AMD On RX Vega Pricing Oddyssey - "Launch Price Ongoing; Stock is to Blame"

[Raevenlord]

In the latest news surrounding the strange, foggy circumstances of AMD's RX Vega 64 pricing, company-man Gerald Youngblood told PCGamesN that the announced RX Vega's pricing wasn't a launch-only affair. Specifically, he said that "Our SEPs, and the price tag that we announced, is our full intention of where we would suggest the product be priced. Not just for launch, but ongoing." Gerald then went on to say that RX Vega's pricing woes can't be attributable to AMD, in that "First of all we just need to drive as much stock as we can, because inventory is really important in everybody being able to hit those prices. Then it's just working with our partners to enable it, but we don't set the price of their product. But we will drive, and do everything that we can, to get those prices to where we suggested when we launched them earlier."





While the supply and demand equation is something we understand, and is the principal factor in increased pricing for almost every component that goes inside a desktop PC nowadays (there are price increases across the board for GPUs, SSDs, and DRAM memory as we speak), perhaps we shouldn't forget that retailers themselves have been saying that they were only able to hit AMD's MSRP of $499 for Vega 64 due to rebates offered by the company. It's true that AMD can't really control the pricing at which retailers sell - but they can control the price at which AMD themselves sell to retailers, through the mentioned rebates. This is the particular point of contention, for now, regarding the company's pricing policy, because it seems AMD are limiting availability of Vega 64 SKUs at $499 by only selling a certain number of RX Vega 64 GPUs with the included rebates that bring the acquisition pricing down enough for retailers to be able to charge MSRP. Now certainly, retailers are always looking towards maximizing their profits as well; however, this "rebate" issue wasn't approached before in other GPU launches, which lends some credence to the retailers' position.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[aj28]

With regard to the rebate issue: Are retailers not buying their stock from AIB partners or distributors? I understand that one or more retailers made statements to the effect of "We are buying these cards at higher-than-SEP prices, therefore AMD's rebates are required to sell them at SEP," but as far as I'm aware, AMD can't dictate to their partners what to sell the cards to retailers for, even if they are reference models.

 

[Dimi]

It was long clear that AMD would have to price these really high to make any sort of profit. Retailers and Etailers are legally NOT allowed to price things at a loss here. I don't know about the American consumer laws though.

 

[P4-630]

 

[Dimi]

Even 699 Eur is a really bad price tbh. Thats 825 dollars.

 

[P4-630]

Even 699 Eur is a really bad price tbh. Thats 825 dollars.

Yeah it is...

Gigabyte Vega 64 is the only Vega 64 (gaming) selling at my country at the moment.

 

[Exceededgoku]

I just bought a Vega FE for my laptop and it seems pretty decent... Maybe worth it for those that can't get the 64?

 

[DarkHill]

View attachment 91359

that is not really relevant.

The (r)e-tailers can set the price as they like, as long as they dont agree on them internally (atleast in europe) -

HOWEVER- if AMD released the fist batch of stock at a different price to the (r)e-tailers than they do with the subsequent ones. THAT is the problem as AMD cannot expect launch-hysteria to be covered by others than them selves. If AMD announce an MSRP/SEP its up to them to ensure that the distributors and (r)e-tailers can profit from this MSRP and then let the open market take care of the rest.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

It's clear to me Amd should have done an nvidia , all founders edition from them direct at an exaggerated price like nvidia do , that way the price would be all their fault but they would earn more per card and direct customer ripping off seams to pass forum muster just fine.

Is it also Amds fault some shops have wanted £/600 notes for a rx 580 lately too.
I mean its quite clear to me Amd made the whole first batch then passed them to partners to sticker up and box then they sold them ,so at least two mittons added their cut into the mix.

 

[HD64G]

Even 699 Eur is a really bad price tbh. Thats 825 dollars.

A small mistake in your calculations. European countries have 18-24% Vat tax above the price. So, to compare to US price you need to divide with at least 1.2. Then you come down to $687 or to 580 euros.

 

[RejZoR]

Vega FE air cooled is freaking 999€. Vega 64 being 1399€ is just plain retardation.

 

[Imsochobo]

Vega FE air cooled is freaking 999€. Vega 64 being 1399€ is just plain retardation.

That is e-tailers, not AMD.
https://www.prisjakt.no/#rparams=ss=vega64

click any product or a direct link:
https://www.prisjakt.no/product.php?p=4422253

Prices vary very much between the few etailers listing it, this is not something amd can control

Thus anything above the 599 usd mspr is 100% e-tailers

 

[vega22]

A small mistake in your calculations. European countries have 18-24% Vat tax above the price. So, to compare to US price you need to divide with at least 1.2. Then you come down to $687 or to 580 euros.

stuff like gpu have a 20% import tax across the board, then a sales tax in the range of 15/25% (depending on which country) on top of that.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

Idk if that beats Newegg's price for the same card @ $689 USD. MSI brand for the exact same card is $719.

