UPDATED: AMD's GPU Shortage before Sale?

[Earnist_]

9 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

I think that when Nvidia's CEO said : "not impressive", he knew this is probably what's going on...

Selling a very little amount of newly made GPUs just for attention??? 

no not at all, the only reason he comes out and says its not impressive or bad is because he sees it as a threat to rtx cards and has to bad mouth it

[Taf the Ghost]

7 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

No one appreciates Multi-track drifting memes.

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

This is one way to ensure honesty when telling investors the product is selling well, in fact we sold out on launch. 

So, the Nintendo play?

[Taf the Ghost]

6 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

it is kinda how i thought the launch was going to be. 

 

its pretty much going to a paper launch with a few of them being sold to some workstation users and then the people who refuse to buy Nvidia for various reasons. will be nice to see how these overclock without powerlimits. 

 

why not the Vega VII fusion. liquidcooler only with stupid powerdelivery. noones gonna buy it regardless of how good it is. and that is the sad realty. they have no reason to compete at the high end, even if they could (which GCN cant)

They want it to stay within the general power limit without murdering boards, but you let the Overclockers have the fun with the product. Somewhere, a few weeks ago, I suggested AMD release this as a Limited Edition run. (Something like RX Vega Black Edition, was my thought.) That's effectively what they're doing. 

 

This is actually something of a weird product, as it really doesn't exist to produce revenue directly. They just don't want to lose money on it. The purpose of a Retail version is "cheap" advertising. These are probably the dies that don't quite meet the MI50 spec for clocks, so this should run at higher voltage than those. That is to say these are partially salvage packages, which drastically lowers the direct cost of production to AMD. However, the point of keeping them in the market is that every benchmarker will need one, will mention it and there's going to be a good solid 4ish months of deep-dives on the 7nm process via testing of the Radeon 7. 

[GoldenLag]

8 minutes ago, Taf the Ghost said:

 

 Im rather interested in the workstation version of this card. Especially since that enables quad crossfire (if the vega workstation is to believed)

 

It could potentially tople quad SLI 1080ti as the biggest PP contest

[COTG]

8 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

 

No, its a very smart move for a card that probably won't be available for long and is only there to sell chips they don't want/need for HPC Cards.

 

And there won't be a cheaper version, this is as cheap as it gets, because HBM is THAT expensive to manufacture!

Because if you mess up the last HBM stack, you can throw away a perfectly fine Graphics Chip and FOUR HBM Stacks. Even if that only happens to a fraction of the parts, its still expensive to throw them all in the dumpster.

 

No, the next GPU-SKU will be Navi. There won't be any other things.

OK, a "fully activated" Card is still a possibility, though I'd only give that a maybe 25% Chance at best.

 

Exactly that's what it means.

Its like a Titan, just from AMD. That's why it didn't come with an RX tag or VEGA on it but instead is called Radeon 7. To make it clear that it is an extraordinary product outside the normal product range.

No it does not as the Card is only available from AMD for exact the price they said they'd sell it. So there will be no increase in price.

Either you can buy the card for exactly that price. Or you can't. There is nothing in between.

 

For a high End AMD Card it is.

You know that people tend to use AMD only to reduce the price for their Cards and buy from the Leatherjacket anyway...

Because its a limited edition that is sold for a limited time and will be replaced within the year would be the most probable conclusion.

They can only compete with the others when people actually buy the Cards.

When nobody buys the cards, even if they are the better value and you get castrated green ones for more money, how can there ever be a competition when everyone sees them only as means to reduce the price??

"For a high End AMD Card it is.

You know that people tend to use AMD only to reduce the price for their Cards and buy from the Leatherjacket anyway..."

I've actually been quite annoyed at this myself... So many people are "disappointed" at the launch of the VII because they were hoping that AMD was going to release a 700$ GTX 2080ti equivalent gaming card that would force Nvidia to drop their prices. Even if the AMD card was going to give the same performance as the nvidia one at a lower price point, most people will still buy the Nvidia card as seen by history, so most people simply look to AMD's graphics cards as a means to get their overpriced green shit for a slightly lower price

[Taf the Ghost]

6 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

 Im rather interested in the workstation version of this card. Especially since that enables quad crossfire (if the vega workstation is to believed)

 

It could potentially tople quad SLI 1080ti as the biggest PP contest

They said they turned off the IF links over PCIe. Which is a little annoying, to be honest. Though until Threadripper 3 is out, with new boards, that'd probably get eaten up for bandwidth. 

[Doobeedoo]

This wouldn't be surprising, they're repurposed accelerators so they can have something faster on high end and show something new on CES too. They said they're working on Navi so Radeon VII will be more short lived. 

[S w a t s o n]

2 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

They want it to stay within the general power limit without murdering boards, but you let the Overclockers have the fun with the product. Somewhere, a few weeks ago, I suggested AMD release this as a Limited Edition run. (Something like RX Vega Black Edition, was my thought.) That's effectively what they're doing. 

 

This is actually something of a weird product, as it really doesn't exist to produce revenue directly. They just don't want to lose money on it. The purpose of a Retail version is "cheap" advertising. These are probably the dies that don't quite meet the MI50 spec for clocks, so this should run at higher voltage than those. That is to say these are partially salvage packages, which drastically lowers the direct cost of production to AMD. However, the point of keeping them in the market is that every benchmarker will need one, will mention it and there's going to be a good solid 4ish months of deep-dives on the 7nm process via testing of the Radeon 7. 

