Gigabyte RX 6950 XT Australia Listing Hints at Extreme Prices

What looks like an official Gigabyte product registration on the Eurasian Economic Commission regulator website hints at an impending launch of refreshed Radeon RX 6X50 series graphics cards. This is interesting in its own right, with model numbers indicating Gigabyte is preparing to launch AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, RX 6750 XT, and RX 6650 XT models, plus a couple of low-spec RX 6400 models for good measure. These will look to compete with the best graphics cards, and prolific hardware leaker momomo_us has thrown in some early pricing from Australia that suggests AMD may hope to sell the RX 6950 XT for more than Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. Or perhaps more likely is that the retailer is hoping to capitalize on early adopters with an inflated price.

Above you can see a screen grab showing the newly unearthed EEC listing, with the graphics card models highlighted. You can see references made to models like the "GV-R695XTAORUSX WB-16GD, GV-R695XTGAMING OC-16GD, GV-R695XTGAMING-16GD." These are typical Gigabyte codenames, eschewing zeros in the graphics card designations.

Keep in mind that EEC registrations are sometimes a good sign of things to come, but they don't always become retail products, so take the news with a pinch of salt.

The first of these three RX 6950 XT cards seems to be Aorus branded, and looks like a sibling of the Aorus Radeon RX 6900 XT Xtreme Waterforce WB 16G (GV-R69XTAORUSX WB-16GD). As implied by the name, the card comes equipped with a water block (WB) card, for those with liquid cooled PC setups. The other two RX 6950 XT cards look to be Gigabyte branded members of the Gaming family, one with a factory overclock.

Moving along, we see three potential Radeon RX 6750 XT graphics cards. Again there's one Aorus branded SKU and two Gigabyte Gaming models. Next comes a quartet of Radeon RX 6650 XT graphics card codenames. There won't be an Aorus model, at least in the regions covered by the EEC. The best RX 6650 XT models from Gigabyte will be the Gaming sub-brand, with the value orientated Eagle brand getting a showing as well. Both Gaming and Eagle models will include a reference clock and overclocked SKU.

Bringing up the rear, the EEC listing includes a pair of RX 6400 graphics cards. Originally, AMD said the RX 6400 would be an OEM-only part for system builders, but it looks increasingly likely that we'll see the card at retail. Performance will naturally be slower than the already rather anemic RX 6500 XT, however, so hopefully the price will make up for the lack of performance and features.

Australian Pricing Indicators

As noted earlier, momomo_us linked to some Australian etailers advertising graphics cards with the GV-R695XTGAMING-OC-16GD codename. Oddly, all sites linked describe the graphics card as a Radeon RX 6900 XT, not RX 6950 XT, but they're using the new codename.

Image 1 of 3

Prices for the GV-R695XTGAMING-OC-16GD are between Au$3,241 and Au$3,320. In one screenshot you can see that this is about the same price as some models of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti. Convert that to USD and subtract VAT and the price for an RX 6950 XT is around the $2,150 mark, at least according to these early listings.

At the time of writing, Nvidia's RTX 3090 Ti graphics cards in the US can be found at or near the $1,999 MSRP, as long as you are happy with a triple fan air-cooled design. Whether the Australian online prices are just placeholders and may change on release remains to be seen.

Right now, the Radeon RX 6900 XT can be found for sale starting at $1,070, with an additional $50 mail-in rebate. That's a far cry from the $2,000+ prices we saw last year at the height of the cryptocurrency mining boom, but GPU prices are dropping rapidly and there are rumors of AMD and Nvidia oversupply. Even with custom liquid-cooled cards, it's difficult to imagine an upgraded RX 6900 XT with faster RAM and higher clocks going for basically double that price.