, who then make decisions about various board designs to offer, some which may be targeted at MSRP, others with added features they hope will command a premium price.

After that, retailers choose what mix of the various board designs they want to stock. "It's something that we don't honestly directly control," McAfee says.

While true, that ignores the fact GPU vendors including AMD itself can and do commission their own reference designs which are sold directly to gamers. AMD opted not to do that itself this time around. So, it definitely does lose some control in that respect, but it made a positive choice to relinquish that control.

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What happens from here is unclear. Most indications imply that supply of AMD's new GPUs was pretty substantial at launch—largely down to a delayed launch with supply sitting in retail from January—but the sheer level of pent up demand for a vaguely affordable GPU with next-gen performance and features was such that the cards still sold out in a blink.

Indeed, as I type these words, not a single AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU is in stock on Newegg, which is largely reflective of current availability. So, the question is: How much demand remains and how many GPUs can AMD supply?

By later this summer, for instance, will you just be able to jump online and buy an AMD Radeon RX 9070, or an Nvidia RTX 5070 for that matter? You know, like almost every other consumer product? If that happens, prices will probably normalise, too. But we've been waiting for that to happen to the GPU market for absolutely years now. Cross your fingers, but probably don't hold your breath.

Jeremy Laird
Jeremy Laird
Hardware writer

Jeremy has been writing about technology and PCs since the 90nm Netburst era (Google it!) and enjoys nothing more than a serious dissertation on the finer points of monitor input lag and overshoot followed by a forensic examination of advanced lithography. Or maybe he just likes machines that go “ping!” He also has a thing for tennis and cars.

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