But like I've posted before Newegg is blaming AMD for the price not Gigabyte or MSi or even supply and demand, they flat out blame AMD.

 

[TheMailMan78]

A completely ignorant question. Could they be short in production because of the consoles or are they a different animal all together?

Idk if that beats Newegg's price for the same card @ $689 USD. MSI brand for the exact same card is $719.

But like I've posted before Newegg is blaming AMD for the price not Gigabyte or MSi or even supply and demand, they flat out blame AMD.

Newegg better have evidence to back that up.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

A completely ignorant question. Could they be short in production because of the consoles or are they a different animal all together?


Newegg better have evidence to back that up.

I sure wish I could have recorded that call, but they were trying to make any excuse to justify the new prices.

 

[efikkan]

With regard to the rebate issue: Are retailers not buying their stock from AIB partners or distributors? I understand that one or more retailers made statements to the effect of "We are buying these cards at higher-than-SEP prices, therefore AMD's rebates are required to sell them at SEP," but as far as I'm aware, AMD can't dictate to their partners what to sell the cards to retailers for, even if they are reference models.

When the maker(AMD) picks a target MSRP, they decide a recommended price based on their own base price, plus an estimated commission from AIB vendors, wholesalers and stores. But each of those are free to take a premium on top of that, or even sell at a loss if they want to. When product prices are inflated above MSRP, that's usually because the store tries to make a larger profit margin due to short demand, it's never the maker, unless the MSRP is changed.

Rebates are irrelevant, that's not how they work. I seriously doubt AMD have put their base price above MSRP as you say shops have claimed, AMD would have to be pretty stupid to do that.

-----

Speculation aside, what are the actual facts here?
Is it just a limited supply of non-bundled cards? Or have AMD actually lied about something?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

AMD are just trying to save their own skin from the angry pitchfork wielding mobs at this stage.

Its kinda like false advertising in a sense... AMD sent out review samples and told everyone that it would be around $500-550ish. Reviewers told everyone that it would be $500-550ish. Then the price jumped up and it turns out AMD had offered retailers a rebate to stock and sell as many cards as possible in an extremely short space of time but the time frame given was too short and AMD got caught with their pants down and their PR team are bailing water like a motherf***er trying to control the damage.

Yes its dishonest but Nvidia arent angels either... Remember the 4GB 970s that weren't actually 4GB??

Since AMD have been the underdog for a long time, I just expected them to be a little more modest and honest while attempting to climb to the top again... Ryzen was a huge achievement for them and rightly so... they should be very happy about what they achieved with that CPU. but theyve only gone and soured the moment with their dodgy dealings.

 

[BiggieShady]

A completely ignorant question. Could they be short in production because of the consoles or are they a different animal all together?

Different beasts, new xbox SoC will still use jaguar cpu cores (beefed up though) and gpu is somewhere between polaris and vega feature wise ... similar story for PS4 Pro, only their gpu got double rate FP16 and lower clocks.
Of course, shortage can come from not having enough production lines available for all the different beasts, or simply yield issues since all vega chips come clocked far beyond the efficiency of the architecture and have huge area.

 

[jabbadap]

stuff like gpu have a 20% import tax across the board, then a sales tax in the range of 15/25% (depending on which country) on top of that.

Well I'm not sure about that, at least there's no extra import duties on EU. Graphics cards are under TARIC code of 8471800000, which have 0% import duties from outside EU. I.E. If I order some graphics card from ebay at $499+$25 shipping costs(shipping costs are added to Value), I can use Finnish Customs duty calculator to calculate all fees needed to get that to Finland.

Spoiler: Imaginary ebay graphics card order from states...

 

[Dimi]

A small mistake in your calculations. European countries have 18-24% Vat tax above the price. So, to compare to US price you need to divide with at least 1.2. Then you come down to $687 or to 580 euros.

I ordered my GTX 1070 on Newegg 12 months ago and it was listed at 410$ after rebate and that is what i paid. I didn't have to pay anything extra.

 

[vega22]

Well I'm not sure about that, at least there's no extra import duties on EU. Graphics cards are under TARIC code of 8471800000, which have 0% import duties from outside EU. I.E. If I order some graphics card from ebay at $499+$25 shipping costs(shipping costs are added to Value), I can use Finnish Customs duty calculator to calculate all fees needed to get that to Finland.

Spoiler: Imaginary ebay graphics card order from states...

View attachment 91368

i thought that was only for full systems or items including a screen, but i am happy to be proven wrong as it stops it happening again

 

[ensabrenoir]

I just bought a Vega FE for my laptop and it seems pretty decent... Maybe worth it for those that can't get the 64?

......ah

 

[Chaitanya]

Even 699 Eur is a really bad price tbh. Thats 825 dollars.

Even in India Vega 64 is 800$ and you can get nVidia Geforce 1080(gigabytes xtreme) for 140$ less than that. Might hold onto my dying card(GTX 970) until the pricing settles down.

 

[Durvelle27]

Hopefully we can see these soon for MSRP