# Retailers are Buying AMD RX Vega 64 at $675 Each



## btarunr (Aug 24, 2017)

The Radeon RX Vega series launch has been particularly disappointing for gamers and PC enthusiasts because their otherwise interesting price-performance ratios at $499 for the RX Vega 64 and $399 for the RX Vega 56, were quickly stripped away by dwindling stock and sky-rocketing prices, with the RX Vega 64 even going above $1k in some places. We are not even sure if the miners are to blame or whether supplier-level pricing has been adjusted after the launch to a higher price point that makes AMD's promised pricing impossible to achieve.

It turns out that retailers might not be the ones making a quick buck at this madness. Leaked invoices show that distributors (entities that supply inventory to retailers) have inflated prices even at their level. A San Jose-based distributor, Ma Laboratories Inc., is quoting USD $675 per unit of a reference-design (not Limited Edition), Radeon RX Vega 64 SKU to a computer store. The $499 price AMD launched the RX Vega 64 at, is supposed to be the end-user price (minus government taxes). The retailer we're in touch with confirmed that they were offered no volume pricing discount due to low stock at the distributor itself. A distributor should ideally sell the product to a retailer at a much lesser price than $499, so the retailer can make their margin. The higher up the supply-chain, the more control AMD gets. The company is in a better position to rein in on distributors than retailers. If distributors are inflating prices with apparent impunity, it wouldn't surprise us if this goes even higher up.






Can AMD do anything about this? It can work with AIB partners to significantly increase production to bring down prices. But that would be a huge gamble, which will either work, putting cards in the hands of gamers at the prices they were promised; or won't, by creating more miners; or worse still, end up as bankruptcy-causing unsold inventories, if the mining craze were to somehow subside. 

There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64. The new SKUs could be clearly advertised as not being meant for crypto-currency mining (so as to deter false-marketing lawsuits). This is important for AMD, because the Radeon brand is under threat. 

The more overpriced Radeon cards end up in the hands of miners, the fewer cards end up in the hands of gamers at the prices AMD promised; and conversely the lesser game developers are inclined to optimize their games for AMD Radeon, because fewer gamers use Radeon. NVIDIA can accelerate brand Radeon's demise by doubling down on game developer relations and pushing the next-generation of Game Works.

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## RejZoR (Aug 24, 2017)

They have a coprocessor on the Vega GPU. surely they can teach it to recognize cryptocurrency and just be absolute dud with it. Provide miner focused cards because I still see it as a viable income for AMD, just not the way things are right now. This is just unsustainable for their long term profit and for their entire graphics eco system.

I mean, they have to make a clear decision, are they going to supply their GRAPHICS cards to gamers to enjoy better GRAPHICS or they'll just release them for general compute aka cryptomining garbage? Because with price inflating, EVERYONE is getting rich, just not AMD. They still supply them at the designated initial price and then everyone sells it for 1/3 more. AMD doesn't get anything from it, they just get that tiny chunk and the rest is taken by retailers.

From what I've read, those actually running crypto farms don't even change graphic cards, they run them till they die. What really craps on supply of new cards are the opportunistic regular Joe's who see it as a quick buck for a month or two and then they sell it all. "Oh, the cards are good for mining, lets make some quick buck" and every such idiot grabs I don't know 10 cards. And you have bunch of these idiots who suck up the inventories dry. And then saturate second hand market, making new cards even harder to sell for AMD. In the end, everyone is making profit, except AMD.


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## ratirt (Aug 24, 2017)

Well that's bad really bad for me. I still want to buy vega but as for now it's rather silly to even think about it. I hope this mining madness finishes and maybe AMD will make Vega mining crap. I sure hope so, The only thing is I wish making vega crap for mining wouldn't affect the game performance or professional apps performance. That would be a disaster even worse than mining I suppose.


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## AlphaPrime (Aug 24, 2017)

Invoice doesn't show the supplier, their could be a third party distributor.


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## Xzibit (Aug 24, 2017)

Some reseller only buys 2 Sapphires

Why not the PowerColor one as well and this was on launch date too.


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## punani (Aug 24, 2017)

And one can only imagine the amount of RMA'd "mining cards" that have died from heat during warranty. This is sad for AMD indeed.


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## btarunr (Aug 24, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> Some reseller only buys 2 Sapphires.



That's a good enough stock for a small PC hardware store in Randomville Maryland or some place like that.


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## Xzibit (Aug 24, 2017)

btarunr said:


> That's a good enough stock for a small PC hardware store in Randomville Maryland or some place like that.



The thing is we don't know. It could be someone with a re-sellers license who just bought 2.

There was no source for the photo posted.


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## W1zzard (Aug 24, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> The thing is we don't know. It could be someone with a re-sellers license who just bought 2.
> 
> There was no source for the photo posted.



It is a well-known store with physical and online presence


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## Xzibit (Aug 24, 2017)

W1zzard said:


> It is a well-known store with physical and online presence



Well if you look at the address.

They are shipping them to themselves. CA SJ corperate dis to NJ branch.  Unless I'm reading the receipt wrong.

Then someone bought from the NJ branch and bought 2 Sapphires but there is no source as to who or for what?


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## papupepo (Aug 24, 2017)

I hear that Samsung's HBM2 costs $250-300 so they can't sell it at $499. $599 is also impossible. They must sell it with some profitable articles in a tie-in sale, so they introduced that Radeon Pack.


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## evernessince (Aug 24, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> They have a coprocessor on the Vega GPU. surely they can teach it to recognize cryptocurrency and just be absolute dud with it. Provide miner focused cards because I still see it as a viable income for AMD, just not the way things are right now. This is just unsustainable for their long term profit and for their entire graphics eco system.
> 
> I mean, they have to make a clear decision, are they going to supply their GRAPHICS cards to gamers to enjoy better GRAPHICS or they'll just release them for general compute aka cryptomining garbage? Because with price inflating, EVERYONE is getting rich, just not AMD. They still supply them at the designated initial price and then everyone sells it for 1/3 more. AMD doesn't get anything from it, they just get that tiny chunk and the rest is taken by retailers.
> 
> From what I've read, those actually running crypto farms don't even change graphic cards, they run them till they die. What really craps on supply of new cards are the opportunistic regular Joe's who see it as a quick buck for a month or two and then they sell it all. "Oh, the cards are good for mining, lets make some quick buck" and every such idiot grabs I don't know 10 cards. And you have bunch of these idiots who suck up the inventories dry. And then saturate second hand market, making new cards even harder to sell for AMD. In the end, everyone is making profit, except AMD.



It's really not that simple.  I highly doubt the video card is able to block cryto-currency mining on a hardware level.   Maybe on a software level but it would be easy to avoid a driver update for miners.  Just like with Bitcoin, the bubble will burst when someone makes a dedicated machine that mines coin far faster then GPUs.

Even if AMD could stop the mining, why would they?  Nvidia has already announced it's ambitions for mining.  Are you saying AMD should just give Nvidia free money?

AMD is still making money on the sale of graphics cards either way.  The only difference is that miners don't contribute to the AMD brand and they don't represent a future sale.  They will buy whatever works for them.

If you ask me, the one thing AMD should have done a long time ago is make operating the cards 24/7 void the warranty.  It is easy to tell a card has been mined to death and the cost of replacements for miners is very costly for card partners.  Consumer level cards were never designed to be run all day every day.


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## zmeul (Aug 24, 2017)

AMD can go suck it
they made their own bed, now sleep in it! I won't shed any tears


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Aug 24, 2017)

to add more salt to the wounds, the Radeon Pack will no longer be available for gamers or consumers. So much for promoting FreeSync & RyZen systems with a compelling package when there's not enough supply to go around.


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## ratirt (Aug 24, 2017)

Tsukiyomi91 said:


> to add more salt to the wounds, the Radeon Pack will no longer be available for gamers or consumers. So much for promoting FreeSync & RyZen systems with a compelling package when there's not enough supply to go around.


For me it is still going or at least I hope it will be going. Although I will have to wait a bit longer for the purchase. I hope not too long though. Maybe AMD should get focus on a mining market separately. design cards only for mining. That I think would make sense and gaming market would get back to normal.


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 24, 2017)

Disabling stuff on a card is just wrong IMO.

Some people want a flexible card that they can game/work/mine or whatever they want with it.


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## Ubersonic (Aug 24, 2017)

> There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64.



That's the dumbest idea I've heard this year lol.

Firstly, Vega 64/56 are already two of the worst cards going for mining performance compared to price and power consumption.  Secondly, it's not miners buying them it's gamers and professional users.  Thirdly, crippling the cards compute performance would make it useless for anything but games, so there go the professional sales that are currently keeping the ship afloat (and there's no guarantee that would drive those sales to the Vega FE and not the Titan).


