In its latest Q2 financial report, AMD had good news for investors and fans of Radeon graphics cards. Gaming revenue was up 73% compared to this time last year, and no small part of this has been down to the success of the RX 9000-series of graphics cards. So much so, that in an earnings call, AMD's CEO Dr Lisa Su confirmed that demand was "very strong" and "outpaced supply."
Of course, anyone who has tried to find a Radeon RX 9070 XT at MSRP will already know this, because they're all wildly over AMD's suggested price. It perhaps doesn't help that Team Red only has three RDNA 4-powered cards that gamers are interested in: the aforementioned 9070 XT, the slightly slower 9070, and the 16 GB 9060 XT.
Supplies of its last-gen RX 7000-series have all but dried up, with just the RX 7600 being readily available. You can still pick up other RDNA 3 cards, if you don't mind paying more than you really should, but few are now worth buying when the current gen is just so much better.
AMD hasn't said how much of the $1.1 billion gaming revenue is down to Radeon sales, but it has shifted a lot of them, and not just directly to retailers. It wasn't that long ago that finding a good gaming PC with a Radeon graphics card was quite a challenge, but now the best PC bargains come with an RX 9070 XT or 9060 XT (and a Ryzen CPU, naturally).
In other words, OEMs and system builders are snapping up Radeons for their models because they're fast, feature-rich, and arguably better value for money than any Nvidia equivalent.
Truth be told, though, no matter how many RX 9000 cards AMD has sold, the bulk of the gaming division's income will come from consoles. The PlayStation 5, PlayStation 5 Pro, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S all sport a custom AMD processor.
Sony and Microsoft are both retaining AMD's services for their next generation of consoles, so even though console unit sales are declining (as they're nearing the end of their lifecycles), money will still be coming in from R&D payments.
That's good news for the future of Radeon GPUs, as Sony and AMD worked together to develop FSR 4, the first version of AMD's upscaling and frame generation tech to directly use AI. As this relationship continues, the fruits of the collaboration will roll out to PCs, both for discrete graphics cards and for the APUs that power laptops and handheld gaming devices.
Now, if AMD can just sort out its supply chain and perhaps knock a little off the price tag while it's at it, perhaps more of us can enjoy a Radeon-powered gaming session or two. Because there are plenty of PC gamers who certainly want to, that's for sure.
