Review AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT Review: The Memory Compromise

[ottonis]

If there was more effective competition at the design and manufacturing end of things, there would be more supply diversity throughout the supply chain to supply them and shortages probably wouldn't have been as severe if not avoided altogether.

Apple may up the ante sooner rather than later with their upcoming M1 - successor APUs, which are rumored to have substantially increased iGPU performance. Then we will see what Intel is going to do with their DG2 (and other, higher specced dedicated GPUs) and whether or not they are actually serious about it. However, this will materialize only after Intel will have their new fabs fully operational. Until then, they will certainly use every available wafer for their CPUs/APUs.
Some (very slight) hopes can be had for a potential expansion of already ongoing cooperation between AMD and Samsung, and maybe Samsung could provide some production capacities for future (lower grade) Radeon GPUs (rather unlikely because of Nvidia).
So, there is some hope for more capacities and more competition....

 

[aalkjsdflkj]

I'm confused by all the discussion about MSRP. Isn't MSRP completely irrelevant right now? From a consumer's perspective, there's no difference between having an MSRP of $50 or $700 for this card. The only way to get one will be from someone like Gigabyte or MSI and they'll set whatever price the market will bear, and scalpers will raise that even further. If magic happens and the GPU shortage disappears in a couple of weeks then MSRP will still be irrelevant because if they're overpriced at an MSRP of $379 then the manufacturers will need to drop the asking price until it's actually priced properly for the market.
If the market were approaching normal then yes, MSRP would matter a little because knowing that it's overpriced would steer me towards something like a 3060 or 3060ti as a better value, but given the craziness of the current market MSRP seems like a weird thing to get worked up over.

I'm also surprised at the concern over 8GB of VRAM and lower memory bus. AMD clearly targeted this for 1080P (look at their press release - it probably mentions 1080P a dozen times). It seems like they targeted this card for excellent 1080P performance minus ray tracing, and it should be good at that resolution for quite a while. Yes, the VRAM, bus, and Infinity Cache make it a lot less capable at higher resolutions but the performance at 1080P makes it look like those were the right decisions for the majority of gamers who are still using that resolution according to Steam surveys.

It seems to me that if you're looking for a GPU to use with a 1080 display and you don't care about ray tracing very much, this would be a good option once prices drop to a reasonable level. A 3060 or 3060ti might be better depending on your priorities, but it seems like this has a place in the market.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I'm confused by all the discussion about MSRP. Isn't MSRP completely irrelevant right now? From a consumer's perspective, there's no difference between having an MSRP of $50 or $700 for this card. The only way to get one will be from someone like Gigabyte or MSI and they'll set whatever price the market will bear, and scalpers will raise that even further. If magic happens and the GPU shortage disappears in a couple of weeks then MSRP will still be irrelevant because if they're overpriced at an MSRP of $379 then the manufacturers will need to drop the asking price until it's actually priced properly for the market.
If the market were approaching normal then yes, MSRP would matter a little because knowing that it's overpriced would steer me towards something like a 3060 or 3060ti as a better value, but given the craziness of the current market MSRP seems like a weird thing to get worked up over.

I'm also surprised at the concern over 8GB of VRAM and lower memory bus. AMD clearly targeted this for 1080P (look at their press release - it probably mentions 1080P a dozen times). It seems like they targeted this card for excellent 1080P performance minus ray tracing, and it should be good at that resolution for quite a while. Yes, the VRAM, bus, and Infinity Cache make it a lot less capable at higher resolutions but the performance at 1080P makes it look like those were the right decisions for the majority of gamers who are still using that resolution according to Steam surveys.

It seems to me that if you're looking for a GPU to use with a 1080 display and you don't care about ray tracing very much, this would be a good option once prices drop to a reasonable level. A 3060 or 3060ti might be better depending on your priorities, but it seems like this has a place in the market.