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## silentbogo (Aug 24, 2017)

btarunr said:


> There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64. The new SKUs could be clearly advertised as not being meant for crypto-currency mining (so as to deter false-marketing lawsuits). This is important for AMD, because the Radeon brand is under threat.



Here we go again. Blame everything on miners, regardless of whether it's based on facts or not.
I think my thoughts can be perfectly described by this quote from TweakTown:



> Vega GPUs aren't being gobbled up by miners because the Ethereum mining performance is abysmal when you take into consideration the mammoth power consumption, heat output, and noise. Vega GPUs are being gobbled up by Hollywood, but the smoke and mirrors of blame are being used perfectly, where miners are getting all of the blame.
> 
> Read more: http://www.tweaktown.com/news/58843/hollywood-miners-gobbling-up-radeon-rx-vega-supply/index.html



The reason why Vega prices are so high and supply is so low, is all 100% AMDs own fault:
* They've delayed Vega "to ensure that the supply is there, and miners don't disrupt it"
* They've promised an MSRP of $399/$499, so that "it stays affordable for normal people"
* They failed to deliver the promised supply, which got the entire supply chain very nervous
* The supply chain bumped prices at every step along the way, because they know Vega supply is very short. They cannot commit to smaller margins at higher volume, because there is no volume!

In my country there are zero Vega cards in stores right now. Our largest online electronics retailer haven't even bothered to list Vega cards on their website, even though RX400/500 series and GTX10 series were listed ahead of time and were in stock at release date. That's the same greedy store, which was not afraid of selling a regular GTX1080 (not FE and not Ti) for over $1000 not too long ago.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Aug 24, 2017)

maybe, but still not a viable way to make some profit in the long run if they keep running into stock shortages...


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## techy1 (Aug 24, 2017)

"interesting price-performance ratios at $499 for the RX Vega 64 and $399 for the RX Vega 56" - that is FALSE.
and also false is "399$" and "499$" - none of Vegas ever seen that price tag. so stop saying that Vega in ideal conditions is comeptitive or decent product... 
RIP Vega for good. I hope Amd gets their $ from miners so they can invest in next gen and much more decent architecture.


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## CandymanGR (Aug 24, 2017)

It is ridiculus to even claim this is a typical invoice with retailer's price, including discount for reselling.
I just don't buy it. If this is the case, then nobody can make profit out of them, and there is no reason for a retailer to stock the card at the first place.


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## R0H1T (Aug 24, 2017)

CandymanGR said:


> It is ridiculus to even claim this is a typical invoice with retailer's price, including discount for reselling.
> I just don't buy it. If this is the case, then nobody can make profit out of them, and there is no reason for a retailer to stock the card at the first place.


Fake news? Looks like a single disgruntled retailer or reseller to me


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## Vayra86 (Aug 24, 2017)

Somehow I get the sense Vega news is getting the status of any Trump-related news article. You read it, you smirk or shrug for a second and move on.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Aug 24, 2017)

now the most compelling GPUs for newbie builders & gamers are Nvidia since stocks for all the GTX 10 Series range are back to normal. Over here, stocks for them are in abundance whereas AMD ones are still severely limited to RX570 & RX580.


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## R0H1T (Aug 24, 2017)

Tsukiyomi91 said:


> now the most compelling GPUs for newbie builders & gamers are Nvidia since stocks for all the GTX 10 Series range are back to normal. Over here, stocks for them are in abundance whereas AMD ones are still severely limited to RX570 & RX580.


Which is funny since they're probably being made at 3 places by GF, Samsung, TSMC(?) ~ http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vega-package-problem,35281.html


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## CandymanGR (Aug 24, 2017)

R0H1T said:


> Fake news? Looks like a single disgruntled retailer or reseller to me



 I don't know. It just doesn't feel right. What i am saying is this. If i was a retailer, and the distributor would tell me "you know mate, Vega 64 is 675$ per unit", i wouldn't buy them! It's pointless. Wouldn't you agree?
If a retailer buys them for 675$, the selling price including profit would be too high to be competitive.


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## yotano211 (Aug 24, 2017)

AMD can eat $hit and mad angry gamers need to stop blaming miners for the Vega problems, all mad angry gamers need to blame AMD


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## Frick (Aug 24, 2017)

I still haven't seen store prices on Vega 56.


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## Nephilim666 (Aug 24, 2017)

AIB's need to just sell direct. Problem solved. What do they need online retailers for anyway?


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## ratirt (Aug 24, 2017)

yotano211 said:


> AMD can eat $hit and mad angry gamers need to stop blaming miners for the Vega problems, all mad angry gamers need to blame AMD


So we should blame NVIDIA for high pricing on 1070's cards for example? I guess so since it costs way more than it was several months ago.


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## Tsukiyomi91 (Aug 24, 2017)

update: still no news of 56 & 64 coming on my end... highly doubt the shops here are gonna sell the 64. If they did, it's gonna be well over MYR4k a pop after conversion, shipping tax, customs tax & including 6% tax.


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## _Flare (Aug 24, 2017)

wasn´t there a info from a big german retailer stopping with polaris sales because they couldn´t get reliable shippingdates, further they told that the cards where sold before even shipped to europe.

If that is true for Vega, too, than the first Members of the supply-chain directly after AMD and the AIB make sh**loads of money right now. Simultaniously drying out every part of the chain after them.

If AMD doesn´t stop that, then they will be out off the PC-Gaming-Business in a few month, resulting in every penny invested in Game-Developers, Vulkan, drivers, console to PC portability, etc. will be worth nothing if they give up market share like this.
Maybe in a few years we will tell newbies:
"Well the monopoly of nvidia in the PC-Gaming wasn´t alway there, until 2018 there was also the now cryptomining-company AMD building Gaming-Cards, too, but they lost focus to that somewhere around 2015 and disapeared from pc-gaming."


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## _Flare (Aug 24, 2017)

Even here in germany where electricity-bills are at around 0.25-0.28 euro/kWh the gaming-market wants AMD-GPUs just because they are an alternative to the green-side.

AMD please act fast.

but, they giving a sh**

64 Bit drivers for Windows 10 & Windows 7 updated to include support for Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition  (8/23/2017)
http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-art...eta-for-Blockchain-Compute-Release-Notes.aspx


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## Rahmat Sofyan (Aug 24, 2017)

HBM still too expensive, I wonder how much will be the price for Volta with HBM.. ?


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## Assimilator (Aug 24, 2017)

AMD, and in particular RTG, is under pressure to deliver something to shareholders. So they don't care who buys their cards - miners, Hollywood, gamers, or Satan - and at what price, as long as their cards are being bought.

In the long run, of course, this might mean we see AMD disappear from desktop graphics to focus on the far-more-profitable professional market, a la Matrox.


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## btarunr (Aug 24, 2017)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> HBM still too expensive, I wonder how much will be the price for Volta with HBM.. ?



As much as I'd love to be proven wrong, I don't think there will be a consumer-segment Volta card with HBM2, only expensive Tesla or Quadro. NVIDIA will pull through using GDDR5X or GDDR6 for GeForce.


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## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

Lots of hate directed at AMD here.

I got my Vega 64 for 507€, so those of you bitching about the price, why don't you find a respectable retailer ?
Or even complain to your retailer ?

AMD isn't going to die anythime soon.

Putting the blame on AMD, is like putting the blame on BMW or Mercedes for crappy drivers....

Shame for putting this "News" out there on the front page, when there is no confirmation of diddly squat.
This should have stayed in the forums.

edit : Check this summary about the pricing : https://seekingalpha.com/article/4101362-amd-vega-pricing-scandal


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## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

Assimilator said:


> AMD, and in particular RTG, is under pressure to deliver something to shareholders. So they don't care who buys their cards - miners, Hollywood, gamers, or Satan - and at what price, as long as their cards are being bought.
> 
> In the long run, of course, this might mean we see AMD disappear from desktop graphics to focus on the far-more-profitable professional market, a la Matrox.



Matrox pulled out because they had no comparable GPU's.
It was costing them too much in R&D, and the Parhelia was a bit of a wrong step tech wise.
They never got back up from that.
Shame, I loved Matrox cards.
They use AMD Gpu's now iirc, as well as some of their own.....


