Tuesday, August 15th 2017

AMD's RX Vega Launch Prices Might be Just Smoke and Mirrors
Overclockers UK staff member Gibbo, who posted the renowned British company's Vega stocks and deals for the red team's graphics cards, has just come out with something that might put our inner buyers to attention. Apparently, AMD has allowed launch prices to be as they currently are ($499 for the Vega 64 and $399 for the Vega 56 in the Americas; £549 for the Vega 64 in the UK) through rebates and other offers to retailers, who, according to Gibbo, couldn't keep those prices at all if that was not the case. According to the Overclockers UK staffer, " (...) the good news is AMD are rebating early launch sales to allow us to hit £449.99 on the stand alone black card which has no games. This is a launch only price which AMD at present are saying will be withdrawn in the near future, when if it happens is unknown, but remember do not be shocked if the price jumps nearly £100 in a few days. This time around there is no early adopter tax, quite the opposite on the stand alone black card, so do be quick."Doing some digging through Europe, we've been seeing incredible (as in, unbelievably high) pricing for AMD's RX Vega cards all over Europe, with Mindfactory.de also asking users fork out €649 (~$760) for your base, run of the mill reference Vega 64. And if price hikes are to be expected in the near future, I think AMD can count itself out of the game, in all practical realities. At that pricing, Vega just isn't competitive with Pascal's equivalent cards. On Overclockers UK, the cheapest GTX 1080 can be had for just £449 (a whole £100 pounds less, with competitive performance, to the Vega 64.) Over at Mindfactory.de, you can nab an AIB, dual-fan GTX 1080 for just 527€. Let's see what happens to Vega 56's pricing when that one actually finds itself out in the wild, but for now, it seems AMD's bet on HBM2 and a monolithic die is backfiring on them. The company is probably betting most of its Vega profits to come from the professional or AI acceleration markets - and for the looks of it, that is the most sensible play.
Sources:
Gibbo @ Overclockers UK, Mindfactory.de, Reddit
150 Comments on AMD's RX Vega Launch Prices Might be Just Smoke and Mirrors
Therefore, not saying that things will be radically different, but there's really no clear conclusions to reach at this point in time. Only by mid-September we can actually even evaluate Vega cards correctly, by:
- custom cards price/stocks (which are the ones people want to buy)
- actual final performance (w/ better tuned drivers by then and several "OC" card versions around fighting the long established custom GTXs)
- thermal/noise performance (with proper designed custom coolers)
R9 290/X launch was a clear typical case of jumping into conclusions, one that some review sites completely went full rabid, riding the reference cooler storm in search of click bait before the actual cards people wanted (customs) could arrive. In the end, when they finally launched, all that went calm and quiet, because custom cards nullified the problems, and transformed the cards into a must buy, specially the R9 290 (and I'm even not talking about mining at all).
Now, not saying custom Vegas will be GTX beaters, specially in the 64 case, but the custom 56 really has a good chance to be an even greater card than it already looks to be. Even to the point of nVidia being pushed into finally revealing a "1070 Ti".
Bottom line:
- If (custom cards) stocks/prices stabilize in Sept around a decent value, then we'll have a great card.
- If not, and if mining also does the same thing it did to the RX 580s, then Vega is a bust, consumer wise.
Until that time comes, not much really matters with the reference ones. Whoever chooses to wait and see what happens, is doing the right thing. Whoever cannot wait that much time, then GTX it is (even though a "1070 Ti" shadow can be lurking around).
You are getting offensive pretty fast :|.
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/rx-vegas-low-mining-speeds.236150/
"The reason for low stock right now might be that AMD didnt have lots of stock or the price gouging people are the reason. Any sane miner will not even touch any RX Vega for their mining enjoyment. "
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/amd-releases-beta-driver-specifically-geared-for-blockchain-compute.236193/
Sad to Say Some members need to edit their posts to remove some of the not so pleasant personal attacks before the mods clean up and issue points
I want an iPad Pro 12.9" at about £860. I can't think of any business reason at all for having it except that I had one before and I really liked it, so I want it again. End. At that price, I can't buy it at the moment, unfortunately.
ROI isn't as good, but Vega is the best mining card by a respectable margin.
Its weird... it feels like you are talking out of both sides of your mouth... ROI isn't as good, yet its the best mining card by a respectable margin???????????????? I get it in total hash rate, but it takes longer to make a profit.. its riskier to get these faster, yet more expensive/longer ROI cards.
But yeah, I would like to see some calculations, including power use (may not affect you, but it affects the overwhelming majority who does mine), price, and posted hash rates (Sure it can be tweaked, but we haven't seen it yet... lets use concrete values for now)...................
.......................
EDIT: Using the latest beta driver... www.techpowerup.com/img/dcfzl8FkuCntOyhc.jpg
There will almost Certainly be further release's which will address further improvements/enhancements
ROI is garbage. I still assume drivers and the actual miner will earn more performance, but as it sits that is a hope and a prayer. Vega core with gddr5 will be a better option fkr mining assuming they dont use the garbage memory design they did on Polaris and do something similar to the 512bit bus on the Hawaii cards.
disappointed in performance, prices, availability, and the wait for driver to mature.
not bashing AMD i just feel bad for ppl that waited.
Google
IBM - Nvidia partner in NVlink
Microsoft
Amazon
HP
Qualcomm
Nvidia is also tryn to keep as much customers as it has. Professional/Consumer products are becoming less overlapable as before.
If you wanted 1080 Ti - level performance, there was no reason to wait for Vega when you could have just bought a 1080 Ti! For those that are building enthusiast PC's now, Vega is a nice option.
I would wager you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about that and look forward to no response in a couple of days like everyone else who is full of it.
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.
Seriously Tom, I see you say a thing like that and I know you can't be reasoned with and hence not worth continuing to discuss this.
AMD staying quiet for now as they release how manipulative their pricing has been. PR damage control incoming.