AMD RX 6800 XT Black Edition Launched But It Has Bad News For Eager Fans

AMD surprisingly released a Midnight Black version of the Radeon RX 6800 XT earlier this week. Unexpectedly, it was sold out almost immediately.

The product was not formally announced by the company and according to Videocardz, members of the AMD Red Team community had been notified about it via email. The notification reportedly told recipients to watch for the AMD Radeon 6800 XT Black Edition graphics card at 6 a.m. PT or 9 a.m. on April 7. Obviously, the announcement had not remained a secret, considering the way the sales turned out.

The AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Black Edition sports the same look but with some minor tweaks. Instead of using the original color scheme of the design cooler, the newly released version has an almost full black shroud. There are also notable grey accents on the fans of the graphics card.

As for its specs, the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black Edition features the same Navi 21 XT GPU with 4608 Stream Processors. It is packed with a 128 MB Infinity Cache and 16 GB of GDDR6. This particular version sports a 2-slot design with dual 8-pin power connectors. As per AMD's recommendation, the graphics card would be sold at the MSRP price of $649 but it is unclear if it will cost more than that in the retailers.

How many AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black Edition units have been produced or sold remains unclear. In the official email sent to the members of the AMD Red Team, the company explained the logic for releasing the said graphics card. "Based on community feedback and popular demand, we have created a select quantity of AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black graphics cards featuring the same great performance of the widely popular AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT," it said.

There is no telling if AMD would release another batch of the Radeon RX 6800 XT Midnight Black Edition. In an interview with The Verge, the company said that it is "continuing to focus on delivering the latest Radeon graphics cards to as many gamers as possible at SEP." It added that the company will "continue to make reference cards available on AMD.com and will continue to replenish supply for the foreseeable future."