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## GreiverBlade (Aug 24, 2017)

cry some more ... the cheapest Vega 64 is 676chf for me (close to the retailer buy price you mention and way cheaper than a 1080Ti for me, heck even a little cheaper than a 1080), unluckily no stock .... otherwise i would have sold my 1070 for 550 as i was offered for (by a friend who mine ETH ) and added the 126chf missing.

and the one in stock are rather between 999.80chf and1306chf (standard cooler and liquid edition respectively )

oh and 1 FE listed at 1632chf


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 24, 2017)

http://wccftech.com/radeon-rx-vega-64-msrp-pricing-update/


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## R0H1T (Aug 24, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> http://wccftech.com/radeon-rx-vega-64-msrp-pricing-update/


So it's the same(?) damn retailers again


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## Kronauer (Aug 24, 2017)

Why do we belive this in the first place? It can be as fake as pornstars' tits.
This is *ONE* suspicious *invoice* that has *no currency* on it,* just numbers*, yet the title says multiple retailers buy RX VEGA 64 for 675 USD.

This invoice contains *no information about* that* it is* 675*USD*. It can be 675 salty techpowerup comments.
It say the *price is taxable*, yet the are *no* spearate columns for *net and gross price*, that must be *indicated* on an invoice.

I just dont understand how can a tech-journalist team, that has pretty high reputation and expertise (yes im talking about you TechPowerUp) fall for such a cheap scam that this is.


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## GreiverBlade (Aug 24, 2017)

Kronauer said:


> Why do we belive this in the first place? It can be as fake as pornstars' tits.
> This is *ONE* suspicious *invoice* that has *no currency* on it,* just numbers*, yet the title says multiple retailers buy RX VEGA 64 for 675 USD.
> 
> This invoice contains *no information about* that* it is* 675*USD*. It can be 675 salty techpowerup comments.
> ...


bah .... the retail prices reflect on that "rumor" .... so .... why not, i.e.: a single Vega 64 is between +300 and +600 $/chf (well $ and chf are not far apart from each other) on retail price ....

for sure it's not 675 peanuts ... nor yen or won .... (dang at 675yen or won i would gladly take a bunch of them, if not the whole stock  and not for mining .... like on 101 of them 1 in the main rig and a wall of 100 box in my livingroom minus another opened to go to the shelf of my gpu collection tho ...  )


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## W1zzard (Aug 24, 2017)

Kronauer said:


> Why do we belive this in the first place? It can be as fake as pornstars' tits.
> This is *ONE* suspicious *invoice* that has *no currency* on it,* just numbers*, yet the title says multiple retailers buy RX VEGA 64 for 675 USD.
> 
> This invoice contains *no information about* that* it is* 675*USD*. It can be 675 salty techpowerup comments.
> ...


Thanks for your appreciation of our hard work, and for the poor soul that might lose his job. I made things easier for you and banned your account, please don't come back to insult the intelligence of my staff.


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## EdInk (Aug 24, 2017)

Ma Laboratories doesn't quite sound like a retailer to me or what have I missed?


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 24, 2017)

Some kind of distributor more likely ...

Edit: https://www.malabs.com/

https://www.malabs.com/company/aboutus.php


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## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

W1zzard said:


> Thanks for your appreciation of our hard work, and for the poor soul that might lose his job. I made things easier for you and banned your account, please don't come back to insult my staff.



Considering the comments made in the article about what AMD could possibly do to mitigate this problem, "hard" work would have been getting a comment from AMD about pricing and what they can do about it, like a lot of other sites have managed to do in the last couple of days.

The poor soul who might lose his job, took it into his own hands when he leaked the invoice.

Its your site, and yes, you can do what you want with it, and its users.
I'd say swinging the banhammer is not an appropriate response, but you can do what you want with it.

edit : Whatever happened to Mods editing out what they consider insults in peoples posts ? I'd rather see a "Insults removed" and a PM, than a swing of the Banhammer.


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## Breit (Aug 24, 2017)

Why should AMD focus their efforts on making their GPUs unusable for miners? That wouldn't make any sense at all. As long as they sell their cards to whomsoever, they make their profit and investors are pleased. The more people are spending for their cards, the better for AMD and everyone in between AMD and the customer.

The real problem is that they just can't produce enough cards in total to satisfy demand. This is not a new problem to AMD and it is just beyond me why they won't do anything about it. One gets the impression that they did this short-supply thing on purpose for whatever reason they might have.

I mean if HBM is such a massive cost factor and limiting production volume big time, then why bother incorporating HBM on consumer products? It appears to have no apparent advantage when comparing their products to the ones from the competiton:

Higher bandwidth? -> Sadly not the case.
Lower power consumtion? -> Vega is using way more power for the same performance levels as the competition, so no again.
More compact board designs? -> Vega cards are as big as GPUs ever were, so again: no!
Lower latencies for memory access? -> Maybe, but apparently that doesn't reflect in better performance obviously.
All whats left is higher cost, lower production volume, angry customers and shady marketing tactics including dishonest communication about pricing.


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 24, 2017)

There are some very interesting undervolting tests going on at OCUK's forums at the moment (Vega owner's thread).

Results (stability to be determined) are showing massively less power draw and consistently keeping max boos clocks (1630MHz on AIO) for overall the same or better performance at much cooler temps with less power.

Wattman and the drivers still seem to be a rushed mess, so I would think things can only improve from here, if the pricing can be sorted.


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## efikkan (Aug 24, 2017)

Breit said:


> …The more people are spending for their cards, the better for AMD and everyone in between AMD and the customer.


The premium isn't spread across everyone, AMD gets the same share for one card sold for $500 and the same model sold for $1000 in another store. The question here is who takes the premium. Usually it's the stores, but it can also be the wholesalers or AIB partners. And of course AMD could also be lying, but I've not seen the evidence for that yet.


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## ratirt (Aug 24, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> There are some very interesting undervolting tests going on at OCUK's forums at the moment (Vega owner's thread).
> 
> Results (stability to be determined) are showing massively less power draw and consistently keeping max boos clocks (1630MHz on AIO) for overall the same or better performance at much cooler temps with less power.
> 
> Wattman and the drivers still seem to be a rushed mess, so I would think things can only improve from here, if the pricing can be sorted.


Do you have a link to that post or article? I would likely read some news and hints and how that power consumption is handled. Not that I care much about the power consumption but it would be nice to see lower figures in that department.


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## R0H1T (Aug 24, 2017)

ratirt said:


> Do you have a link to that post or article? I would likely read some news and hints and how that power consumption is handled. Not that I care much about the power consumption but it would be nice to see lower figures in that department.


The RX Vega 64 Owners Thread | Page 50 | Overclockers UK Forums


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## EarthDog (Aug 24, 2017)

Ubersonic said:


> That's the dumbest idea I've heard this year lol.
> 
> Firstly, Vega 64/56 are already two of the worst cards going for mining performance compared to price and power consumption.  Secondly, it's not miners buying them it's gamers and professional users.  Thirdly, crippling the cards compute performance would make it useless for anything but games, so there go the professional sales that are currently keeping the ship afloat (and there's no guarantee that would drive those sales to the Vega FE and not the Titan).


yeah, weve been waiting days for mr someoneorother to get back to us on mining performance. From the numbers we have seen, ROI is a lot longer on these cards...

...but still waiting for something concrete.

Interesting theory in the first post considering its ROI is higher...


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 24, 2017)

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/the-rx-vega-64-owners-thread.18789713/

Start around page 35 if you are in a hurry.


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## silentbogo (Aug 24, 2017)

Evildead666 said:


> I got my Vega 64 for 507€, so those of you bitching about the price, why don't you find a respectable retailer ?


The only possible scenario is getting a pre-order w/ AMD promo discount from a single french online store, and those cards aren't shipping until at least mid-september, and it's limited to a grand-total of 137 lucky customers (according to their leaflet).
So, the chances of you being a current owner of a 508€ RX Vega 64 are so slim, that I would say with certainty that you don't have it.


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## john_ (Aug 24, 2017)

AMD wants to make money and whetever price they put on Vega 64, gamers will look elsewhere. Why? Because even if AMD decides to sell ALL Vega cards at their $399 or $499 points, Nvidia can come up with price reductions for their 1070 and 1080 models, making AMD bleeding money everytime they sell give away a Vega card. Even if Nvidia doesn't do a move, people will still keep buying GeForce cards because "they need less power and produce less heat". People will always find an excuse to go with Nvidia or Intel brands. If you don't believe me, just look how fast many people change their stance about Ryzen cpus, now that Intel is promising more cores.

Another thought. Let's say that AMD, or it's partners like Sapphire, sells the Vega 64 at $450 to the retailer and the retailer, because of mining craze, sells at $700. Who makes the more money? But if AMD, or it's partner, sells the majority of cards at $675 and only offers limited quantities at $499, then they can make some money. The retailers of course will come out crying because they wouldn't be able to enjoy huge(for an electronic device) profit margins.