Pretty much this. Also fits the rumor that AMD cancelled Vega 7nm for consumers late into production ramp because of great early Navi silicon.

[TacoSenpai]

10 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

-snip-

no, no, NO, BRAIN STAPH

 

10 hours ago, Quadriplegic said:

Not surprised on the "no custom variants" part. I mean, there are no partner Titan cards, right?
 

-snip-

 

10 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

-snip-

I have been summoned...

 

Edit:  @Taf the Ghost beat me to it.  you win this time

 

Spoiler

 

 

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, S w a t s o n said:

Pretty much this. Also fits the rumor that AMD cancelled Vega 7nm for consumers late into production ramp because of great early Navi silicon.

This product has been on & off several times in the rumor mill. If Navi was early, they probably don't release it. With Navi looking to be on track for its early Q3 launch, it's something to fill into a market segment for a time. I do wish they hadn't nerfed the Double-Precision though. It would have made an interesting product to have around.

[dizmo]

This card never struck me as something they were going to push mass market. I imagine the 8GB cards that eventually come will be doing that.

This is just the "let's have something to show off at CES" card.

[ZestyJalapeno]

This doesn't even look like a shortage, more like a limited production run from defective Instinct chips....

[S w a t s o n]

2 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

This product has been on & off several times in the rumor mill. If Navi was early, they probably don't release it. With Navi looking to be on track for its early Q3 launch, it's something to fill into a market segment for a time. I do wish they hadn't nerfed the Double-Precision though. It would have made an interesting product to have around.

Based on the whole mike rayfield thing I think it was on and off several times in AMD. I meant good engineering samples, not early navi though this is earlier than I originally expected back at vega launch.

[frost3y]

13 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

It seems like the release of the Vega cards, almost no coverage or pow-wow about the Vega Frontier. A good card for AMD to release, but hardly see them anywhere and good luck getting one. Could be repeating the Vega mistake. 

Got a frontier air cooled card

 

[Belgarathian]

Just sounds like AMD being realistic that for gaming GCN just can't compete with Nvidia's top offerings. Navi if I remember correctly will be a new architecture from the ground up.

[Arika]

So basically AMD never Intended to treat this as a serious product. So the whole song and dance at the press release for this card was nothing but 

 

[GoldenLag]

1 hour ago, Belgarathian said:

Navi if I remember correctly will be a new architecture from the ground up.

Navi is final version of GCN. Arcturus is the rumoured next gen Macroarchitecture. 

 

We need to wait untill 2020 before we get a new Macroarchitecture

[DrMacintosh]

GPU shortages are bad for us, but if they can sell out that hopefully means AMD is doing fine. 

 

33 minutes ago, Arika S said:

So basically AMD never Intended to treat this as a serious product.

No, its just a very safe product for them to make. They just took a workstation card, modded it a little, and made it a RTX 2080 competitor. It didn't cost them a lot of money and however many units they can sell they will be happy with.  

[Arika]

3 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

and made it a RTX 2080 competitor.

no they didn't, if it was a legitimate 2080 competitor, then it wouldn't be a 5000 unit limited run.

Quote

It didn't cost them a lot of money and however many units they can sell they will be happy with.  

they are being sold under manufacturing costs, they can only lose money on this.

 

so 

• first of it's kind (7nm)
• limited run (5000 units)
• sold under cost price (can only lose money)

No business would make this decision for anything other than marketing.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

no they didn't, if it was a legitimate 2080 competitor

On a brute performance metric it is. I don't think anyone expects gamers to pick a Radeon VII over a RTX 2080 in mass scale. AMD has never been able to overthrow Nvidia in the high end market. 

 

1 minute ago, Arika S said:

they are being sold under manufacturing costs

According to who? 

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Arika S said:

no they didn't, if it was a legitimate 2080 competitor, then it wouldn't be a 5000 unit limited run.

they are being sold under manufacturing costs, they can only lose money on this.

 

I agree, if they want to market it as a competitor, people are going to expect it to be a competitor. 

I read they only have a $50 margin on these cards. 

[meenmeen1103]

I'm a little confused how some are saying that a byproduct of yields from a different SKU otherwise destined for the bin being re-purposed as a new product to be sold at any price nets a loss of revenue, especially without actually even looking at the company's financials. Makes more sense that even at a below production cost pricepoint, any money they make from this product is profit.

[Arika]

10 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

According to who? 

Mike Rayfield, now former general manager of the Radeon Technologies Group.

 

Quote

‘Radeon VII ‘ which was to be a Vega 20 based consumer facing part that cost $750 to build

so the former vice president of Redeon technology basically said it will cost $750 to build, but it's being sold for $699.

 

and even if what @RorzNZ said about the $50 margin on these cards that still next to nothing. these cards to not being made to make money, they are being made to build up the AMD brand that has been in the shadows in the high end for such a long time in the GPU market.

[Arika]

7 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I'm more confused by people treating a rumor as a fact.

I'm not, happens in every other thread, why should an AMD thread be different?