The MSRP matters less than street prices, but those often reflect the MSRP. RTX 3060 costs about $700 right now, RTX 3060 Ti costs about $930 right now, at least on eBay. But there are other ways to get GPUs, for closer to MSRP, and all indications are that Nvidia RTX cards are getting into customer hands better than AMD's RX 6000 cards. Fundamentally, however, this is not an awesome card. It's about equal to an RX 5700 XT, a card that launched at $400 two years ago and quickly fell to $325-$350 pricing for over a year. Just because miners are willing to spend $900+ on those cards now doesn't make a $600 or even $500 RX 6600 XT a good deal. It also doesn't make the $600+ RTX 3060 a good deal.

What's it worth? I wouldn't pay more than about $300 personally, but then I'm not in the market for a midrange card that's priced as a high-end card. If your only choices are RX 6600 XT at $550 and RTX 3060 at $600, I'd lean toward AMD. If it's $400 for an RTX 3060 and $500 for the RX 6600 XT, I'd go for Nvidia. But what I'd much rather have (or recommend at least) is a $450–$500 RTX 3060 Ti. EVGA has those sort of available via its queue system, but I have no idea how long the wait is. By the time someone can buy an RTX 3060 Ti for $500 or less, it might be too late.

 

[Valantar]

The opening page of this review had me utterly baffled. It says things like "this is by far the most expensive mainstream GPU we have ever seen", yet... the 3060 Ti exists at a higher MSRP and likely higher real world prices once the initial rush for these passes. Or is that somehow not in the same tier as the regular 3060? That would be pretty difficult to argue. Then it goes on to get negative marks for specifications alone (memory bus, amount and IC amount), despite the performance of the card clearly demonstrating that those specifications don't actually constitute a drawback at this level of performance. I mean, what are the standards here? Is it bad to be outperforming the competition with "worse" specs? That definitely sounds weird.

Is this a big cut from Navi 22? Obviously it is. Does it matter? Not as long as it performs well. And it clearly does. A reviewer giving negative marks for on-paper specs with no evidence for actual harm to performance from those specs? That's pretty worrying.

GPU prices are insane across the board, and AMD and their partners (or Nvidia) can't be blamed for that, but... at least let us try to compare things from the same baseline, yeah?

If the 3060 has 12GB of VRAM - so what? At its performance level, it will never, ever make use of that amount. Not even close. Period. 8GB is clearly no limitation for the 6600XT, and is unlikely to be so for the useful lifetime of the card. It took 5+ years for 4GB to become too low for AAA games at 1080P Ultra. Are you now expecting it to take just one or two for twice that amount to be too little? 'Cause that's not how VRAM usage in games grow. It's generally slow and steady. And the bandwidth and smaller OC clearly isn't doing any harm at resolutions where a GPU like this is actually able to keep up. Who cares if the 3060 is faster at 2160p when that still isn't even remotely playable?

There's a significant logical disconnect between the test data and the "analysis" of this review.

 

[InvalidError]

Is this a big cut from Navi 22? Obviously it is. Does it matter? Not as long as it performs well. And it clearly does.

Only as long as you don't push resolution or details in a way that stresses the VRAM bandwidth and capacity too much, otherwise its performance collapses from having only 128bits memory and 4.0x8 busses. Where RT is involved, the RTX3060(Ti) has a massive (50-100%) performance lead.

In a sane market, this would be worth $300 at the absolute most.

 

[fball922]

I think there has been an interesting discussion on MSRP vs street/market value, but I will chime in with one tidbit I didn't see anyone else mention- Market manipulation.

Scalpers are real, but don't be fooled by what is going on at eBay. Some cards are selling at outrageous prices, but many of those are being cycled back through. Scalpers use bot accounts to bid against real bidders and raise the prices. If the price goes beyond what a real person is willing to purchase it for, the auction ends as "sold" to the bot and the "transaction" is completed with the seller's own money. eBay takes its cut of the action, essentially a "marketing" fee for the scalper. This also has the effect of distorting "closed auction" searches (they appear to be selling at really high prices) and eBay's algorithms stating what a "good deal" looks like. eBay has NO incentive to stop this (they get theirs either way, sometimes multiple times) and it is hard to prove it is happening since you can no longer see the full name of the bidders.

