Mining, and not Gaming, Compelled ASRock to Enter the Graphics Market

[btarunr]

When we first reported news of ASRock entering the graphics market with a focus on AMD Radeon GPUs, the story included a theory that crypto-currency mining was the primary driver behind the company's move. ASRock in its press-deck announcing its new Phantom Gaming series graphics cards late Wednesday, inadvertently confirmed that theory. While the cards are branded Phantom "Gaming," the press-deck slide detailing the lineup is prominently headlined "Mining" besides "Radeon 500 Series VGA." Our GPU Database curator also mentions that the cards' designs bear striking similarities to coolers from Chaintech, the OEM that supplies to Chinese VGA brands such as Colorful. Strangely enough, ASRock still went with "gaming" branding, and gave the cards proper display connectors, so it's hedging its bets on both gamers and miners.



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[megamanxtreme]

Some are stating the good-ol' "resale value."

 

[R-T-B]

Some are stating the good-ol' "resale value."

Who? I've yet to see it.

EDIT: That was a legitimate question. Downvotes rather than answers, really guys?

 

[Vayra86]

Hahaha wow this is quite sad.

 

[owen10578]

These seem to be a different SKU for mining? The phantom gaming on the news before this had higher clockrates.

 

[Ubersonic]

"Chaintech"

God damn that's a name I haven't heard in a long time, I had a Chaintech KT333 motherboard back in the day, was epic

 

[techy1]

very good news for gamers... asrokc will get burned with this (as of now gpu mining is on its last leg - and they about tho start shipping) and then after few years when cryptos (and its mining) will resurect its hype again, then other companies will be like: "... yea - remember what happened to that asrock move, I do not want that to us". I hope asrock filled the stock of these (and paid for it) before product launch

 

[brian111]

Unless given an extremely good deal, I don't see why anyone would purchase mining only cards. The chance of being stuck with essentially worthless cards would be too great.

 

[EugeneR]

No one is mining with RX570 right now.

 

[jabbadap]

Unless given an extremely good deal, I don't see why anyone would purchase mining only cards. The chance of being stuck with essentially worthless cards would be too great.

They are targeted to big mining farms with big quantity purchases. Not some single home users.

 

[R00kie]

Gaming in the name, Mining in the segment.
Well, that's not confusing at all.

 

[Athlonite]

1st off why would you even want a non RX580 or better for mining
2nd why would you want anything less than a RX580 for gaming

 

[EugeneR]

2nd why would you want anything less than a RX580 for gaming

Not everyone got rich parents.

 

[Athlonite]

Not everyone got rich parents.

I worked and saved and bought my own

 

[Fluffmeister]

Phantom Gaming does seem quite an apt name after all.

 

[zilul]

I worked and saved and bought my own

Not everyone can work.

 

[ppn]

mining is the segment, gaming in the name for resale value.

 

[Super XP]

The RX 580 is for gaming.

 

[medi01]

Goes well with Nvidia's GPP.

 

[MAXLD]

1 new brand, 5 new brands, or even 1 less brand, it's irrelevant. If AMD doesn't ramp up production by a significant factor (it won't), there's no improvements in both mining and gaming scenes, much less price wise.

 

[TheGuruStud]

1 new brand, 5 new brands, or even 1 less brand, it's irrelevant. If AMD doesn't ramp up production by a significant factor (it won't), there's no improvements in both mining and gaming scenes, much less price wise.

There's plenty of gpu dies to go around, but no ram.

 

[_JP_]

Welp, the intention behind any business decision is profit so...just a bit late to the game (pun)?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Welp, the intention behind any business decision is profit so...just a bit late to the game (pun)?

Exactly what I was thinking. The mining trend is on the down-slope and that trend shows no signs of slowing. Still, AsRock makes good stuff and their cards are likely to continue that particular trend.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I think ASRock has one of the better customer service support out there and their MBs tend to be top notch from what I've used over the years. If I was in the market for a GPU and I didn't care if it was AMD or Nvidia, I may consider them if Zotac and EVGA didn't have something that I liked.

I guess we wait and see if this is something that pans out for them or if it's just one of those, we tried it and it didn't work and they move on with business as before. I, for one, hope this works out well for them. Always nice having more choices, even if it is for GPUs.

 

[Super XP]

1 new brand, 5 new brands, or even 1 less brand, it's irrelevant. If AMD doesn't ramp up production by a significant factor (it won't), there's no improvements in both mining and gaming scenes, much less price wise.

Memory shortages is the issue. A quote by AMD: off anandtech.
A: Relative to just where we are in the market today, for sure the GPU channel is lower than we would like it to be, so we are ramping up our production. At this point we are not limited by silicon per se, so our foundry partners are supplying us, there are shortages in memory and I think that is true across the board, whether you are talking about GDDR5, or you’re talking about high bandwidth memory. We continue to work through that, with our memory partners and that will be certainly one of the key factors as we go through 2018.