Oh, AMD. And… Intel and Nvidia. Oh… GPU makers generally. This whole release cycle sucks. Firstly the Intel B580 launched to lots of hype, but it barely had any stock - and now it’s 20-25% above MSRP. Then NVIDIA launched the RTX 50 series and… well, we all know how that went! Low stock, missing ROPs, melting cards/connectors, removal of 32 bit PhysX (etc etc). Then AMD released their long-awaited RX 9070XT and said there was wide availability - which seems to be true in America, but in the rest of the world, there’s low stock levels and often cards are selling for more than MSRP.

So in this video/rant, I wanted to discuss my thoughts about the 2025 graphics card launches - including my experience with it - and then I discuss what we can maybe do about it.

(Link to direct YouTube video)

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone! Building computers used to be fun and stress-free. It was quite a nice time actually, but nowadays it feels like Intel, Nvidia, and AMD kind of know how to play the system. I guess there’s always been an element of this, but recently it feels like companies will, you know, launch a GPU to much fanfare and loads of the big tech channels do glowing reviews talking about how the $250 or £550 card is going to transform things and it’s really good at MSRP. But as we later learn, it’s actually really freaking hard to buy one at MSRP unless you live in America and live near a Micro Center. And obviously, if you do and you recently bought like a 9070 XT, then credit to you, you know, that’s a really good thing. But obviously for the rest of us in the rest of the world, we’re often not so lucky with things either going straight from out of stock to out of stock, or things going out of stock 40 minutes before the actual launch time.

Or in the case of the 9070 XT yesterday, the main reseller Overclockers, their website was basically down from 2:00 p.m. until like 8:00 p.m. And yes, there were some drops throughout the day, but it was pure luck as to whether you’d actually get through the CloudFlare CDN in order to be able to check out before the website crashed yet again. So it’s frustrating all around, and many people just seem to be completely sick of things.

And so I just wanted to do this video to rant some more about how everything is out of stock, but also talk through—towards the end I’ll talk through what we can do about it. And I also wanted to discuss some of the counterarguments that some people come up with.

But anyway, let me back up a bit. At the end of 2024 and then into 2025, Intel released the B580 graphics card to loads of fanfare, and people were desperate for this particular card because having like a $250 or £250 card which often plays many modern games quite well was obviously a massive benefit to many of us. But what we quickly noticed is it was a paper launch. You know, it was very, very hard to buy it at MSRP. I actually had two pre-orders open at the two UK retailers that actually were selling that card, and they both said, “Yeah, we’ll have stock,” and then when the actual launch day happened, they didn’t have stock and the pre-order got cancelled. So that was completely great.

And before you know it, now the B580 is often for £280 to £300. And then obviously, you know, Hardware Canucks and Hardware Unboxed actually found that the card had massive driver overhead issues. So it kind of felt that that card then just disappeared into oblivion, and people often went for like, you know, they either overpay for it or they bought like an RTX 4060, which in some cases offered much better performance at a similar price point.

Then we had Nvidia’s turn, and we all know how that happened. You know, a big launch event: “5070 equals a 4090! Wide availability!” And then the launch happened and it was a complete joke. Overclockers in the UK literally had less than 10 5090s available, and their website crashed yet again on actual launch day. And yes, Scan did have more availability, but it was still very, very hard to buy a 5090. And even now you can’t actually pre-order one. You can pre-order a 5080, I believe, and obviously the 5070 Ti and things, but not a 5090.

And then we come to like melting connectors and missing ROPs and, you know, fake frames and all of that. So the entire launch was a complete joke. And then the cards that are available are for sale for a massive markup. You got the 5090, which is sometimes more than like $3,000 or €3,000 or £3,000. And then you got like the 5080, which is at least 50% more than MSRP in many cases, and it’s just really rubbish.

And then, you know, even the 5070 Ti, which is in stock—it’s only in stock because it’s massively overpriced and no one wants to pay, you know, £900 for a 5070 Ti when it’s just not worth that.

And then we come to AMD. You know, the 9070 and the 9070 XT launched to much fanfare earlier this week, and obviously we were all really excited about it. And as we know, retailers have been having stock for many months, hence the massive stock cube that we actually seen on the Overclockers forums, and that is brilliant to see. But then actually when people dug into the detail, a lot of these retailers including Overclockers actually posted really useful information basically saying that there’s a rebate system in place. And the MSRP rating available for that card—that MSRP is only available to a small number of customers. In the UK, for example, the ASRock Steel Legend, the white one, they only had 10 units available at MSRP, and basically Overclockers’ own staff said, “That’s going to sell out immediately,” and basically you don’t have a chance of getting that.