I tend to agree that this is more of a "what the market will bear" situation, but still... There seems to be at least some other treachery afoot.

 

[Conahl]

Why spend >$400 on crap like this when I could just get an Xbox Series X for $500?

cause one already has quite the selection of games for their comp, and there is nothing on the xbox (or PS) that one wants to play ? thats the situation i am in. both PS an Xbox have no games that interest me, where i have plenty of games on my comp that i can play, but i still wouldnt buy any video card right now. so for now, im still using a 1060 strix 🙂

 

[LolaGT]

Sitting from a perspective of owning a 5700 xt that was 380 all up delivered to my door, I would not touch this card unless the street price was the same.
Like it or not, sometimes the only move is not to play the game.
If I absolutely had to game I would hunt up a PS4 and sit this whole mess out, or get my mind right that I am not going to play the latest and greatest on high res ultra.

 

[InvalidError]

If I absolutely had to game I would hunt up a PS4 and sit this whole mess out, or get my mind right that I am not going to play the latest and greatest on high res ultra.

In my case, it is more like "I already have a computer for other uses and don't want to throw more than $200 extra at it for relatively decent gaming" otherwise I'd just use the IGP.

 

[Giroro]

You know, I'm glad that AMD finally got around to making a $200 GPU.

I'm just very disappointed that they're charging $400 for it.

 

[Giroro]

The market has its own rules. As long as there is larger demand than the amount of GPUs AMD can produce, they will keep the prices high. That's just how (free) markets work.
You can't blame a company for maximizing their profits within the margins the market provides to them.
For a bottle of water, you usually pay less than a Dollar. Now, in the desert, with the next station being 500 miles away, you would pay even 10 Dollars (or 100?) for a bottle of water if you are thirsty.
This will not change as long as global GPU shortage is lasting.

This is exactly why capitalism only works for the common good when there is a fair and comparative market. This is why regulation is necessary, exactly why monopolies are illegal, and why people want to crack down on the tech oligarchs.

But in short, yes. You absolutely can blame a company for colluding to extort their customers, or for acting in an anti-competative way. You blame them in the same way you blame a mugger for holding you up at gunpoint.

 

[thestryker]

As I note in the review, Nvidia set the price for the RTX 3060 at $329. What happened? All the graphics card manufacturers (ASRock, EVGA, Gigabyte, MSI, PNY, Zotac, etc.) all raised their prices and took the profits. Yes, Nvidia still made plenty of money, but it could have made more money and left the AIB partners with less of the overall pie. And when it wasn't the AIBs jacking up prices (last year), we had scalpers buying everything using bots and putting the cards on eBay and other sites for then-atrocious prices. Except, those old prices look sort of nice in today's market.

The result is that AMD and Nvidia would be dumb to keep trying to sell cards for substantially lower prices than the market will bear. As long as enough people exist that will buy nearly every graphics card at an inflated price, the price of cards will trend upward until equilibrium is reached. If it's not AMD (eg, setting the price of the RX 6600 XT at $379) or Nvidia ($599 RTX 3070 Ti and $1,199 RTX 3080 Ti), it will be the AIBs or retailers or scalpers. Personally, I'd rather the companies doing the majority of the work — AMD and Nvidia — get the majority of the profits, rather than paying scalpers and other profiteers for doing nothing.

But yes, it still sucks that prices are high. They will continue to be high until supply increases and demand decreases.

In the Tech Power Up review of the Asus Radeon RX 6600XT Strix OC they mentioned the Asus reps telling them MSRP was $550 and another SKU was going to be $500 so the AIBs are getting their pound of flesh as well. This is without a doubt the worst rampant capitalism I've seen in the PC space in the 20 or so years I've been paying attention to it. I'd love to pin my hopes of buying a good video card to match my 3440x1440 display (managed to get a 1660 ti for $220 in Oct after the 30 series cards immediately poofed) on Intel, but their first run of GPUs is running through TSMC and likely going to end up in laptops primarily. At this rate it almost looks like anyone looking to pay a reasonable price is going to be waiting until the end of next year at best.

