AMD Radeon RX 6600 XT to be met with a flood of RTX 3060s?

There haven't been a lot of GPU launches over the past year as manufacturers didn't want to spread limited resources over too many SKUs. According to the rumor mill, AMD will start shipping its Radeon RX 6600 XT next month, the first new desktop model since the Radeon RX 6700 XT's launch in March.

NVIDIA to have a flood of RTX 3060 series cards?

If YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead is to be believed, NVIDIA has prepared for this by stockpiling large quantities of its GA106 GPU. Allegedly, NVIDIA will start shipping lots of GeForce RTX 3060 cards by the time AMD's Radeon RX 6600 XT hits the market. Supply of the Radeon RX 6600 XT is said to be decent, better than recent launches, but not high enough to meet demand.

Personally, I find this a bit hard to believe. Given the GPU shortages, it's kinda hard to imagine that NVIDIA is wilfully stockpiling GPUs. It just doesn't make a lot of sense from a business perspective.

MLiD also claims that NVIDIA is still shipping a lot of GPUs without cryptocurrency mining limiter. According to him, NVIDIA's add-in board partners are still able to get large quantities of non-LHR GPU dies:

"You know now that you mention it Tom, the overwhelming majority of our arriving [GeForce RTX] 3070 stock is non-LHR. Last week I thought this was just the last remaining stock... but now it's late July, and most of our arriving 3070s remain as non-LHR models. The majority of upcoming deliveries are non-LHR as well".

"Keep in mind that we are buying these dies from NVIDIA, and they are different from the LHR dies. So NVIDIA has to be mindful of what is going on, and letting some AIBs drag their feet more than others. LHR might be the standard for every SKU eventually, but we (AIBs) are going to drag this process out if they let us...". Source: Moore's Law Is Dead, Transcription via Tweaktown

RDNA3 taping out soon?

There are also some wild rumors about AMD's next-gen GPU architecture. TweakTown picked up rumors from Twitter leaker KittyYYuko. Following reports about an imminent tape out of NVIDIA's Hopper, there's speculation that AMD's Navi31 will tape out soon. The Navi32 tapeout is expected to follow as early as Q1 2022.

MCD is similar to the MCM (Multi-Chip Module) design that NVIDIA will use with its next-gen Hopper GPU, and the chiplet-based technology AMD uses on its various Zen-based CPUs. The latest info on the next-gen RDNA 3 architecture is that Navi 31 will be an MCD (Multi-Compute Die) design and taping out "soon" according to leaker @KittyYYuko, with Navi 32 possibly taping out in Q2 2022.

After the tapeout, there's still a long road to the actual product launch.