AMD knows that Vega will sell to miners, to movie studios and professionals as Frontier, FirePro, SSG, Instinct, whatever pro card. And they probably already know that it is a lost cause to try to sell this card at significant quantities to gamers. So they try to sell Vega RX in a way that wouldn't cost them money and would help their partners that sell ONLY AMD cards make some money themselves. AMD puts it's financials and it's partners at top, leaving the retailers crying and gamers unsatisfied and angry. Well, I don't see something wrong here, at least from a business perspective. Gamers will come back when AMD will be ready to offer a true gaming card. For now they don't have the money to offer true gaming products. Both Ryzen and Vega are pro products, not so much for gamers.

PS I try to explain AMD's actions, NOT give excuses. They should have come out and say from the beginning that, because of the cost of the card to make and uncertainties with VRAM pricing, they can only offer limited amount of cards at discounts.


----------



## Xzibit (Aug 24, 2017)

Evildead666 said:


> Considering the comments made in the article about what AMD could possibly do to mitigate this problem, "hard" work would have been getting a comment from AMD about pricing and what they can do about it, like a lot of other sites have managed to do in the last couple of days.
> 
> The poor soul who might lose his job, took it into his own hands when he leaked the invoice.
> 
> ...



Especially when anyone with a re-seller license / certificate / permit # can buy 2 cards.  Could be a construction worker that needed 2 vega cards or a work from home mom selling jewelry as long as you have a # you can buy from distributors for whole sale.  The only facts that picture shows is that 2 Sapphires were sold one time to someone with a seller # from the NJ branch and they had to be shipped from their HQ in CA San Jose.

Which is why I asked what the source of the photo was.


----------



## CmputrBlu (Aug 24, 2017)

Retailers are buying cards for $675 only to turn around and sell them  for $689-$699? Is that the profit margin these days. Seems to me you already sold these cards in your shop if you're buying just two. Or you're hoping to make a decent profit. Otherwise doesn't seem worth even placing the order


----------



## dyonoctis (Aug 24, 2017)

This is such a mess. I'm here, hoping for a gpu gen that would be like the radeon hd 4000 money wise, but isntead we are getting years old gpu with inflated price, when they are getting closer and closer to their end life, or brand new gpu with both inflated price and nothing really impressive to show. 

Yhea Vega is a compute beast, but cuda is still what's more used (pixar renderman added a denoiser who's only working with cuda, most of the gpu redering software are cuda based and/or the open cl version is limited.) Unlike big studio, the average client can't tweak his software to work better with open cl, so while vega is a bargain for studios, it's not that great for the average joe. 

 And we may have forgotten this, but the new Imac pro is coming with vega gpu in December, so i'm guessing that a fair amount of vega silicon is being shared by gamers, hollywood, pro and apple. The thing is , I'm not seeing apple putting vega in something as slim as an Imac with the current power draw and heat. They must have tweaked it to be more efficent, but for some reason AMD didn't take any clue from them.

Vega is a nice piece of tech, but the last few weeks showed that AMD didn't take the time to refine it, it's costly to make, and doesn't look like it's ready for the gaming market. Vega is just too much for someone who would just want to game, all the Teraflops, all the benefit of HBM2, and the AI, seems waisted. 

The Asus strix has been tested , and the power draw is worse than the reference model.


----------



## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

silentbogo said:


> The only possible scenario is getting a pre-order w/ AMD promo discount from a single french online store, and those cards aren't shipping until at least mid-september, and it's limited to a grand-total of 137 lucky customers (according to their leaflet).
> So, the chances of you being a current owner of a 508€ RX Vega 64 are so slim, that I would say with certainty that you don't have it.



There are two online stores in France doing the same price, afaik, LDLC and hardware.fr.
I got mine at LDLC, and it was delivered monday.
My EK Waterblock was delivered yesterday.

When I ordered it, it was stated as being available within 7-15 days.

You can still pre-order the Vega64 for 508€, so the price isn't a problem, just the supply problem. All the Vega cards are stated as being available in "more than 15 days".
I don't see any limit on the number of customers who are eligible, I even tried my best to see when the "special offer" would end, and could not find any reference to a date limit on their site.
Hardware.fr shop may have had a customer limit, but not that I have seen or heard of.


----------



## c0d3x5 (Aug 24, 2017)

It's all lies.... 

Ryzen flopped, so they are trying to get their money.


----------



## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

john_ said:


> AMD wants to make money and whetever price they put on Vega 64, gamers will look elsewhere. Why? Because even if AMD decides to sell ALL Vega cards at their $399 or $499 points, Nvidia can come up with price reductions for their 1070 and 1080 models, making AMD bleeding money everytime they sell give away a Vega card. Even if Nvidia doesn't do a move, people will still keep buying GeForce cards because "they need less power and produce less heat". People will always find an excuse to go with Nvidia or Intel brands. If you don't believe me, just look how fast many people change their stance about Ryzen cpus, now that Intel is promising more cores.
> 
> Another thought. Let's say that AMD, or it's partners like Sapphire, sells the Vega 64 at $450 to the retailer and the retailer, because of mining craze, sells at $700. Who makes the more money? But if AMD, or it's partner, sells the majority of cards at $675 and only offers limited quantities at $499, then they can make some money. The retailers of course will come out crying because they wouldn't be able to enjoy huge(for an electronic device) profit margins.
> 
> ...





CmputrBlu said:


> Retailers are buying cards for $675 only to turn around and sell them  for $689-$699? Is that the profit margin these days. Seems to me you already sold these cards in your shop if you're buying just two. Or you're hoping to make a decent profit. Otherwise doesn't seem worth even placing the order



AMD is still selling the cards at the regular price.
Any price increase is not on their end, it is on the retailers end, gouging out the users wallets.


----------



## dyonoctis (Aug 24, 2017)

Evildead666 said:


> There are two online stores in France doing the same price, afaik, LDLC and hardware.fr.
> I got mine at LDLC, and it was delivered monday.
> My EK Waterblock was delivered yesterday.
> 
> ...


It's ending the 15 september for 137 orders.
https://media.ldlc.com/bo/file/fiches/odr/amd/leaflet-amd_vega.pdf

And LDLC and shop.hardware.fr are pretty much the same store, the product they are selling, and their stock are way too similar to be really 2 different store. hardware.fr only seems to have lower price, but they must be sharing the same warehouse.


----------



## birdie (Aug 24, 2017)

There's so much BS in this thread it's staggering.

1) We don't know for sure how many units AMD have shipped - it might be several thousand units - of course the prices will go up. AMD hasn't revealed any exact numbers.
2) The truth is most AMD cards are used for mining as indicated by Steam HW survey. This whole "give gamers RX Vegas is just BS".




3) Miners are much better off with Polaris cards.
4) Ethereum mining is not as profitable as it was 2-3 months ago, because the difficulty has increased threefold for this period, so blaming miners for everything is very far fetched.
5) RX Vega simply sucks for gaming.

This whole "drama" is too much ado about nothing.


----------



## Breit (Aug 24, 2017)

efikkan said:


> The premium isn't spread across everyone, AMD gets the same share for one card sold for $500 and the same model sold for $1000 in another store. The question here is who takes the premium. Usually it's the stores, but it can also be the wholesalers or AIB partners. And of course AMD could also be lying, but I've not seen the evidence for that yet.



Then again, I see no reason for them to take action against that (other than losing their reputation amongst gamers). They sell all the cards they are able to produce for the price they are charging for it.


----------



## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

dyonoctis said:


> It's ending the 15 september for 137 orders.
> https://media.ldlc.com/bo/file/fiches/odr/amd/leaflet-amd_vega.pdf
> 
> And LDLC and shop.hardware.fr are pretty much the same store, the product they are selling, and their stock are way too similar to be really 2 different store. hardware.fr only seems to have lower price, but they must be sharing the same warehouse.



Ah, When I click on the special offer link that comes up now.
It didn't when I bought the card, and for the next few days.
The wording is a bit weird though, as it states limited to 137 usages (utilisations), rather than limited to 137 customers (clients or acheteurs)....That could be construed to mean you could buy 137 cards at that price, and no more (very illogical, i know, but the wording isn't clear).
i suspect you are right though, and it is limited to only 137 customers.

I did order on the monday, early afternoon iirc (well, as soon as I saw it in stock). i almost sh!t myself when i saw the prices, and then thankfully saw the rebate price.
If there was no rebate, I would have just gone for the Liquid edition, seeing as they were ALL at 749€, no matter which vega you were getting (Black/Limited/liquid).

edit : The prices seem to be a bit better now, but the limited edition aircooled is still the same price as the liquid cooled one...


----------



## ensabrenoir (Aug 24, 2017)

....the new Amd:





(only comic book readers may get this)


----------



## Vayra86 (Aug 24, 2017)

I'll just say this


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Aug 24, 2017)

Jesus what has happen to my TPU?!

