AMD RX 7000 GPU scams persist at Amazon, and it's not just Sapphire — be sure to double-check the seller

Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Radeon RX 7900 XTX (Image credit: AMD)

The Radeon RX 7900 XTX is one of the best graphics cards on the market, so it's perhaps unsurprising that scammers are preying on less-experienced consumers who are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars. If you're in the market for a new Radeon RX 7000-series graphics card, pay extra attention to the seller, especially if you're buying on Amazon.

Sapphire, one of AMD's premium AIB partners, has been warning consumers about fake Amazon listings for the company's custom Radeon RX 7000-series graphics cards since last month. Sapphire recently issued another warning to its consumers to make sure purchases on Amazon are sold and shipped by Amazon.com.

The reason for the warning? The company has recently received feedback from concerned buyers and victims about scam sellers. Sapphire has urged consumers to be careful when adding products linked from the "Sapphire Technology Store" on Amazon — that's basically just an auto-generated listing of Sapphire products. The scam listings may be the first to come up when buyers add the item to their carts. Unfortunately, Sapphire has no control over this, so it's down to Amazon to fix the mechanism.

It's understandable why Sapphire is uneasy with all the Amazon scams out there, as the majority of them involve the brand's products. You don't generally see fake listings with Biostar or ASRock Radeon graphics cards. That's not to take a dig at other brands, but Sapphire, along with XFX, are the most popular and trusted vendors for AMD's Radeon graphics cards. Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI are also trusted brands, but they don't seem to get as many scam listings either.

Radeon RX 7000-series Amazon listings with laughably low prices have been around for months. For example, some Radeon RX 7900 XT graphics cards were showing up for as low as $399 during Amazon Prime Day. While Amazon has put in some additional effort to remove the phony listings, they're still popping up because the scammers just make new accounts to put up new listings. Just yesterday we saw many RDNA 3 products, including the Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7600, with clearly fake prices — about half what you'd expect to pay.

The bogus listings claim nonsense like "Regularly $999.99, 57% off!" on models such as the Radeon 7900 XTX. There's no way a retailer would slash the pricing on a current-generation graphics card by more than half, not when most other listings are priced much higher. With the recent ban on GeForce RTX 4090 sales in China, there has been a rising demand for RDNA 3 graphics cards, such as the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT, so there's little chance legitimate sellers are going to cut prices so low. If anything, AMD's Radeon RX 7000-series graphics card prices are likely to be going up, not down.

Regardless of whether you're shopping on Amazon, Newegg, Walmart, or anywhere else, it's always best to check the seller and the sanity of pricing before pulling the trigger on expensive pieces of hardware, such as processors or graphics cards. Special occasions like Amazon Prime Day or Black Friday can bring juicy discounts, but when the price sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • Phaaze88
    Some common sense would help recognize obvious red flags, yeah?
    More and more appears to be lost as time goes on...
    Reply
  • plateLunch
    So what does one get when they order one of these boards? Or do they get anything?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    I recently had an amazon seller ship me a different model SSD than the one I ordered. The capacity was the same, so I'll bet they were hoping people didn't notice.

    It came in OEM packaging, which was little more than an anti-static bag. It had no external labels. They sealed the bag by putting a sticker the end of the drive, where the identifying information was located. That made it seem rather deliberate.

    Fortunately, the bag had enough extra room that I could slide the drive over and get a picture of the label, which I then zoomed to see the model number. To get a picture through 3 layers of anti-static bag (because the end was folded over at that exact spot), I had to put it in direct sunlight, but angled so the reflection off the bag didn't blind the camera, and zoom it so that nothing else in frame blew out the auto-exposure.

    In the end, the seller honored my return and refunded me the money. Some of their feedback indicated that they charged a "restocking" fee, for those who returned merchandise after opening it, even if the wrong model had been sent. If those were also in "OEM" packaging, I'll bet they turned around the same merch in a new bag, and sold it as "new" to another buyer.
    Reply
  • ilukey77
    Amazon is a bit of a hit and miss thing some times ..

    I always buy my computer components from a computer shop be it online or in store ..

    that said the first computer i built i bought all the parts off amazon but all of them were shipped from amazon not 3rd party sellers on amazon ..

    Also pays to know ( as ive noticed on amazon au ) some actual Aussie computer sellers trade through amazon like scorptec and jw computers which most Aussie pc builders have used and are solid companies !!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    ilukey77 said:
    but all of them were shipped from amazon not 3rd party sellers on amazon ..
    I nearly always do this. The case I mentioned above was one where I took a calculated risk and was wiling even to write off the purchase price, if it came to that.

    BTW, the seller shipped it in a paperboard envelope, of the type you normally use to send documents. There was nothing to protect the M.2 SSD, other than a thin sheet of the kind of bubblewrap with the small bubbles. So, it seemed like that seller was possibly even hoping to collect insurance money from the shipper, if the drive got damaged during shipment?
    Reply
  • ilukey77
    bit_user said:
    I nearly always do this. The case I mentioned above was one where I took a calculated risk and was wiling even to write off the purchase price, if it came to that.

    BTW, the seller shipped it in a paperboard envelope, of the type you normally use to send documents. There was nothing to protect the M.2 SSD, other than a thin sheet of the kind of bubblewrap with the small bubbles. So, it seemed like that seller was possibly even hoping to collect insurance money from the shipper, if the drive got damaged during shipment?
    guess one saving grace is amazon offers kinda a no questions asked returns system ..

    Bit annoying having to return the item blah blah but still handy if you get scammed !!
    Reply
  • Geef
    The real bummer is that people here reading Tomshardware are able to figure these things out pretty quick. There are probably a lot of people who've been scammed and never knew the difference.
    Reply
  • ilukey77
    ^^ kinda why people should always do there research first read reviews and the bad ones first not the i loved it it was the best product ever ones !!

    the actual bad reviews like the ones about the product not the ones where it was the wrong color ..

    you can usually tell if its the product is bad to the picky people that just comment bad because they are bitter !!
    Reply
  • bit_user
    ilukey77 said:
    guess one saving grace is amazon offers kinda a no questions asked returns system ..
    Not for marketplace sellers, or at least in this case. When I tried to return it, they directed me to do so through the seller. Maybe it's different if the merchandise is actually shipped by Amazon - in this case, it wasn't.

    ilukey77 said:
    Bit annoying having to return the item blah blah but still handy if you get scammed !!
    I did once have a seller ship me fewer items than I ordered, though also shipped by the seller (not Amazon). In that case, I reached out to Amazon and they were able to issue me a partial refund. That was before the incident I mentioned above, so I don't know if there was a change in policy or if the reason I wanted a refund is what determined that I could do it through Amazon.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    ilukey77 said:
    ^^ kinda why people should always do there research first read reviews and the bad ones first not the i loved it it was the best product ever ones !!
    Also, avoid new sellers!! The case where I got shipped fewer items than ordered was by a fairly new seller. When I checked their reviews, they had only a few and were basically all positive at the time of my order. By the time I got the package, a bunch of negative reviews had come in.

    If you buy from a seller with overwhelmingly positive feedback and a long track record, you're much less likely to get ripped off.
    Reply