Thursday, August 24th 2017
Retailers are Buying AMD RX Vega 64 at $675 Each
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.
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.
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.
135 Comments on Retailers are Buying AMD RX Vega 64 at $675 Each
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."
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)
support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-Software-Crimson-ReLive-Edition-Beta-for-Blockchain-Compute-Release-Notes.aspx
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.
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 : seekingalpha.com/article/4101362-amd-vega-pricing-scandal
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.....
and the one in stock are rather between 999.80chf and1306chf (standard cooler and liquid edition respectively )
oh and 1 FE listed at 1632chf
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 675USD. 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.
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 :laugh: 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 ... )
Edit: www.malabs.com/
www.malabs.com/company/aboutus.php
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.
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.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.