@W1zzard @btarunr I got busted up for fighting with people more than once on TPU. Yeah, and a good amount of times it was 100% on me for trolling. But, dammit I trolled with honor! With that being said you guys have more mods than ever and the riff raff comes in here and starts insulting all the staff. More and more everyday! Things didn't used to be this way. There used to be a balance. You guys should let me off the leash like the old days. Ill have 90% of these noobs raging quitting life.

On a side note to the staff. Keep killing it guys. The old school guys are still here and got your back.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 24, 2017)

birdie said:


> There's so much BS in this thread it's staggering.
> 
> 1) We don't know for sure how many units AMD have shipped - it might be several thousand units - of course the prices will go up. AMD hasn't revealed any exact numbers.
> 2) The truth is most AMD cards are used for mining as indicated by Steam HW survey. This whole "give gamers RX Vegas is just BS".
> ...


i like the thoughts... but its one hell of a leap to say look at a steam survey a week or two after a card releases, nkt see many on there and think they went mining. Ill let you figure out the large gaps between those two things.


----------



## Gasaraki (Aug 24, 2017)

AMD is so full of shit. Just the day before they claim that the high prices were because of demand. Now the truth comes out, again.


----------



## xkm1948 (Aug 24, 2017)

So many RTG supporters completely rid of critical thinking capabilities. RTG would put a Vega sticker on a turd and these people would still defend it.

Take a fu*cking minute to think about it, what does TPU have to gain by publishing this? Endangering its relationship with a major GPU manufacturer. TPU is trying to dig into this whole shitshow of RTG's Vega for the fu*cking sake of consumers.


And hey, I don't see a lot of you lovers of RTG buying a Vega card. How about putting your money where you mouth is first? You support RTG by purchasing their Vega and then we can talk.


----------



## brian111 (Aug 24, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> Especially when anyone with a re-seller license / certificate / permit # can buy 2 cards.  Could be a construction worker that needed 2 vega cards or a work from home mom selling jewelry as long as you have a # you can buy from distributors for whole sale.  The only facts that picture shows is that 2 Sapphires were sold one time to someone with a seller # from the NJ branch and they had to be shipped from their HQ in CA San Jose.
> 
> Which is why I asked what the source of the photo was.



Wizzard already stated early in the thread,

"It is a well-known store with physical and online presence"


----------



## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

xkm1948 said:


> So many RTG supporters completely rid of critical thinking capabilities. RTG would put a Vega sticker on a turd and these people would still defend it.
> 
> Take a fu*cking minute to think about it, what does TPU have to gain by publishing this? Endangering its relationship with a major GPU manufacturer. TPU is trying to dig into this whole shitshow of RTG's Vega for the fu*cking sake of consumers.
> 
> ...



Bought and delivered.
The one thing that _should_ have been done, is asked AMD about it, maybe even showed them the photo, and asked for a comment on that.

You have a very good point that TPU has nothing to gain from this, apart from clicks and page visits.
There is a lot to lose though, and basically saying AMD should gimp their cards or BIOS's.

For AMD, a card sold, is a card sold, be it to a Miner, or a Gamer, = money in the bank.
AMD do not seem to sell cards directly to end users, so if anyone is to blame, its the retailers and distributors, not AMD or RTG.

One rule of fabrication (and distribution), is not to produce too many of them. Unsold stock is the worst possible thing you can have.
Sold out stock, is usually the best thing to have, just not on release day.....

edit : just one last thing, The picture shows only two being ordered. Is it possible that these are for two liquid Cooled cards ? Wouldn't $675 be not too bad for those ?
I mean, it doesn't explicitly show if its aircooled or liquid cooled in the invoice, as far as i can see...


----------



## R0H1T (Aug 24, 2017)

Just to show how much of an effect mining has had ~






> As JPR writes: *the chart shows, this is the first time in over 20 years that Q2 has seen an increase in shipments, and never one this dramatic*. The big difference is the impact Bitcoin, Ethereum and other coin miners are having on the market. Why Ethereum? There was a similar uptick in GPU sales for Bitcoin and Litcoin mining 2013. It drove up sales of GPUs and especially AMD GPUs because of AMD’s GCN architecture favored mining. Low cost application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) were then employed to do the job and that boom went bust, much to the relief of gamers looking for better deals on GPUs. Bitcoin miners who had built large GPU structures for mining, dumped their AIBs on eBay, cannibalizing the GPU market for a couple of quarters. Due to the architecture of Ethereum, that won’t happen.


https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/31-more-graphics-cards-sold-thanks-to-mining.html

Wonder how can anyone defend miners now


----------



## DeathtoGnomes (Aug 24, 2017)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Jesus what has happen to my TPU?!
> 
> @W1zzard @btarunr I got busted up for fighting with people more than once on TPU. Yeah, and a good amount of times it was 100% on me for trolling. But, dammit I trolled with honor! With that being said you guys have more mods than ever and the riff raff comes in here and starts insulting all the staff. More and more everyday! Things didn't used to be this way. There used to be a balance. You guys should let me off the leash like the old days. Ill have 90% of these noobs raging quitting life.
> 
> On a side note to the staff. Keep killing it guys. The old school guys are still here and got your back.



Brown nosing at its finest! Sucking up to the establishment even!


/ontopic

@btarunr This is misleading if MaLabs is truly a qualified distributor because they can only sell if the purchaser has a tax code and anyone wanting to be a retailer can get one easily enough. afaik distributors dont have same restraints as a retailer/reseller and can set any price they want, the same as a retailer. The pic is an image of an invoice and is not a final bill of sale. The bill of sale will have on it any discounts, rebates, shipping costs, and,finally the corrected pricing. The invoice seen here is for itemized tracking (and note there is no shipping cost)


----------



## Gasaraki (Aug 24, 2017)

Ubersonic said:


> That's the dumbest idea I've heard this year lol.
> 
> Firstly, Vega 64/56 are already two of the worst cards going for mining performance compared to price and power consumption.  Secondly, it's not miners buying them it's gamers and professional users.  Thirdly, crippling the cards compute performance would make it useless for anything but games, so there go the professional sales that are currently keeping the ship afloat (and there's no guarantee that would drive those sales to the Vega FE and not the Titan).




AMD could stop releasing drivers that "boosts mining by 50%"...


----------



## birdie (Aug 24, 2017)

EarthDog said:


> i like the thoughts... but its one hell of a leap to say look at a steam survey a week or two after a card releases, nkt see many on there and think they went mining. Ill let you figure out the large gaps between those two things.



Moar likes from AMD fanboys. Keep them coming. Meanwhile in the real world:

AMD Radeon RX 470 0.34%
AMD Radeon RX 480 0.92%

That's less than NVIDIA GeForce 840M which is a _mobile only_ GPU which has sold less than 100K units.

RX 4XX series has been on the market for more than a year already.
RX 5XX series has been on the market for four months.

RX 570 and 580 are nowhere to be seen. Keep deluding yourself that people use modern AMD GPUs for gaming. I'd love to see this dying breed. 



Nephilim666 said:


> AIB's need to just sell direct. Problem solved. What do they need online retailers for anyway?



Logistics and post-sale support (warranty, returns, etc). AIBs don't have money, people and resources for that.


----------



## TheMailMan78 (Aug 24, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> Brown nosing at its finest! Sucking up to the establishment even!
> 
> 
> /ontopic
> ...


Oh man you have no idea what your messing with. I'm on a leash son.


----------



## SPLWF (Aug 24, 2017)

Damn they smokin crack


----------



## Slizzo (Aug 24, 2017)

btarunr said:


> As much as I'd love to be proven wrong, I don't think there will be a consumer-segment Volta card with HBM2, only expensive Tesla or Quadro. NVIDIA will pull through using GDDR5X or GDDR6 for GeForce.



So far GDDR5X has proven more than fast enough, so that's OK with me. I would like to see what improvements GDDR6 brings along.


----------



## brian111 (Aug 24, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> Brown nosing at its finest! Sucking up to the establishment even!
> 
> 
> /ontopic
> ...



As previously pointed out the retailer is well known according to Wizzard.  MaLabs is definitely a major distributor.  I have no idea for certain if the invoice in this case is truly a reflection of final price but in the industry I worked in it definitely was.  There is no shipping listed because it was sent UPS collect.


----------



## Frick (Aug 24, 2017)

birdie said:


> Moar likes from AMD fanboys. Keep them coming. Meanwhile in the real world:
> 
> AMD Radeon RX 470 0.34%
> AMD Radeon RX 480 0.92%
> ...



I think Vega was the point. But whatever.


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 24, 2017)

birdie said:


> Moar likes from AMD fanboys. Keep them coming. Meanwhile in the real world:
> 
> AMD Radeon RX 470 0.34%
> AMD Radeon RX 480 0.92%
> ...


