Yesterday rumours started to swirl with regard to AMD reference design graphics cards being phased out. A French tech site wrote that the red team’s latest reference designs for the Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT and RX 6800 GPUs were going to be discontinued. That story was that AMD had done its job and AIBs would now take over to satisfy market demands. However, someone in the rumour chain seems to have got a hold of the wrong end of the stick, or even the wrong stick.
It was claimed AMD would cease production of its reference designs but AIBs would be free to use the design as well as market their own designs with custom coolers. In mid November AMD’s CVP & GM of Radeon graphics business, Scott Herkelman, told his Twitter followers that AMD would continue making reference designs “through early 2021”. I’m not sure if that was the source of the discontinuation news/rumour or if so, why it would bubble up yesterday.
Whatever the case, the AMD Radeon RX 6000 reference designs seem to be safe for the time being. Yesterday evening Herkelman took to Twitter to issue some reassurance to those interested in buying a reference design card, and the likes of custom cooling block makers, could rely on more being made beyond the earlier cited cut off date. Herkelman’s exact words were that “We’ve just officially extended the reference design builds indefinitely due to popular demand,” and he thanked Twitter users for their feedback.