According to our sources, AMD AIB partners are working hard to get their Radeon RX 6800 custom versions to the market and these should be ready by the end of November. The reference RX 6800 series is not necessarily bad, as AMD finally said goodbye to blower-style coolers, and the reference design should be good, at least judging from what we are hearing so far.
On the other hand, custom AIB partners should bring factory-overclocked versions, as well as better coolers, and we are looking forward to seeing some of those from the usual suspects, including Asus' ROG, Sapphire's Nitro series, Powercolor's Devil, and others.
AMD still in talks with AIB partners for Radeon RX 6900 XT
As rumored earlier, AMD is currently talking to its AIB partners about custom Radeon RX 6900 XT, and since this one officially launches on December 8th, it is still early to talk about it. According to our sources, more details should be available in the next few weeks, and partners will still need some time to work on the custom design.
There is no reason why AMD should not give a green light on custom Radeon RX 6900 XT but it all probably comes down to the amount of fully-enabled Navi 21 GPUs that AMD can provide.
At $999 (SEP) for the reference version, the Radeon RX 6900 XT targets the high-end market, while the Radeon RX 6800 and the RX 6800 XT, priced at $579 and $649 (SEP), respectively, are the bread and butter for AMD and its AIB partners, as these should sell in volume.