 

[watzupken]

In the Tech Power Up review of the Asus Radeon RX 6600XT Strix OC they mentioned the Asus reps telling them MSRP was $550 and another SKU was going to be $500 so the AIBs are getting their pound of flesh as well. This is without a doubt the worst rampant capitalism I've seen in the PC space in the 20 or so years I've been paying attention to it. I'd love to pin my hopes of buying a good video card to match my 3440x1440 display (managed to get a 1660 ti for $220 in Oct after the 30 series cards immediately poofed) on Intel, but their first run of GPUs is running through TSMC and likely going to end up in laptops primarily. At this rate it almost looks like anyone looking to pay a reasonable price is going to be waiting until the end of next year at best.

In my opinion, it will be a long wait in order to get any GPUs at MSRP. I believe the likes of EVGA still offer some cards at MSRP if you are ok to wait. Otherwise, if you find a card that is reasonably priced and within your budget, just get it and stick with it. This "supply issue" got me thinking that I should slow down when it comes to buying new hardware.

 

[Valantar]

Only as long as you don't push resolution or details in a way that stresses the VRAM bandwidth and capacity too much, otherwise its performance collapses from having only 128bits memory and 4.0x8 busses. Where RT is involved, the RTX3060(Ti) has a massive (50-100%) performance lead.

In a sane market, this would be worth $300 at the absolute most.

But can you show me a use case wher that actually happens? Yes, it underperforms in 2160p, but... so what? It wouldn't be playable with better bandwidth there anyhow. It doesn't have the compute/raster/shading resources required for that. It still outperforms the 3060 in 1440p, just by a bit less than in 1080p. And 8GB is going to be sufficient for 1080p for the lifetime of this GPU - its compute resources are going to hold it back far more than memory capacity. 8GB is also plenty for 1440p today in the vast majority of games (remember, VRAM allocated by a game is not equal to how much its actually using or needs), and the same point about struggling elsewhere first applies there too. As for bandwidth, the only game I've seen where that might be an issue is Doom Eternal (weird frame time spikes), but that might just as well be fixable with a driver update - we don't know yet.

As for RT performance: sure, but... that's the entire architecture. Nvidia's RT is better (plus all current RT titles are primarily developed for and thus heavily optimized for Nvidia's RTX). That has zero relation to the specific configuration of this GPU.

I entirely agree that this would be a $300 GPU in a sane world, but that ultimately doesn't affect how its relative performance is judged as everything else is equally insane.

Sitting from a perspective of owning a 5700 xt that was 380 all up delivered to my door, I would not touch this card unless the street price was the same.
Like it or not, sometimes the only move is not to play the game.
If I absolutely had to game I would hunt up a PS4 and sit this whole mess out, or get my mind right that I am not going to play the latest and greatest on high res ultra.

I hope you wouldn't buy this no matter what if you have a 5700XT considering that it's 5(here)-8%(TPU) faster at best. That would be the most unnecessary upgrade ever 😛

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

The opening page of this review had me utterly baffled. It says things like "this is by far the most expensive mainstream GPU we have ever seen", yet... the 3060 Ti exists at a higher MSRP and likely higher real world prices once the initial rush for these passes. Or is that somehow not in the same tier as the regular 3060? That would be pretty difficult to argue. Then it goes on to get negative marks for specifications alone (memory bus, amount and IC amount), despite the performance of the card clearly demonstrating that those specifications don't actually constitute a drawback at this level of performance. I mean, what are the standards here? Is it bad to be outperforming the competition with "worse" specs? That definitely sounds weird.

Is this a big cut from Navi 22? Obviously it is. Does it matter? Not as long as it performs well. And it clearly does. A reviewer giving negative marks for on-paper specs with no evidence for actual harm to performance from those specs? That's pretty worrying.