THe irony in you calling me an AMD fanboy is god damn hilarious. Perhaps consider the ditching the barbs. 

Hey now!!! Something we can hang our hats on... data sets which have been out long enough to be worthwhile in the RX4xx... good job! 



Frick said:


> I think Vega was the point. But whatever.


It absolutely was as that is what the thread title is about!!! Who knew he meant older cards??!!! So many people here on both sides are full of piss and vinegar, it is hard to have an intelligent conversation without these useless barbs and insults being heaved. TPU has more staff than ever, yet this problem is more rampant........and TMM is about to be let loose. Its like, armageddon here.


----------



## Readlight (Aug 24, 2017)

cant they just create vega gaming card for 130 euro whit speed like rx580. RX 460 is super slow.


----------



## springs113 (Aug 24, 2017)

Not for nothing i see a lot of ppl yapping and whining about Vega never being sold for the $500(vega64) price tag.   I for one bought 2 at that price.   I used to love coming to these forums.   TPU had its share of imbeciles but lately i feel like it's a bunch of grade schoolers arguing about who's sitting next to whom.   The quality of discussion as certainly taken a hit.  Come on ppl can we all be civil.


----------



## birdie (Aug 24, 2017)

To duck with your point if you weren't taught to read in school.

My post was about the fact that modern consumer level AMD GPUs are not bought for anything other than mining but you can think anything you want. Just be grounded in reality - it might help.

Anyway, this discussion is completely worthless. Keep fanboyism running.


----------



## infrared (Aug 24, 2017)

birdie, I will give you 1 free warning... You've been throwing around a lot of insults for a while now and it needs to stop. If you consider the discussion worthless then stop posting in the thread or better still unfollow it, because at this point it's starting to look a lot like trolling.

The warning goes for everyone, I'll be handing out thread bans and/or points for anyone that can't be civil.


----------



## ZoneDymo (Aug 24, 2017)

zmeul said:


> AMD can go suck it
> they made their own bed, now sleep in it! I won't shed any tears



idk about that, you can now wait longer for Volta as there is no need to push it out earlier sooo you are not winning with this either.


----------



## DeathtoGnomes (Aug 24, 2017)

TheMailMan78 said:


> Oh man you have no idea what your messing with. I'm on a leash son.


muahahaha


----------



## DidoD (Aug 24, 2017)

btarunr said:


> There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64. The new SKUs could be clearly advertised as not being meant for crypto-currency mining (so as to deter false-marketing lawsuits). This is important for AMD, because the Radeon brand is under threat.



the FE should be that mining card and the Vega`s gaming with bad driver/bios for mining, makes more sense.


----------



## semitope (Aug 24, 2017)

papupepo said:


> I hear that Samsung's HBM2 costs $250-300 so they can't sell it at $499. $599 is also impossible. They must sell it with some profitable articles in a tie-in sale, so they introduced that Radeon Pack.



you should know that's not likely to be true.



birdie said:


> Moar likes from AMD fanboys. Keep them coming. Meanwhile in the real world:
> 
> AMD Radeon RX 470 0.34%
> AMD Radeon RX 480 0.92%
> ...



you guys aren't even trying to make sense.


----------



## jimmyz4202 (Aug 24, 2017)

springs113 said:


> Not for nothing i see a lot of ppl yapping and whining about Vega never being sold for the $500(vega64) price tag.   I for one bought 2 at that price.   I used to love coming to these forums.   TPU had its share of imbeciles but lately i feel like it's a bunch of grade schoolers arguing about who's sitting next to whom.   The quality of discussion as certainly taken a hit.  Come on ppl can we all be civil.




I bought my 2 cards at microcenter on launch day, they only had 4 total and tried to say they were 699 marked down to 599,  wouldn't price match, I bought them at 599 then talked to the mgr and got them to re- ring for 499 and got my free game codes.


----------



## birdie (Aug 24, 2017)

infrared said:


> birdie, I will give you 1 free warning... You've been throwing around a lot of insults for a while now and it needs to stop. If you consider the discussion worthless then stop posting in the thread or better still unfollow it, because at this point it's starting to look a lot like trolling.
> 
> The warning goes for everyone, I'll be handing out thread bans and/or points for anyone that can't be civil.



Read the comments to my posts and you'll understand why I'm struggling to be civil. I'm posting relevant factual data - I receive inanities in response: specially this one below: _"you guys aren't even trying to make sense"_. Anyways, I will follow your advice and I stop participating in this thread altogether.


----------



## Kursah (Aug 24, 2017)

birdie said:


> Read the comments to my posts and you'll understand why I'm struggling to be civil. I'm posting relevant factual data - I receive inanities in response: specially this one below: _"you guys aren't even trying to make sense"_. Anyways, I will follow your advice and I stop participating in this thread altogether.



If you struggle to be civil, then don't post. Pretty simple.

If you or anyone else here decides to continue posting offensively or aggressively, then expect to earn points from infractions. Follow the *TPU forum guidelines*, play nice, enjoy your time here.

Feel free to share your information and facts, that is always appreciated. But there is no need for any kind of aggressive or offensive treatment of others here from any member to any other member, period. If anything, that kind of drama devalues the facts and points made, because the focus is now on said drama. No thanks.

If you feel your point and posts must degrade to offending others with personal insults, you're better off not posting. This goes for everyone involved in this thread. Thanks!


----------



## Countryside (Aug 24, 2017)

Lets make one thing clear how many retailers in total have paid more than the advertised price of 499.


----------



## Alphadark (Aug 24, 2017)

You know I just really want to build a new rig. 

I was going to go from my i7 4770k with a 390x to a ryzen 1800x with a 1080 or Vega 64(I have solar panels so I don't give a crap about power usage) but the prices are all over the damn place. the 1080 has gotten more expensive and the VEGA is in 1080ti territory which makes no sense. 

I have yet to find someone selling the Aqua pack VEGA for a reasonable price either. They are marking up other items to make a huge profit on the "discounts"......I give up.


----------



## nemesis.ie (Aug 24, 2017)

If you are not maxing your panels you may want to do a bit of mining - if the weather is cooler.


----------



## Xzibit (Aug 24, 2017)

brian111 said:


> As previously pointed out the retailer is well known according to Wizzard.  MaLabs is definitely a major distributor.  I have no idea for certain if the invoice in this case is truly a reflection of final price but in the industry I worked in it definitely was.  There is no shipping listed because it was sent UPS collect.



Its also stamped received on the 21 and writing in the stamp says Call Call if my decrypting cursive is right.

They shipped to themselves once they received they stamped it and either called the buyer or this was the slip put into the package sent out to the purchaser.

UPS-Ground-Collect  = Someone payed for it with there UPS account.  If it was the distro he could have just added the shipping cost to the final price.

Many unknowns due to redactions and just left out of the article.  One purchase became a blanketed statement.


----------



## Totally (Aug 24, 2017)

Don't distributor do volume pricing, the less you buy the closer to retail you pay and more you buy the less you pay per unit?


----------



## Rahmat Sofyan (Aug 24, 2017)

btarunr said:


> As much as I'd love to be proven wrong, I don't think there will be a consumer-segment Volta card with HBM2, only expensive Tesla or Quadro. NVIDIA will pull through using GDDR5X or GDDR6 for GeForce.



Same thought..

Thats why I wonder.. Some rumors said volta will with HBM, some said with GDDR. If Vega used GDDR, maybe the price not this high, despite all miners craziness..

actually, what was AMD purpose with HBM ?


----------



## EarthDog (Aug 24, 2017)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> actually, what was AMD purpose with HBM ?


high bandwidth (check, but relatively useless below 4k), and lost cost to produce (nerp).


----------



## Evildead666 (Aug 24, 2017)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> Same thought..
> 
> Thats why I wonder.. Some rumors said volta will with HBM, some said with GDDR. If Vega used GDDR, maybe the price not this high, despite all miners craziness..
> 
> actually, what was AMD purpose with HBM ?



It was a real good idea at the time, but then the HBM delays and cost increases (they expected volume production by now).
You can't design a chip with a 2048bit HBM interface and just switch it to GDDR.
The lower Vega will prob all be GDDR based.

Consumer Volta is most probably going to be GDDR5X, leaving the HBM versions for the Pro Crowd.


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## Totally (Aug 24, 2017)

birdie said:


> Moar likes from AMD fanboys. Keep them coming. Meanwhile in the real world:
> 
> AMD Radeon RX 470 0.34%
> AMD Radeon RX 480 0.92%
> ...



