Wednesday, January 16th 2019
A Sprinkle of Salt: AMD Radeon VII Reported to Only be Available in Reference Design, no Custom Treatment
A report via Tom's Hardware.de says that AMD's plans for the upcoming Radeon VII are somewhat one-dimensional, in that only reference designs will be available for this particular rendition of the Vega architecture. And this doesn't mean"initial availability" only on reference cards, like NVIDIA has been doing with their Founder's editions; the report claims that at no point in time will there actually be a custom-designed Radeon VII. The quantity of Radeon VII GPUs will apparently be "strictly limited" come launch - a likely result of the decision to make use of TSMC's 7 nm process, which will have to serve not only AMD's Ryzen 3000 and Epyc CPUs when those are actually launched, but all of TSMC's other clients.
This is in contrast with AMD CEO Lisa Su's words during her CES keynote, who said that Radeon VII would be available from "several leading add-in board partners plan to offer the cards". According to a Tom's Hardware.de Taiwanese source, "You cannot leak anything that does not exist" in regards to third-party designs. And another Chinese source said "the quantity of Radeon VII is strictly limited… not sure if AMD wants to open AIB to have an own design later".
The saltiness is in the title for a purpose: we'd be very surprised with a decision such as this from AMD's part. Low availability to partners is better than no availability at all for a number of reasons. Let's not forget the damage it would do to AMD's ecosystem to only release a high-performance product - the one that AMD buyers have been waiting for since the original Vega) under their own branding, closing partners out of the profits they'd make on custom designs. It just doesn't strike us as a sensible business decision.
Source:
Tom's Hardware.de
This is in contrast with AMD CEO Lisa Su's words during her CES keynote, who said that Radeon VII would be available from "several leading add-in board partners plan to offer the cards". According to a Tom's Hardware.de Taiwanese source, "You cannot leak anything that does not exist" in regards to third-party designs. And another Chinese source said "the quantity of Radeon VII is strictly limited… not sure if AMD wants to open AIB to have an own design later".
40 Comments on A Sprinkle of Salt: AMD Radeon VII Reported to Only be Available in Reference Design, no Custom Treatment
Nothing is stopping them from pushing AIB cards later in the cycle. Its not like there is a tight release schedule going on for gaming GPUs. If you look at the way Vega 56/64 launched its actually quite similar, low availability early in the cycle, almost no AIB cards to be found, and today there are lots of them.
So basically AMD can only win by announcing this, and that is because the bar is set very low in terms of VII being a great gaming GPU sales cannon. I think the merit of this release is mostly in the pressure on high-end price points and not so much the card itself. And against Nvidia's complex Turing die, that is pretty neat.
Most likely just a lie.
And while we are at it, how did price war of 1050Ti vs RX 570 (which is what, 1.5 times faster?) go?Rumor had it that AMD prepared that mostly for PR purposes, just to be able to tick off "we are present in that perf bracket too" and other than that product wasn't that viable from commercial perspective (with HBM2 alone estimated to cost $200-300 half a year ago).
The 2060 is an bomb though, just as good of an bomb as RX570.
twice the price but performance to match!"
There is absolutely no telling what direction it will go with the VII yet, and in both cases consumers win. Its always better than having the 2080 sit high and dry.
Then the rumor will run through the website echo chamber, then... maybe... someone will ask.
Anyway, if true, what a kick in the pants....I cant imagine this to be true. Maybe upon initial launch, but shortly thereafter (like we normally see).That would actually be news/reporting. :po_O
That "price war" you mentioned.Fair enough, but it's been months since mining craze was over.
The reference design with 3 fans looks good enough. This Radeon VII appears to be a niche card to AMD. I don't think they expect to sell a lot of them. Just to have a product out there that can "compete" against nVidia.
I don't see the point in this offering if that is the case. Get something out for the gamer than competes at the high end, please to benefit us all.
Asus Strix, Gigabyte Gaming, Sapphire Nitro+ and PowerColor Devil?
A point of reference for "lots of them":
MSI alone makes 5 different 2080 models (and that's not including the "OC" variants).
www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709%20601301599