GPU prices are insane across the board, and AMD and their partners (or Nvidia) can't be blamed for that, but... at least let us try to compare things from the same baseline, yeah?

If the 3060 has 12GB of VRAM - so what? At its performance level, it will never, ever make use of that amount. Not even close. Period. 8GB is clearly no limitation for the 6600XT, and is unlikely to be so for the useful lifetime of the card. It took 5+ years for 4GB to become too low for AAA games at 1080P Ultra. Are you now expecting it to take just one or two for twice that amount to be too little? 'Cause that's not how VRAM usage in games grow. It's generally slow and steady. And the bandwidth and smaller OC clearly isn't doing any harm at resolutions where a GPU like this is actually able to keep up. Who cares if the 3060 is faster at 2160p when that still isn't even remotely playable?

There's a significant logical disconnect between the test data and the "analysis" of this review.

The RTX 3060 Ti costs $20 more and outperforms the RX 6600 XT across the board. It's not even close (unless every game happens to be like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which they aren't). This is a potentially slightly better card than an RTX 3060 12GB, but even then I'd have to look at street prices to determine which one I'd buy. If they're the same price, sure, get the RX 6600 XT. If the RTX 3060 ends up costing $50 less, I'd go Nvidia — because things like VRAM capacity, RT performance, and DLSS all still factor in at some level. Any more than that and it definitely goes Nvidia's way. There are multiple games that do benefit some from the 12GB on the RTX 3060 (Red Dead Redemption 2, Watch Dogs Legion, and Strange Brigade likes the extra bandwidth). Does it really need 12GB? Probably not, but Nvidia didn't give the GPU a 128-bit bus, which was the right call, and it didn't opt for 6GB VRAM, which was also the right call.

But the RTX 3060 Ti you discount because it's a higher MSRP (by $20) is a high-end card, and it's 12% faster at 1080p, 19% faster at 1440p, and 34% faster at 4K — and that's all without factoring in ray tracing or DLSS. With those enabled, the 3060 Ti is more than double the performance of the RX 6600 XT. It's not even close.

So choose your poison: It's barely better than RTX 3060 but costs more and struggles in certain situations, or it's far worse than the RTX 3060 Ti. If you really want an AMD card, the RX 6700 XT is the far better option. It actually beats the RTX 3060 Ti and currently costs about as much as the RTX 3060 (on eBay, anyway, which is the only way to get a card immediately if you want one). AMD's RDNA2 architecture seems to want more than 8GB VRAM in games where Nvidia's Ampere and Turing GPUs do fine with 8GB. Maybe drivers will fix that, but this is a mediocre bottom-of-the-high-end card masquerading as a mid-range card.

 

[-Fran-]

The RTX 3060 Ti costs $20 more and outperforms the RX 6600 XT across the board. It's not even close (unless every game happens to be like Assassin's Creed Odyssey, which they aren't). This is a potentially slightly better card than an RTX 3060 12GB, but even then I'd have to look at street prices to determine which one I'd buy. If they're the same price, sure, get the RX 6600 XT. If the RTX 3060 ends up costing $50 less, I'd go Nvidia — because things like VRAM capacity, RT performance, and DLSS all still factor in at some level. Any more than that and it definitely goes Nvidia's way. There are multiple games that do benefit some from the 12GB on the RTX 3060 (Red Dead Redemption 2, Watch Dogs Legion, and Strange Brigade likes the extra bandwidth). Does it really need 12GB? Probably not, but Nvidia didn't give the GPU a 128-bit bus, which was the right call, and it didn't opt for 6GB VRAM, which was also the right call.

But the RTX 3060 Ti you discount because it's a higher MSRP (by $20) is a high-end card, and it's 12% faster at 1080p, 19% faster at 1440p, and 34% faster at 4K — and that's all without factoring in ray tracing or DLSS. With those enabled, the 3060 Ti is more than double the performance of the RX 6600 XT. It's not even close.

