The launch day for AMD’s new Radeon GPUs – the RX 9070 & RX 9070 XT – has come and gone, taking place on March 6th. Despite advertising plenty of availability, cards were soon snatched up by consumers (whether those be scalpers, bots, or gamers looking for their next upgrade). This led AMD to promise to replenish stock following “phenomenal” demand.

One complaint from fans that applies to both AMD’s and Nvidia’s recent GPU launches is price. For reference, the RX 9070 & 9070 XT have a starting price of $549 and $599, respectively, but many SKUs cost much more than this. With that in mind, we can only hope that these cards retail closer to their MSRPs, but it doesn’t look like it will happen despite AMD’s encouragement.

AMD says MSRP pricing is “encouraged” – but that doesn’t mean it’s enforced

AMD’s Frank Azor visited a Miami Micro Center store to meet up with fans, praising the level of demand and promising more stock in the “coming days and weeks” (you can keep an eye on our RX 9070 series stock tracker for this). While the card remains hard to find, we expect price rises, despite Azor’s claim that MSRP pricing “will continue to be encouraged beyond today”.

In contrast to Azor’s post, there has been news that the RX 9070 series pricing will only rise. This originally came from large Swedish retailer Inet, which revealed that the MSRP pricing only applied to “the first shipment of each model”.

Following that revelation, we spotted a post on Reddit that claims UK retailer Ebuyer also only has a “limited number of units at the price offered by AMD,” confirming that the customer’s pre-order has been canceled and refunded after the card they wanted to buy “sold out at that price.”

Based on this information, it’s safe to say that retailers have a limited amount of MSRP stock, and it is only set to rise now that the initial batch of graphics cards has sold out. So, despite Azor saying $549 and $599 pricing is encouraged, it doesn’t seem like it will be enforced very much, if at all.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.