Pretty much since the AMD RDNA 2 and Nvidia Ampere generation began towards the latter parts of 2020, gamers and PC enthusiasts have struggled to get hold of a new GPU unless they were willing to pay way above the MSRP. The good news, however, is that it looks as though graphics card prices are continuing to come down, with the possibility of them "plummeting" at some point. With that, it should be less of a headache to secure new hardware, but it's possible team red may have been helping in that capacity as well.
According to a photo taken by HotHardware, it looks as though AMD was selling some of its products at this year's PAX East. What's interesting about this is that it looks as though the company was selling them at their intended MSRPs, with some of the items only being available in other places above their retail values.
Chief among the AMD items available were a number of RX 6000 graphics cards, including the 6700 XT, 6800 XT, and 6900 XT, all of which form the higher end products with RDNA 2 architecture. Interestingly, there was also the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU which was announced at CES 2022 and only launched a few days ago. Even as prices continue to fall, most are still above MSRP. So to see AMD pushing its own GPUs and CPUs at PAX East at retail value is certainly intriguing.
Lisa Su and the rest of the team at AMD are clearly looking to make sure they stay ahead of the competition. With Nvidia recently releasing the underwhelming RTX 3090 Ti and Intel about to launch its own Arc desktop range, the pressure is on for AMD to be hot on the heels of team green, while also keeping a watchful eye on what the new entrants in the industry will be up to over the next few months and years.
On top of that, the next generation of GPUs is looming ahead. With Nvidia launching its RTX 40-series this September and AMD announcing the arrival of the RDNA 3 towards the end of this year, there's not much time left in this era to make an impact. Having said that, with prices coming down all the time and team red helping on that front, the final moments of this generation could be an interesting one, especially once Intel releases its desktop graphics cards.
Source: HotHardware