So choose your poison: It's barely better than RTX 3060 but costs more and struggles in certain situations, or it's far worse than the RTX 3060 Ti. If you really want an AMD card, the RX 6700 XT is the far better option. It actually beats the RTX 3060 Ti and currently costs about as much as the RTX 3060 (on eBay, anyway, which is the only way to get a card immediately if you want one). AMD's RDNA2 architecture seems to want more than 8GB VRAM in games where Nvidia's Ampere and Turing GPUs do fine with 8GB. Maybe drivers will fix that, but this is a mediocre bottom-of-the-high-end card masquerading as a mid-range card.

Will you be following up with the eBay pricing watch and the retail pricing as well?

I've been looking at prices and they've been going down a lot in the EU, but it doesn't seem to be reflected in USA prices just yet.

Regards.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

Will you be following up with the eBay pricing watch and the retail pricing as well?

I've been looking at prices and they've been going down a lot in the EU, but it doesn't seem to be reflected in USA prices just yet.

Regards.

Yeah, for sure. There's not much data right now, but when I update the GPU price index in ~two weeks, we'll see what the RX 6600 XT cards are selling for on eBay. Given the relatively low hash rates, I hope it's $500 or less, but I suspect it won't be. Plus, there are those saying "RX 6600 XT is awesome for mining because it only needs 60W of power for 32MH/s!" I didn't corroborate that, yet, and if I were mining I wouldn't be super interested in building twice as many PCs just to use lower hashrate, lower power GPUs. But some will do it I'm sure.

 

[-Fran-]

Yeah, for sure. There's not much data right now, but when I update the GPU price index in ~two weeks, we'll see what the RX 6600 XT cards are selling for on eBay. Given the relatively low hash rates, I hope it's $500 or less, but I suspect it won't be. Plus, there are those saying "RX 6600 XT is awesome for mining because it only needs 60W of power for 32MH/s!" I didn't corroborate that, yet, and if I were mining I wouldn't be super interested in building twice as many PCs just to use lower hashrate, lower power GPUs. But some will do it I'm sure.

Thanks for confirming

Regards.

 

[InvalidError]

I've been looking at prices and they've been going down a lot in the EU, but it doesn't seem to be reflected in USA prices just yet.

Those thousands of ex-mining GPUs coming out of Chinese mining operations take a while to cross the ocean by boat, assuming there are any left waiting to make the journey after all of the nearer buyers are done snatching those up.

 

[husker]

Yes there is: effective competition.

In a truly competitive market, if your net profit margin exceeds 12% or so, multiple competitors will want a piece of your market and drag the prices down to costs+10% or so. Today's prices are only possible because the cost of entry is astronomically high largely thanks to copious amounts of red tape mainly in the form of often questionable patents.

The lack of competition is not what is driving the price in this case. High cost of entry into the GPU market? You bet that is true, which is one of the reasons that they can be marketed at a higher value. I find that blaming some kind of red tape and questionable patents is deflecting the argument. Even if there were dozens of Nvidias and AMDs out there, the manufacturing capacity still puts a cap on the number of total cards on the market: This is what keeps the prices abnormally high.

 

[InvalidError]

Even if there were dozens of Nvidias and AMDs out there, the manufacturing capacity still puts a cap on the number of total cards on the market: This is what keeps the prices abnormally high.

As I wrote earlier, if there was more chip manufacturer diversity, there would likely have been more upstream vendor and fab diversity. The aggregate capacity of those vendors would likely be larger than what we have today since they would all be competing to gain each other's business and need spare capacity to do so, and the supply shortages (if any) would be far less severe.

The root problem is monoculture - everyone today relies on the same 1-3 upstream sources and are screwed if any of those sources comes short. You would be far less likely to run into such issues in a market like 20 years ago where almost any part or equivalents could be sourced from 10+ different manufacturers each owning a bunch of fabs.

