AMD has decided that now isn’t the time to slow down new GPU releases. Instead, the manufacturer came to the conclusion that today was the perfect day to release yet another graphics card to the silicon-starved market. Today, AMD released a variant of its Radeon 6800 XT. No, it doesn’t come with more memory or compute units, or some wonderful tech that lets it handle ray tracing well. Instead, AMD slapped a coat of black paint on the Radeon 6800 XT and called it a day.
This GPU is officially titled the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black, and it sure lives up to that name. Matte black replaces the grey found on the regular 6800 XT’s fans and the red stripe along its side. Admittedly, the card looks pretty sleek, and anyone going for an all-black build is probably giddy that AMD released this card. It’s a shame then that they won’t get their hands on one, at least for a while. The card went for sale on AMD’s store today and has already sold out.
It should be no surprise that the RX 6800 XT Midnight Black sold out as quickly as it did. Not only are consumers still looking for any GPU they can get their hands on, but this is a pretty solid one. Its specs are no different from the regularly colored 6800 XT. Altogether, it sports the same 72 compute units, 128 MB memory cache, 16 GB of GDDR6 memory, and same base clock speed. AMD even sweetened the pot by pricing this card the exact same as it does the regular 6800 XT. You’d expect variants like these to cost at least a bit more, but not this time.
When can we expect more graphics cards?
The Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black selling out as quickly as it did is par for course at this point. Manufacturers simply can’t make GPUs to match the demand from consumers. That’s due to a plethora of different issues, from semiconductor shortages to the ongoing pandemic.
(credit: AMD)
However, that all could be changing soon. In an interview, Radeon Technologies executive Riche Corpus said that AMD would be producing more cards soon, by the end of Q1 this year. The sad part is that Q1 ended as of March 31, and we still haven’t seen more AMD GPUs on the market. It’s safe to assume that AMD is still trying to make more cards, but the company just might not be able to or Corpus overpromised.
