Highlighting just how much things have changed in the past year, AMD is bringing back something we have not seen in what feels like forever: game bundles piled onto graphics cards. It is starting with just one SKU, the Radeon RX 6900 XT. Should you manage to actually find one in stock (from a qualifying vendor, naturally) and pay the asking price, AMD will gift you codes to claim Far Cry 6 and Resident Evil Village at no added cost.
This is actually an expansion of AMD's latest 'Raise the Game' bundle that was announced a little over a week ago. Initially, the free games offer applied to a swath of gaming desktops pairing Ryzen 5000 (Zen 3) and 3000 (Zen 2) series processors with any Radeon RX 6000 graphics card, and gaming laptops pairing mobile Ryzen 5000 series CPUs with Radeon RX 6000M GPUs.
Those offers still stand, but now AMD is including standalone 6900 XT cards into the mix as well. There's fine print (terms and conditions), of course, but the offer is simple: buy AMD's flagship graphics card, including custom overclocked and liquid-cooled models from its add-in board partners, and get two free games.
In the days of old, these kinds of offers were commonly found on not just flagship GPUs costing $999 and up, but on lower priced cards as well. And even if only for optics, if I was in charge at AMD, I would have at least included the Radeon RX 6800 XT and 6800 into this offer, if not the entire lineup. It's not like any of the cards are ever in stock anyway.
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Buy hey, at least this takes some of the sting out of splurging on a top tier GPU, if you're lucky enough to actually find one. And if you do, Resident Evil Village you can play right away, whereas Far Cry 6 releases on October 7. As it pertains to the latter, the offer also includes a couple of exclusive in-game goodies—an AMD Radeon baseball cap and Ryzen t-shirt.
As for the Raise the Game promotion, it covers qualifying 6900 XT cards purchased between September 16 through December 31, 2021, and qualifying systems and laptops going back to September 9. You'll then have until January 22, 2022 to redeem your bundled games.
