Wednesday, August 23rd 2017
AMD On RX Vega Pricing Oddyssey - "Launch Price Ongoing; Stock is to Blame"
In the latest news surrounding the strange, foggy circumstances of AMD's RX Vega 64 pricing, company-man Gerald Youngblood told PCGamesN that the announced RX Vega's pricing wasn't a launch-only affair. Specifically, he said that "Our SEPs, and the price tag that we announced, is our full intention of where we would suggest the product be priced. Not just for launch, but ongoing." Gerald then went on to say that RX Vega's pricing woes can't be attributable to AMD, in that "First of all we just need to drive as much stock as we can, because inventory is really important in everybody being able to hit those prices. Then it's just working with our partners to enable it, but we don't set the price of their product. But we will drive, and do everything that we can, to get those prices to where we suggested when we launched them earlier."
While the supply and demand equation is something we understand, and is the principal factor in increased pricing for almost every component that goes inside a desktop PC nowadays (there are price increases across the board for GPUs, SSDs, and DRAM memory as we speak), perhaps we shouldn't forget that retailers themselves have been saying that they were only able to hit AMD's MSRP of $499 for Vega 64 due to rebates offered by the company. It's true that AMD can't really control the pricing at which retailers sell - but they can control the price at which AMD themselves sell to retailers, through the mentioned rebates. This is the particular point of contention, for now, regarding the company's pricing policy, because it seems AMD are limiting availability of Vega 64 SKUs at $499 by only selling a certain number of RX Vega 64 GPUs with the included rebates that bring the acquisition pricing down enough for retailers to be able to charge MSRP. Now certainly, retailers are always looking towards maximizing their profits as well; however, this "rebate" issue wasn't approached before in other GPU launches, which lends some credence to the retailers' position.
Source:
PCGamesN
37 Comments on AMD On RX Vega Pricing Oddyssey - "Launch Price Ongoing; Stock is to Blame"
Gigabyte Vega 64 is the only Vega 64 (gaming) selling at my country at the moment.
The (r)e-tailers can set the price as they like, as long as they dont agree on them internally (atleast in europe) -
HOWEVER- if AMD released the fist batch of stock at a different price to the (r)e-tailers than they do with the subsequent ones. THAT is the problem as AMD cannot expect launch-hysteria to be covered by others than them selves. If AMD announce an MSRP/SEP its up to them to ensure that the distributors and (r)e-tailers can profit from this MSRP and then let the open market take care of the rest.
Is it also Amds fault some shops have wanted £/600 notes for a rx 580 lately too.
I mean its quite clear to me Amd made the whole first batch then passed them to partners to sticker up and box then they sold them ,so at least two mittons added their cut into the mix.
www.prisjakt.no/#rparams=ss=vega64
click any product or a direct link:
www.prisjakt.no/product.php?p=4422253
Prices vary very much between the few etailers listing it, this is not something amd can control
Thus anything above the 599 usd mspr is 100% e-tailers
But like I've posted before Newegg is blaming AMD for the price not Gigabyte or MSi or even supply and demand, they flat out blame AMD.
Rebates are irrelevant, that's not how they work. I seriously doubt AMD have put their base price above MSRP as you say shops have claimed, AMD would have to be pretty stupid to do that.
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Speculation aside, what are the actual facts here?
Is it just a limited supply of non-bundled cards? Or have AMD actually lied about something?
Its kinda like false advertising in a sense... AMD sent out review samples and told everyone that it would be around $500-550ish. Reviewers told everyone that it would be $500-550ish. Then the price jumped up and it turns out AMD had offered retailers a rebate to stock and sell as many cards as possible in an extremely short space of time but the time frame given was too short and AMD got caught with their pants down and their PR team are bailing water like a motherf***er trying to control the damage.
Yes its dishonest but Nvidia arent angels either... Remember the 4GB 970s that weren't actually 4GB??
Since AMD have been the underdog for a long time, I just expected them to be a little more modest and honest while attempting to climb to the top again... Ryzen was a huge achievement for them and rightly so... they should be very happy about what they achieved with that CPU. but theyve only gone and soured the moment with their dodgy dealings.
Of course, shortage can come from not having enough production lines available for all the different beasts, or simply yield issues since all vega chips come clocked far beyond the efficiency of the architecture and have huge area.
He turned around and told me that it's because off the difference between the Canadian and the US dollar and import fees blah blah blah. I told him he was full of shit because I export weekly into the u.s. And I know what the markets doing.
I did however agree with him on the exchange rate difference but that was all.
He kind of rolled his eyes didn't know what the hell he was even speaking about and he was one of the head managers and I just straight right told him he's price gouging and this company should be ashamed of themselves but who am I to judge how one company operates over another.
And excuse my language but where are all the fucking mining only cards that the manufacturers promised to produce? Not the gaming cards but The mining cards?