Wednesday, January 16th 2019
AMD's Initial Production Run of Radeon VII Just 5,000 Pieces, Company Denies it
More news coming in on AMD's upcoming high-end graphics card, the Radeon VII, with Chinese media reporting that AMD's initial production run for the card is set to ship just 5,000 pieces worldwide. This comes hot on the heels of another report that the Radeon VII won't come in custom-designs by AMD's add-in board (AIB) partners, and that only the reference design will be repackaged and sold by them. What's worse, the source which leaked this production size also revealed that AMD is selling the card below cost-price, i.e., with each card sold, AMD is losing money. This probably explains Wall Street's cold response to the Radeon VII launch, but with a batch size of just 5,000 (roughly $3.5 million in sales at $699 a piece), this card has a negligible impact on AMD's bottom-line.
AMD posted a swift denial to both pieces of news, the size of its production run and the product's profitability. In a statement to MyDrivers, AMD said (translated): "We will not release production figures, but when released on February 7, AMD.com official website and AIB vendor partners will have products on sale, and we expect the supply of Radeon VII to meet the needs of gamers." In short, Radeon VII is shaping up to be the card you'd want to buy if you've sworn a blood-oath never to buy an NVIDIA product, and you need something to play games in 2019 at 4K with.
Sources:
MyDrivers, MyDrivers (2)
AMD posted a swift denial to both pieces of news, the size of its production run and the product's profitability. In a statement to MyDrivers, AMD said (translated): "We will not release production figures, but when released on February 7, AMD.com official website and AIB vendor partners will have products on sale, and we expect the supply of Radeon VII to meet the needs of gamers." In short, Radeon VII is shaping up to be the card you'd want to buy if you've sworn a blood-oath never to buy an NVIDIA product, and you need something to play games in 2019 at 4K with.
124 Comments on AMD's Initial Production Run of Radeon VII Just 5,000 Pieces, Company Denies it
Also, AMD will be able to use a "first consumer 7nm GPU" headline.
Looking at all the R&D and manufacturing struggle, 7nm could be the last silicon node for mainstream GPUs ever. And this statement is based on what...? :-)
AMD marketing strategy lately is all about being first to 7nm in CPUs and GPUs (after they took the lead in core count). Having such a limited, flagship product makes a lot of sense for AMD, so TSMC could have asked any price they wanted.
Even if this whole move costs them $3.5mln (as much as the revenue), it's still less than 30s commercial during superbowl.
I get the distinct impression from the OP that there's a smear campaign in the works. All of these things said target lowering AMD's stock valuation.
Told you so... @Mighty-Lu-Bu ?
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/told-you-7nm-vega.251514/
How many Radeon MI60 Instinct Professional units would we think AMD produce/sells? How many chips on a 7nm wafer? How many on a wafer are just bad can't be salvage for anything? Then what's the mix of full MI60 (4096SP), MI50/Vega7 (3840SP), and I might say there possibly could be a 56CU/3584SP part being binned. That could point to how many parts AMD would have to play with.
As to price the existing Vega 64 has been down to $400... what's different? The 7nm wafer TSMC is charging more, although you get more per wafer, also remember the V64 was a full chip. This is a gelding so per chip could be slightly more, but I could say similar? Cost for 8Gb "more" HBM2, I might say $80. The interposer and assembly is same if not getting better so that's similar. There is plenty of money left in the BOM to provide profit, that's bunk!
Lastly, AIB's... We don't think existing Vega 64 design don't easily "port-over"? Everything is on the interposer, so the power section might need nothing as isn't the MI50 300 TDP while I thought Vega 7 isn't suppose to be that high. AIB's have existing PCB and coolers that should not have an issue flipping from their existing Vega 64 customs to this interposer that in all probability a "pin-for-pin" drop-in interposer and nothing more.
Logically this Chinese media report is not based on factual consideration.
But let's face it, the Radeon VII is nothing more that an attempt to fill the high-end user case.
And for that, there's the 2060, and nobody can deny it's performance on actual games. Three weeks ago I thought this card (2060) would be a very slow version of RTX cards, but it's not the case and I revised my point of view.
Slight problem is Win 10 with Fall update... Quite hard to in.
No real bias here, I have both brands onhand for my use and just grabbed a GTX 780 for my DD, not the newest by any means but enough it serves the needs I have. Also have a R9 380X I run sometimes, it's a good card too so in truth either one can and will do for me. Only difference is what would run what I'm currently wanting to do best and that's it.
Same with AMD vs Intel, currently running a 7350K in this setup and before that it was a FX-8300, what I have runs along the fence and honestly I haven't seen enough difference to make me want to prefer one over the other, be it a card or CPU.
If it works and does the job to make you happy, go for it.
I do.
I call this bollox.
While "The data center accelerator market is expected to grow from 2.84 billion by 2018 to USD 21.19 billion by 2023"
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-data-center-accelerator-market-2018-2023---focus-toward-parallel-computing-in-ai-data-centers-300705003.html
Some would want to think AMD could do perhaps 500,000 GPUs to Data Center and Deep Learning HPC over the next 2-3 years I personally think that's low-ball.
seekingalpha.com/article/4103435-china-catalyst-amds-radeon-instinct-ai-processors
ALSO WORTH NOTING A LOT ON HERE WERE VERY HAPPY WITH 10% improvement for years even lauding its greatness ,vega 7 is 25%+ better then vega64 i have one , it games at 1680Mhz for no more then 240 watts but typically around 180 watts @4k,, Vega 7 runs Upto 300 watts , i very much doubt it runs that high in any game and its priced about the typical 2080 price point here in the uk with 2080's going for between 650 and 800 dependant on variant, of which there are two , one a bit shitter then the other in silicon terms, that alone gets AMD the sale for me , they are not being deceptive, but im not buying tbh waterblocked cards need using for longer to recoup costs, shame.
Biased comments is one thing, I don't care about those, biased news is something else which I do care about (as should everyone else, media is the one that's supposed to stay neutral (and yes, I know I repeat that in this message, but you can never repeat it enough))