 

[aalkjsdflkj]

Fundamentally, however, this is not an awesome card. It's about equal to an RX 5700 XT, a card that launched at $400 two years ago and quickly fell to $325-$350 pricing for over a year. Just because miners are willing to spend $900+ on those cards now doesn't make a $600 or even $500 RX 6600 XT a good deal. It also doesn't make the $600+ RTX 3060 a good deal.

I guess I'm just missing something then. When I read the review it looked to me like it was a great card for FHD gaming for people who don't care about ray tracing. I can't think of another card that's as cool, efficient, and quiet for that use, but maybe I'm missing something. When I look at the 6600 XT I see a card that, for the right user, is a fantastic card at a terrible price. Hopefully the price issue with all cards will adjust sooner rather than later, because right now everything is a bad value.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I guess I'm just missing something then. When I read the review it looked to me like it was a great card for FHD gaming for people who don't care about ray tracing. I can't think of another card that's as cool, efficient, and quiet for that use, but maybe I'm missing something. When I look at the 6600 XT I see a card that, for the right user, is a fantastic card at a terrible price. Hopefully the price issue with all cards will adjust sooner rather than later, because right now everything is a bad value.

Most things can be good at the right price. If this were $250, it would be far more compelling for sure. This is supposed to be a mid-range / mainstream card, but it's sitting in high-end price territory. The RX 5600 XT, which this nominally replaces, was a $280 card at launch that was regularly available for $250 after launch. That's what people wanted. This could have been, "OMG it's an RTX 2070 level GPU, but for only $250!" Instead it's, "Look, an RTX 2070 level GPU, that's launching nearly three years after the RTX 2070 came out, and street prices are as high as the RTX 2070. Meh."

We definitely hope prices drop on all GPUs, but I just don't see that happening any time soon. Several big CEOs (Intel for sure, probably statements from AMD, Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm, etc. as well) anticipate that Q3/Q4 of this year will be the worst of the component shortages, but that we won't fully recover from the shortages until ~2023. And that's assuming there's no delta variant relapse, or whatever comes after delta.

 

[TheAlmightyProo]

cause one already has quite the selection of games for their comp, and there is nothing on the xbox (or PS) that one wants to play ? thats the situation i am in. both PS an Xbox have no games that interest me, where i have plenty of games on my comp that i can play, but i still wouldnt buy any video card right now. so for now, im still using a 1060 strix

My thoughts exactly, except I did buy recently. I dunno about console gamers... I mean, I was one once upon a time (while maintaining a reasonable spec laptop for lower settings/fps in PC exclusives) and I've nothing much actually against consoles etc but maybe they just don't mind the limitations of IP and genre represented on console?
For me, PC offers so much more of actual interest and enjoyment to me that yes, it was even worth scalper prices this year to keep playing as well as upgrade, might as well, after 5 years (and that scalper being a legit store/site tells us it's ALL a mess and likely to retain some semblance of it even after the issues we're told as to why it is fade away...)

But while I used to say (erroneously yes, but you may get the idea) that if all I ever wanted to play was FIFA and CoD then console would do fine, I could just as well say that the moment the big consoles get the likes of Total War then I'd look twice and maybe be interested again...
However, as it is, I have a huge backlog on PC (5800X, 6800XT, 3440x1440) and a Switch I barely use despite some big name games/PC crossplats (only really used to play fun Nintendo/indie games with gf who is more a casual/retro/Nintendo IP gamer than a AAA one, let's say) I doubt a PS5/XB would get a lot of use to be worth the cost tbh. At least not until the PC reaches the point that the console performs better.

 

[TJ Hooker]

But in short, yes. You absolutely can blame a company for colluding to extort their customers, or for acting in an anti-competative way. You blame them in the same way you blame a mugger for holding you up at gunpoint.

Where exactly is the collusion/anti-competitive behavior in the current GPU market? If you have evidence of such behavior, you can report it to the FTC. https://www.ftc.gov/faq/competition/report-antitrust-violation