Intel is not even manufacturing these, they are TSMC 7nm so they are competing for the same fab capacity that everyone else is using.
Nvidia's pricing as a result is completely fake. Like the claimed "$330 3060" in fact starts at $400 and rapidly goes up from there, with MSRP's on 3060's as high as $560.
But a 6900XT is available for $3100 at my local store... and the 3090 is $2100. Between the two it's not hard to see why the NVIDIA cards are selling and the AMD cards are sitting on the shelves, the AMD cards are 50% more expensive for the same performance.
As for why that is - which is the point I think you wanted to address, and decided to try and impute into my comment - who knows. Price are "sticky" (retailers don't want to mark down prices and take a loss) and AMD moves fewer cards in general. Maybe that means that prices are "stickier for longer" with AMD. Or maybe it's another thing like Vega where AMD set the MSRP so low that partners can't actually build and sell a card for a profit at competitive prices. But in general, regardless of why - the prices for AMD cards are generally higher, and when they go down the AMD cards sell out too. The inventory that is available is available because it's overpriced.
(and for both brands, the pre-tariff MSRPs are essentially a fiction at this point apart from the reference cards and will probably never be met again.)
That's just your store being dumb, then. The 6900 XT is averaging about $1,500 brand new on eBay[0] while the 3090 is going for about $2,500[1]. Even on Newegg, the cheapest in-stock 6900 XT card is $1,700[2] while the cheapest 3090 is $3,000[3]. Everything I've read suggests that the AMD cards, while generally a little slower than their Nvidia counterparts (especially when you factor in ray-tracing), give you way more bang for your buck.
> the prices for AMD cards are generally higher
This is just not true. There may be several reasons for the Nvidia cards being out of stock more often than AMD: better performance; stronger brand; lower production counts; poor perception of AMD drivers; specific games being optimized for Nvidia; or pretty much anything else. But at this point, pricing is set by supply and demand, not by arbitrary MSRPs set by Nvidia/AMD, so claiming that AMD cards are priced too high is absolutely incorrect.
[0]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=6900xt&_sacat...
[1]: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=3090&_sacat=0...
[2]: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709%20601359957&Order=1
[3]: https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709%20601357248&Order=1
But Nvidia has Ampere on both TSMC 7nm (GA100) and Samsung's 8nm (GA102). The TSMC variant has a significantly higher density at 65.6M / mm² vs. 45.1M / mm². Comparing across architectures is murkey, but we also know that the TSMC 7nm 6900XT clocks a lot higher than the Samsung 8nm RTX 3080/3090 while also drawing less power. There's of course a lot more to clock speeds & power draw in an actual product than the raw fab transistor performance, but it's still a data point.
So there's both density & performance evidence to suggest TSMC's 7nm is meaningfully better than Samsung's 8nm.
Even going off of marketing names, Samsung has a 7nm as well and they don't pretend their 8nm is just one-worse than the 7nm. The 8nm is an evolution of the 10nm node while the 7nm is itself a new node. According to Samsung's marketing flowcharts, anyway. And analysis suggests Samsung's 7nm is competitive with TSMC's 7nm.
There's a lot of fab capacity under construction. 2-3 years out, semiconductor glut again.
This is one of the smartest moves by Intel, make their own stuff and consume production from all their competitors, which do nothing but paper designs. Nvidia and especially AMD took a risk not being in the fabrication business, and now we'll see the full repercussions. It's a good play (outsourcing) in good times, not so much when things get tight like today.
Probably not. AMD has had their N7/N6 orders in for years.
They're just budging in line with their superior firepower. Intel even bought out first dibs on TSMC 3nm out from under Apple.
There's no evidence this is happening and people with TSMC experience say it's not happening.
Nvidia and especially AMD took a risk not being in the fabrication business
Yes, and it paid off dramatically. If AMD stayed with their in-house fabs (now GloFo) they'd probably be dead on 14nm now.
AMD on TSMC 3nm for Zen5. Will be squeezed by Intel and Apple- https://videocardz.com/newz/amd-3nm-zen5-apus-codenamed-stri...
Intel consuming a good portion of TSMC 3nm- https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/intel-locks-down-a...
I see zero upside with these developments for AMD, and to a lesser degree, Nvidia, who are better diversified with Samsung and also rumored to be in talks with fabricating at Intel as well.
This doesn't really work. If there is more demand, they'll build more fabs. It doesn't happen overnight -- that's why we're in a crunch right now -- but we're talking about years of lead time here.
TSMC is also not stupid. It's better for them for their customers to compete with each other instead of having to negotiate with a monopolist, so their incentive is to make sure none of them can crush the others.
> I see zero upside with these developments for AMD, and to a lesser degree, Nvidia
If Intel uses its own fabs, Intel makes money and uses the money to improve Intel's process which AMD can't use. If Intel uses TSMC's fabs, TSMC makes money and uses the money to improve TSMC's process which AMD does use.
It depends how much money is involved. I don't think TSMC, nor any business is the master chess player you're envisioning, losing billions to instead worry about AMD's woes. But rather consider AMD's troubles as something they'll have to sort out on their own in due time. They're on their own.
Now, AMD and TSMC do have a good relationship. But large infusions of wealth corrupt even the most stalwart companions. This is one of those things that people don't need to debate, we'll see the results on 3nm. At a minimum, it looks like Intel is going to push AMD out of TSMC's leading nodes. There's no way to size this up as good news for AMD.
>If Intel uses TSMC's fabs, TSMC makes money and uses the money to improve TSMC's process which AMD does use.
TSMC is going to make money without Intel anyway. Choking AMD may not be their intention, but it's certainly a guaranteed side effect of it. Intel makes so much product that they are capable of using up their own space, and others. And now the GPUs are coming. Intel makes 10-times the profit AMD does per year. If AMD didn't have an x86 license, no one would utter these two companies names in the same sentence.