Tuesday, August 15th 2017
AMD's RX Vega Launch Prices Might be Just Smoke and Mirrors
Overclockers UK staff member Gibbo, who posted the renowned British company's Vega stocks and deals for the red team's graphics cards, has just come out with something that might put our inner buyers to attention. Apparently, AMD has allowed launch prices to be as they currently are ($499 for the Vega 64 and $399 for the Vega 56 in the Americas; £549 for the Vega 64 in the UK) through rebates and other offers to retailers, who, according to Gibbo, couldn't keep those prices at all if that was not the case. According to the Overclockers UK staffer, " (...) the good news is AMD are rebating early launch sales to allow us to hit £449.99 on the stand alone black card which has no games. This is a launch only price which AMD at present are saying will be withdrawn in the near future, when if it happens is unknown, but remember do not be shocked if the price jumps nearly £100 in a few days. This time around there is no early adopter tax, quite the opposite on the stand alone black card, so do be quick."
Doing some digging through Europe, we've been seeing incredible (as in, unbelievably high) pricing for AMD's RX Vega cards all over Europe, with Mindfactory.de also asking users fork out €649 (~$760) for your base, run of the mill reference Vega 64. And if price hikes are to be expected in the near future, I think AMD can count itself out of the game, in all practical realities. At that pricing, Vega just isn't competitive with Pascal's equivalent cards. On Overclockers UK, the cheapest GTX 1080 can be had for just £449 (a whole £100 pounds less, with competitive performance, to the Vega 64.) Over at Mindfactory.de, you can nab an AIB, dual-fan GTX 1080 for just 527€. Let's see what happens to Vega 56's pricing when that one actually finds itself out in the wild, but for now, it seems AMD's bet on HBM2 and a monolithic die is backfiring on them. The company is probably betting most of its Vega profits to come from the professional or AI acceleration markets - and for the looks of it, that is the most sensible play.
Sources:
Gibbo @ Overclockers UK, Mindfactory.de, Reddit
150 Comments on AMD's RX Vega Launch Prices Might be Just Smoke and Mirrors
Seams he sold all the stock he would have gotten rebates with-in 2hrs if you follow his post
Vega is a lot of "AWESOME" on tech paper, but the reality is that something as simple, as old tech as a GTX 1070/1080 can do just as much with a better efficiency.
is the CURRENT official MSRP $499 or $599?
Only AMD can answer that.
Just sounds like a salesman try'n to be your friend, as long as you buy his stuff.
I'm pretty sure @Finners is a forum member on OcUK or Scan. He should probe..... Oi mate - probe!
I still retain ties with the mining scene. Believe it, no one is picking these up.
It may have been hyperbole to say "no one" on my part though, heh.
The cards rule the wavy seas of mining. Miners are buying them at insane prices. This time, differently from Polaris, a nice share goes to AMD, because it's a new card, and not a rebrand.
It's too good for miners to skip, no matter what 'the community' thinks of it. I don't like it either, but mining exists.
Benchmarks are what is to be expected from early drivers and games few years old. They'll get better in time. New games will have optimization for Vega, whatever its marketshare will be.
In the meantime, each unit produced is sold, which probably can't be said for 1080 (TI).
And for a guy sweating alot, all because 100W difference - try turning on your AC while gaming, it will consume 9.6KW / 8h, while 8h of gaming save will save you 0.8KW on world famous electricity saving and most power-efficient architecture in the universe, ever... Taking it to even more ridiculous level, Vega will save you heating money at winter... THE WINTER IS COMING!
People *really* exaggerate on relatively small power saving, making it such a huge deal. Most of us have at least one AC, do we now? And most of us don't have solar panels or thermal pumps, do we? Those things save power, not the GPU/TPU...
And people are bidding on them up to $700.
Let miners have them, it's clear the GTX 1080 is obvious choice for gamers with any sense.
The product is garbage in my book. Seriously, it should leapfrog the 1080 Ti after all this development time, but at the very minimum it should match or almost match a 1080 Ti in every performance metric, ie framerate, power, heat and noise. Having a brand new card after two years that trades blows with a second tier 1080 while running hot and sweatily overclocked out of the box (it's not shown as such, but it has to be given what's written about it) to achieve it while sucking down so much power, heat and noise (including noticeable coil* whine that W1zz reported) is frankly, pathetic. I really don't get why they continue with this HBM when it does nothing for them. Just stick to the much cheaper GDDR5X and be done with it. At least they can lower the price of their cards then permanently and bring competition that way.
Great article, as usual. :)
*Hardly surprising, as consuming more power means drawing more current which will naturally need to more coil whine and better components to keep it at bay.Dude, I wish you were wrong. :ohwell: We really need that competition. I remember that quote from NVIDIA a few months ago where they said they weren't worried about Vega. Clearly they knew what they were talking about and that's bad news for us.
Hot
Slow
Late
Power hungry
Bad in Mining
And now to top it off, it is expensive. Geez it is going from bad to worse. Who in their right mind would even think about spending money on this abomination? Extreme die hard fans?
But i guess this was ryzen's years, next year could be RTG's (fingers crossed)
Right now these prices make Vega the best choice for miners, and as long as G-Sync exists there will be a large portion of people that will HAPPILY pay the same price for Vega 64 as they would a 1080.