Although there are plenty of AMD’s Radeon RX 9070-series graphics cards on the market, many of them are sold at prices significantly higher than their recommended, $549 / $599, which naturally leaves many consumers and market observers frustrated. Hardware Unboxed accused AMD of setting unrealistically low recommended prices. However, AMD denies the accusations and says that graphics cards that adhere to default specifications will retail at recommended prices.
“It is inaccurate that $549/$599 MSRP is launch-only pricing,” said Frank Azor, head of consumer and gaming marketing at AMD. “We expect cards to be available from multiple vendors at $549/$599 (excluding region-specific tariffs and/or taxes) based on the work we have done with our AIB partners, and more are coming. At the same time, the AIBs have different premium configurations at higher price points and those will also continue.”
When developers of graphics cards set manufacturer-suggested retail prices (MSRP), they consider the default specifications and bill of materials (BOM) cost of their reference designs. In most cases, MSRPs leave makers of graphics cards, distributors, retailers, and other participants of the supply chain a fair margin as companies like AMD and Nvidia do not want their partners to fail.
However, that margin is not always sufficient for manufacturers, as they tend to suffer from fluctuating prices of materials (e.g., copper foil) and components. Therefore, actual producers of graphics add-in-boards tend to do two things: produce lower-cost graphics cards or higher-end boards.
On the one hand, they try to lower the costs of graphics cards with default specifications by experimenting with BOM and components. Some of such graphics cards may retail even below MSRP (though not at launch week or month) and work just fine, thanks to the experience that companies like Asus or Sapphire have.