Where'd you pull that data from? And of course you are aware how unbelievably Ill informed it is to compare laptop gpus to desktop discrete gpus. Where are the figures for the GTX 1050/1060 for a more rational arguement? Why aren't you squaking about how  intel igps outsell nearly everything and therefore must be better than everything else.


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## Hood (Aug 25, 2017)

nemesis.ie said:


> http://wccftech.com/radeon-rx-vega-64-msrp-pricing-update/


This statement from "a source close to AMD who is very knowledgeable about the matter" is the biggest pack of lies I've ever heard.  "tens of thousands of units were shipped, but ran into logistical delays" - so I guess every truck they shipped them in broke down, or all the bridges were washed out - what a coincidence!   "This problem will be quickly remedied and the entire stock should be up for grabs within this week. In fact, the card has already been restocked at *Newegg and Amazon*, albeit at the $599 price point (Amazon’s dynamic pricing algo has already taken it above the $700 mark)" - another lie, they've never been $499 or $599, always $689 and higher, as they are right now (I've checked every day since pre-orders started).  AMD is as bad at lying as they are at marketing.  If you take these statements at face value, they make AMD look stupid, disbelieve them and they look like liars - ether way, they lose, especially since Vega 64 is at most a $400 card.


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 25, 2017)

"There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64. "


OMG how dumb are some of these tech editors.  Jesus it's like some of you fundamentally do not understand mining or even basic business!



Vega's current gaming performance is definitely about 30% lower than it should be.   Maybe it will get better, heck it almost definitely will; but right now it isn't good enough.   AMD needs to move inventory to make money while they ramp up HBM2 production.  The crypto-boom is a god send for AMD while they fix up their drivers!
You fundamentally cannot nuke mining performance at the hardware level without destroying gaming/rendering performance.   Crypto currencies are designed from the ground up to  utilize GPU architectures in order to decentralize computing to the masses.   Even if they found a way to "Slightly" nerf Ethereum mining performance, it wouldn't matter when you can mine 100 other f***ing coins.  *LOL this is a $150,000,000,000 market AMD is tapping into.  Why would they not?!*
Crypto-currency mining isn't going anywhere!   EVER!    It's been 10 years lol (The internet is here to stay too btw lmao).   Every time this has happened in the past AMD has made ZERO extra money even though their cards were in insane demand.  It's about time they made some money.   Do you guys want any R&D budget for Navi?  Heck they could use money for their driver team alone!
I agree AMD should do a relaunch - but it should be of AIB-cooled cards when they had Primitive Discard enabled in like 2-4 months.  Right now would be insane.  They can't even make enough cards to meet supply, so yeah prices are high for now.


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2017)

Its been well over 2 days captain...... still waiting...


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 25, 2017)

EarthDog said:


> Its been well over 2 days captain...... still waiting...



For what?


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## EarthDog (Aug 25, 2017)

Still wating to hear your explanation of...

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...-smoke-and-mirrors.236177/page-5#post-3711427



EarthDog said:


> Ive posted some results with the latest beta driver and it puts it around 36 mh/s with overclocked memory. Ive asked for actual ROI numbers and, even though youve been doing this since college, the math doesnt seem to support your claims.
> 
> Perhaps we/I am missing something...eagerly waiting your response in a couple days.



You responded with 37mhs result, but never broke down the math for this being the best at whatever the hell you were talking about.


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 25, 2017)

EarthDog said:


> Still wating to hear your explanation of...
> 
> https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...-smoke-and-mirrors.236177/page-5#post-3711427



That's right now too lol.   I have been tweaking it with some other early adopters and we should be to 45 MH/s within a month.



Wait how would Vega not at least get like 35 MH/s or higher?  I don't believe you have ever mined a day in your life because you clearly do not even know how this works...


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## btarunr (Aug 25, 2017)

Rahmat Sofyan said:


> actually, what was AMD purpose with HBM ?



With Vega AMD went HBM2 because it [claims to have] solved many of its memory management problems using the HBCC approach, and needed a very fast, very low-latency memory sitting next to the GPU. Memory management was AMD's problem-area with GCN. So they kept working around it by throwing brute memory bandwidth to solve the problem (imagine multiple failed fetch/store ops to correctly fetch/store once). Then they realized they can't go wider than 512-bit GDDR without encountering huge power costs, not to mention running out of PCB. So they did HBM with Fury, hoping that the exotic nature of HBM, coupled with 512 GB/s bandwidth would help sell it (which it did, until NVIDIA launched Pascal).


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 25, 2017)

btarunr said:


> With Vega AMD went HBM2 because it [claims to have] solved many of its memory management problems using the HBCC approach, and needed a very fast, very low-latency memory sitting next to the GPU. Memory management was AMD's problem-area with GCN. So they kept working around it by throwing brute memory bandwidth to solve the problem (imagine multiple failed fetch/store ops to correctly fetch/store once). Then they realized they can't go wider than 512-bit GDDR without encountering huge power costs, not to mention running out of PCB. So they did HBM with Fury, hoping that the exotic nature of HBM, coupled with 512 GB/s bandwidth would help sell it (which it did, until NVIDIA launched Pascal).



Pretty much exactly this.   At least Fury gave them some time to optimize an architecture around HBM.   Too bad their driver team can't keep up with their engineers :/


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## phanbuey (Aug 25, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> Pretty much exactly this.   At least Fury gave them some time to optimize an architecture around HBM.   Too bad their driver team can't keep up with their engineers :/



Seems to be a recurring problem...


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## Captain_Tom (Aug 25, 2017)

phanbuey said:


> Seems to be a recurring problem...
> 
> View attachment 91450



Haha I know it is buddy.  Although I will say it seems like AMD saw that coming.  Even after the update Vega FE is competitive with the Titan that costs $200 more.  So yeah the Titan now wins at some professional applications, but Vega wins at others (And these are the terrible launch drivers.  They will improve substantially).


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## phanbuey (Aug 25, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> Haha I know it is buddy.  Although I will say it seems like AMD saw that coming.  Even after the update Vega FE is competitive with the Titan that costs $200 more.  So yeah the Titan now wins at some professional applications, but Vega wins at others (And these are the terrible launch drivers.  They will improve substantially).



Re: the drivers for sure... i mean NV released a card with incomplete driver set altogether.  They had a
"hey Bob that vega is looking pretty good in Maya, did... uh... did you ever add that one maya thing to the package before you sent it?"
- bob: "Ohhhhhh.... shhh... ahh. We gotta call Matt, he will figure out how to make this sound like a good thing." moment.

what in the current price of the currency that you mine is 45 mh/s or 35 mh/s mean in terms dollars per day?


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## nemesis.ie (Aug 25, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> "There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64. "



I'd like to see them launch the next batch with a UEFI that sets a lower voltage on chips that can do it, as this seems to reduce the power draw a lot.

Likewise the AIB partners to put one up for d/l for existing owners given it seems to be locked at the moment so folks can't currently do it themselves.

On the other topic, regarding the 3x improvement on the TitanXp, that was nothing to do with development, they already had that performance available and used on the higher grade cards and just enabled it because of competition from Vega.


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## efikkan (Aug 25, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> Vega's current gaming performance is definitely about 30% lower than it should be.   Maybe it will get better, heck it almost definitely will; but right now it isn't good enough.   AMD needs to move inventory to make money while they ramp up HBM2 production.  The crypto-boom is a god send for AMD while they fix up their drivers!


I see you are still in denial about Vega. This is just the same old excuse we hear every time with AMD hardware; _wait a while and it will improve_, but it never does. Keeping in mind that RX Vega was three months overdue, the drivers were more mature than previous generations at launch, so all the low hanging fruit is pretty much picked already…

Cryptocurrencies are pretty much irrelevant for Vega10 due to energy efficiency. Just like with datacenters, "serious" miners primarily care about energy efficiency because cooling always becomes the problem.


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## R0H1T (Aug 25, 2017)

efikkan said:


> I see you are still in denial about Vega. This is just the same old excuse we hear every time with AMD hardware; _wait a while and it will improve_, but it never does. Keeping in mind that RX Vega was three months overdue, the drivers were more mature than previous generations at launch, *so all the low hanging fruit is pretty much picked already*…
> 
> Cryptocurrencies is pretty much irrelevant for Vega10 due to energy efficiency. Just like with datacenters, "serious" miners primarily care about energy efficiency because cooling always becomes the problem.


Is it?


> Quick note on primitive shaders from my end: I had a chat with AMD PR a bit ago to clear up the earlier confusion. *Primitive shaders are definitely, absolutely, 100% not enabled in any current public drivers*.
> 
> The manual developer API is not ready, and the automatic feature to have the driver invoke them on its own is not enabled.


https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/1997699/




http://radeon.com/_downloads/vega-whitepaper-11.6.17.pdf

Also pseudo channel is not working as intended, maybe needs a driver or firmware update ~


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## efikkan (Aug 25, 2017)

R0H1T said:


> Is it?


