AMD CEO Says Radeon RX 9070 XT Week 1 Sales Smoked All Prior Radeons By 10x
AMD was quick to debunk a recent report claiming it revealed combined Radeon RX 9070 XT and Radeon RX 9070 shipments had topped 200,000 units. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. Either way, AMD never shared an actual specific tally. In the days since, however, AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su did provide an interesting figure regarding AMD's latest generation consumer GPU sales, saying the Radeon RX 9070 XT has been the company's best-selling Radeon of any generation in the first week and it's not even close.
During a 15-minute sit-down interview with Tony Yu, General Manager of ASUS in China, Dr. Su touched on a number of topics. The entire interview is worth a watch (embedded below), though it's at around the 9min22sec mark where the conversation turns towards gaming GPUs.
Yu comments that the Radeon RX 9070 XT has been a big hit and asks Dr. Su if she could comment on its development and the story behind the launch. Dr. Su doesn't dive too deep into the weeds, but does mention that when designing a new architecture, it's important to figure out the primary characteristics many years in advance.
For the development of RDNA 4, Dr. Su says the goal was to "bring the best gaming capability to a very, let's call it good price point" so it would be accessible to more gamers.
It's a mantra we've heard from AMD before, most recently in our Two and a Half Geeks episode (embedded above) featuring AMD's CVP and GM, David McAfee (starting at the 39min48sec mark). Dr. Su essentially reiterated what McAfee told us, noting that not a lot of people can afford a flagship GPU. A quick peek at Steam's monthly hardware surveys back up this claim—the most-used GPU is the GeForce RTX 4060 followed by the GeForce RTX 3060. Even the ancient GeForce GTX 1650 and embedded graphics from AMD and Intel rank have higher market shares than any flagship-class GPU.
What's really interesting, though, is the revelation that the Radeon RX 9070 XT has dominated all previous Radeon launches, in terms of first week sales.
"So 9070 XT has been a fantastic success. Actually, it's the number one selling for all of the AMD Radeon generations for the first week sales by far—10x higher than previous generations and we like to see people happy. People are very happy with 9070 XT," Dr Su says.
The remarks, which were posted to Bilibili and spotted by Videocardz, paint the most candid picture yet of Radeon RX 9070 series sales, even without a concrete number of units shipped. And though Dr. Su specifically mentions the Radeon RX 9070 XT, our assumption is that the 10x figure references combined Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT sales (the latter of which likely sold better given the close proximity in pricing).
What about actual availability, though? Yu playfully presses Dr. Su saying fans of ASUS are clamoring for inventory, to which she replies, "We are going to, yes, yes, yes, no problem! We're very excited about it and we're increasing the manufacturing."
Here's hoping AMD can make good on Dr. Su's comment, which hints at better availability and partner pricing to come in the weeks and months ahead.