And then you look at the other cards—they had around 100, they said, available at MSRP. Things like the Sapphire Pulse and the Gigabyte card and the PowerColor Reaper. And I think Overclockers said that once the 100 or so batch of those at MSRP actually sell out, they’ll go up by, you know, 30 to 60. But overnight now, they’ve actually gone up by at least £70. So no longer can you get an MSRP, you know, 9070 XT in the UK, all throughout Europe, or much of the world. You know, now you’re paying at least 10 to 15% more than that.

Really, AMD have been very smart, I think, with this release. You know, they said there’s wide availability, but not necessarily wide availability at MSRP. And actually throughout the day yesterday, I was keeping an eye on things, and many of us were actually seeing the prices go up in real time. So with Ebuyer, who’s another big retailer in the UK, you could literally have it in your basket, and the moment you’d click on checkout, the price would go up. I think it was like £60 or £70, and a lot of retailers actually done that.

And now obviously Overclockers, you know, the price—they did a final drop last night, and then the prices of everything have gone up. What you noticed is even the—I think there was a £699 card. When Overclockers lifted the price of the other cards, the MSRP ones, then what actually happened was those other cards went up to like £729. So everything just had a price bump, and it’s all just really, really frustrating.

And I know that, you know, people argue you’re not forced to actually buy these cards, and I sort of get that argument. But there are people out there whose graphics cards are broken or very, very old, and they’ve been waiting for an upgrade for many years. And, you know, actually when you look at a game like Indiana Jones, you do kind of need to get a new graphics card to play that, especially due to the ray tracing requirements and things like that.

So I don’t really buy the argument that some people make on Reddit and places saying, “No one’s forcing you to buy them.” That is true, but you kind of still need to buy them. And also, I was speaking to someone on Reddit the other day who said, “Well, just go to a local shop and buy it there.” The problem though is, many—apart from in America—many countries just don’t have retail stores anymore. You can’t just walk in and buy hardware.

Here in the UK, I think there’s only one I’m aware of, which is Scan. They have a physical store up in Bolton, which is like a 5-hour drive for me. And actually, they weren’t selling the 9070 XT in store, so even if I’d driven up there and queued up, well, that would have been pointless because they wouldn’t have sold to me anyway. They just didn’t have enough stock.

So yeah, it’s frustrating all around. Really, it feels like Intel, Nvidia, and AMD—I think they know what they’re doing, you know. But Nvidia actually are just sticking two fingers up at gamers, to be honest. But Intel and AMD, I think, have been very clever to, like, with YouTubers and actually launch their graphics cards at a really good MSRP price, but then really that’s “vaporware.” That’s a paper launch in many cases.

But what can we do about it? I guess the main options are: we can wait and hope the stock gets replenished throughout the year, which it will, of course, and the market forces then, you know, competition actually drives down the price. And I’m not sure whether Nvidia are going to cut their prices. You know, they earn so much money from AI that gamers are an afterthought nowadays. But AMD do tend to be a bit more competitive, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we do start seeing 9070 XTs, you know, start to lower in price and go towards the £600 level or $600 level or whatever in time.

The other option is, if you were, you know, really wanting to game at like 4K, maybe reconsider that and get a really good quality 1440p monitor. Maybe an OLED one or a high refresh rate one or something like that. I think that can lead to a pretty good gaming experience, but obviously each to their own. And I think prices might come down a little bit in the future. I think really, because Nvidia have been uncompetitive for so long, there’s just so much pent-up demand amongst gamers. And actually, I don’t think even AMD realized just how much demand there would be for their cards.

So I’m not trying to hate on them in this video or hate on Intel or anything else, but I just think in general, you know, the graphics card market is just a bit of a mess. There’s a shortage of cards, there’s lots of demand out there, and it’s really frustrating.

If you did manage to pick up a card, you know, for MSRP, please let me know in the comments. Or if you have a plan going forward for what you’re going to do because you didn’t get the graphics card you wanted, then please let me know a comment as well about that. And other than that, I hope you enjoyed my rant. If you did, please click the thumbs up button and please subscribe to see more videos like this. Thanks for watching!