Yes, the low hanging fruit are all picked. The Vega you see now, is the Vega you get.
If a hardware feature is disabled, then it's because it doesn't work as intended. This is quite normal. But some of you will always interpret this as future gains, and always keep waiting for the next mythical driver to finally solve everything. If you keep waiting, we'll be buying the successor of Volta long before you get to "unleash" your Vega…


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## R0H1T (Aug 25, 2017)

efikkan said:


> Yes, the low hanging fruit are all picked. The Vega you see now, is the Vega you get.
> If a hardware feature is disabled, then it's because it doesn't work as intended. This is quite normal. But some of you will always interpret this as future gains, and always keep waiting for the next mythical driver to finally solve everything. If you keep waiting, we'll be buying the successor of Volta long before you get to "unleash" your Vega…


And you're saying you know these features are disabled in hardware, how?


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## Vayra86 (Aug 25, 2017)

R0H1T said:


> And you're saying you know these features are disabled in hardware, how?



Because its not active and the card is on the market right now. People are buying a card with a price and a performance metric that they know is there. The pricing and positioning is now set, which means its general performance is also set. There are exceptions to this rule, but they are so rare, I think I know of only one, and that was when Nvidia activated Shader Cache on Kepler. But even that was what, +5-7% in select titles.

Go look at the fine wine that is any older GCN card today, such as the Fury X. It has gained some performance, but again, only in select titles. The general Fury X perf level is still where it was at launch, +-5% depending on game.

Hell, not even AMD itself is saying Vega will go much faster, yet somehow some people still believe it will.


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## efikkan (Aug 25, 2017)

R0H1T said:


> And you're saying you know these features are disabled in hardware, how?


I didn't say anything was disabled in hardware.
You were the one referring to a hardware feature which is (supposedly) not enabled.


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## dyonoctis (Aug 25, 2017)

Captain_Tom said:


> "There is another option AMD can try, in our opinion. It can re-launch RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 as new SKUs which come with crippled cypto-currency mining abilities (a special BIOS or something driver-level, or even something at the silicon-level), and discontinue the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64. "
> 
> 
> OMG how dumb are some of these tech editors.  Jesus it's like some of you fundamentally do not understand mining or even basic business!
> ...


As long as they don't make real dedicated mining compute unit, Navi is going to be another chaotic launch with overpriced gpu. Nvidia already stated that they don't feel threatened by AMD at all. In Europe AMD got *NOTHING *in the 1080p budget segment, RX 570/580 are just overpriced ghost, GTX 1060 are the only thing that you can actually get in this segment.

Since i'm also doing 3d rendering I used to bet on AMD since their consummer product got more compute power, but even now the developpers find that cuda is just more mature and easy to work with. Octane renderer ? cuda only. Redshift ? same story. Cycle renderer ? the open cl version got less features. Pixar ? They developped a bunch of tools that only works with nvidia hardware. Even vray is faster with cuda than open cl. Apple only using AMD gpu ? it doesn't help that open cl on mac is not only slower than on windows and linux, it also got stability issue. Having a Nvidia gpu for creative content creation give you more options, while AMD is forcing you to look for specific option that are not always the best. Add that to the current state of the market, and that's another thing that makes amd less attractive for conssumers, and will not push developpers to work with open cl.

Even with not so great mining perfomance, Nvidia is still making a huge chunk of money, and manage to keep their brand fidelity. Meanwhile the gaming market not so happy with AMD right now, and if the price keep being inflated because of the crypto currency, AMD might win a market but lose another one.

I'm not saying that crypto should die, but AMD need to rethink their strategy.


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## _Flare (Aug 25, 2017)

1. A GPU-manufacturer needs to have marketshare to give others a reason to optimize for its products.
2. Why is nvidia able to push that much FPS with the 150W GTX1070 having only 3 GPC, where we wait and wait to see AMD doing equal with GCN with 4 Engines with equal Watts?
3. I can´t build a "good in some years"-Card while needing a good and efficient card to compeet, NOW.
4. Same fault like the Bulldozer-idea... meh in some couple of month it could be widely adopted and optimized bla bla. How with inactive/broken engines and nearly no marketshare to get wide adoption and optimization?
5. being not to rigorous: if the 200W state of Vega does anytime in the future (month or years) beat the OC-Variants of the GTX1080 with same Watts, okay, better late then never. But if Vega in that state EVER gets near the FPS of 1080Ti i will be an idiot.


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## TheMailMan78 (Aug 25, 2017)

I think AMD was holding on to all the Vegas so they could mine themselves. When the market went down the market all of a sudden had a supply of Vega. AMD already knows they are made for mining so they jacked up the prices.

Either way Vega is a massive piece of S#!T for the price.


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## efikkan (Aug 25, 2017)

_Flare said:


> 1. A GPU-manufacturer needs to have marketshare to give others a reason to optimize for its products.


Market share is not the issue due to the console market. Right now there are more way optimized games for AMD hardware than their counterpart, in fact many games are developed initially exclusively for AMD hardware and then ported to PC.



_Flare said:


> 4. Same fault like the Bulldozer-idea... meh in some couple of month it could be widely adopted and optimized bla bla. How with inactive/broken engines and nearly no marketshare to get wide adoption and optimization?


Bulldozer was a faulty design, only suitable for specific workloads which doesn't map well with consumer software. It's not a lack of "optimizations" as people keep claiming.



_Flare said:


> 2. Why is nvidia able to push that much FPS with the 150W GTX1070 having only 3 GPC, where we wait and wait to see AMD doing equal with GCN with 4 Engines with equal Watts?


Because they have a much more efficient design which is able to divide the workload and keep the cores fed.



_Flare said:


> 5. being not to rigorous: if the 200W state of Vega does anytime in the future (month or years) beat the OC-Variants of the GTX1080 with same Watts, okay, better late then never. But if Vega in that state EVER gets near the FPS of 1080Ti i will be an idiot.


Vega10 will remain roughly where it is today.


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## R-T-B (Aug 26, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> They have a coprocessor on the Vega GPU. surely they can teach it to recognize cryptocurrency and just be absolute dud with it



Not without crippling compute they can't.  That's why this issue exists.


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## Xzibit (Aug 26, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> Not without crippling compute they can't.  That's why this issue exists.



PCPer allude to the basis of the arm in there to be for security.  Could it be repurpose is the question hes asking. If its running security integrity checks then I dont see why not but then it goes into will they or if they even want to or can or willing.

Its non-active in RX from what they said in there discussion.


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## R-T-B (Aug 26, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> PCPer allude to the basis of the arm in there to be for security.  Could it be repurpose is the question hes asking. If its running security integrity checks then I dont see why not but then it goes into will they or if they even want to or can or willing.
> 
> Its non-active in RX from what they said in there discussion.



The algorithms vary too much.  There's no way for even a general purpose CPU to differentiate from gaming compute, which is why no one is trying.


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## Xzibit (Aug 26, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> The algorithms vary too much.  There's no way for even a general purpose CPU to differentiate from gaming compute, which is why no one is trying.



Its not open-source


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## R-T-B (Aug 26, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> Its not open-source



How is that relevant to detecting crypto without breaking gaming compute?


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## Xzibit (Aug 26, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> How is that relevant to detecting crypto without breaking gaming compute?



Did you not say, "that's why no-one is tryn"


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## R-T-B (Aug 26, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> Did you not say, "that's why no-one is tryn"



Uh...  I said because you cannot differentiate the compiled workloads, no one is trying.  They are all opencl kernels to the GPU.

I don't know how open/closed source got relevant, frankly.


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## Xzibit (Aug 26, 2017)

R-T-B said:


> Uh...  I said because you cannot differentiate the compiled workloads, no one is trying.  They are all opencl kernels to the GPU.
> 
> I don't know how open/closed source got relevant, frankly.



To access the security processor ?


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## R-T-B (Aug 26, 2017)

Xzibit said:


> To access the security processor ?



Why would a mining program access the security processor?

I thought the argument was AMD would use the security processor to prevent mining.  In order to do this, the security processor would need to be able to differentiate workloads.

I think we just had a big miscommunication somewhere, it happens on occasion.


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## Vya Domus (Aug 26, 2017)

You can't "detect and cripple mining software" while leaving everything else unaffected. Period.

You can cripple it , but you would cripple the performance on all workloads.

Conspiracy theory ( hold on to your tinfoil hats ):

Now that I think about it , maybe AMD is honest and they are doing their best to get these off the hands of miners and have purposely crippled the card as a whole. And they are going to de-cripple it when this whole things dies out via a magic driver update.

Well...probably not.


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