[Possibly fake] AMD losing 100+ dollars on every vega sold

[JediFragger]

26 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

We have no idea what the yields on the die are though. For all we know they've got scads of the damn things sitting around waiting for HBM2.

Tbf they're bound together, like Sodom and Gomorrah

[mr moose]

On 9/1/2017 at 10:53 PM, Mihle said:

 

He didn't exactly say the BOM for the vega was wrong, just that they didn't regularly publish for all GPU's.

 

Not sure I would be confident to claim that means anything given it is as ambiguous as the original claims.

 

 

At any rate, I think tech media should stick to the working end of tech and not try to be accountants, business managers, and so on.  If you want to know what the human eye can see, speak to a visual processing specialist or visual biologist, want to know about AMD shares, speak to an investor.  Want to know the difference between disk/disc then speak to an etymologist.   Want to know which hard drive is faster go to tech media.

 

 

[Jito463]

On 8/30/2017 at 3:34 PM, Princess Cadence said:

the RX480 was the best card they made in quite a while indeed, from balance stand point, the 500 series rebrand was just dumb though in my opinion...

I thought all along that they should have just tacked a xx5 onto the end of the numbering scheme (485, 475, 465, etc), rather than launch a new product line that was nothing more than a faster clocked version of the previous line.

On 8/30/2017 at 4:58 PM, bbqsauce said:

(you don't design a card like this and only plan to make like 50 dollars in profit. How can it even cover R&D which should be a big factor. imo they probably planned to make like $200 per card?)

Plans don't always work out as expected, though.  Sometimes a bad decision made during the planning phase, can cost you profitability with the end result.

On 8/30/2017 at 9:32 PM, AnonymousGuy said:

Yeah I'm calling bull**** on this.  Why would AMD even sell it if it's costing them money?  They would just scrap the project.

If they were already too invested in the project to cancel, then they would have had no choice but to continue.

On 8/31/2017 at 6:06 PM, Drak3 said:

AMD would absolutely sell VEGA at a $100 loss per card, if the alternative of scrapping them is a $101 loss per card.

On 9/1/2017 at 6:34 AM, Misanthrope said:

If they already made a contract to buy x amount of HBM2 for example it might be more expensive to scrap the entire thing than to just release it anyway and lose money on every card if you're losing less money than you otherwise would by bailing on established contracts.

Exactly this.

 

There's a couple other points I haven't seen brought up yet.

 

1) AMD is not just selling these cards to gamers, they're also set to be included in the new iMac Pro.  Given how Apple is notorious for overcharging their customers, I imagine AMD could make a fair chunk of change from selling to Apple and let them pass the costs on.

 

2) Any losses could be used to obtain tax breaks (US tax code has several such loopholes).  While not a direct benefit to AMD, it would allow them to offset at least part of the expense.

[MoonSpot]

14 hours ago, Jito463 said:

There's a couple other points I haven't seen brought up yet.

 

1) AMD is not just selling these cards to gamers, they're also set to be included in the new iMac Pro.  Given how Apple is notorious for overcharging their customers, I imagine AMD could make a fair chunk of change from selling to Apple and let them pass the costs on.

Yea, no; I don't see that at all.  Apple is in the game for themselves, they're not interested in holding Radeons hand and giving anyone money for kicks.  The moment the cost benefit to apple lines up with nvidias offerings, is the moment AMD gets dropped as a supplier.  Apple overcharges to line their pockets, not someone else's.

[Jito463]

42 minutes ago, MoonSpot said:

Yea, no; I don't see that at all.  Apple is in the game for themselves, they're not interested in holding Radeons hand and giving anyone money for kicks.  The moment the cost benefit to apple lines up with nvidias offerings, is the moment AMD gets dropped as a supplier.  Apple overcharges to line their pockets, not someone else's.

I'm not saying Apple won't negotiate the best deal they can get, but in the type of performance needed on the iMac Pro (e.g. NOT gaming), the Vega card easily beats comparable Nvidia offerings.  As such, AMD can charge a higher premium for the chips to Apple.  Maybe not enough to break the bank, but enough to recoup any losses they may incur from the gaming cards.

[mr moose]

18 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I'm not saying Apple won't negotiate the best deal they can get, but in the type of performance needed on the iMac Pro (e.g. NOT gaming), the Vega card easily beats comparable Nvidia offerings.  As such, AMD can charge a higher premium for the chips to Apple.  Maybe not enough to break the bank, but enough to recoup any losses they may incur from the gaming cards.

I thought the only reason apple was using AMD was becasue they could squeeze AMD for a better deal.  Nvidia aren't exactly struggling for sales so they are less likely to take a lower figure just to sell 3% more cards.  

 

EDIT: 3% is a made up figure to illustrate the number of cards likely sold on top of all the cards sold simple due to being in a mac.

[Jito463]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

I thought the only reason apple was using AMD was becasue they could squeeze AMD for a better deal.  Nvidia aren't exactly struggling for sales so they are less likely to take a lower figure just to sell 3% more cards.  

 

EDIT: 3% is a made up figure to illustrate the number of cards likely sold on top of all the cards sold simple due to being in a mac.

You could be right.  I merely meant a higher premium compared to what they sell to their AIB partners.  In any event, I could be completely wrong, it's just some more speculation in a thread steeped in speculation.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

You could be right.  I merely meant a higher premium compared to what they sell to their AIB partners.  In any event, I could be completely wrong, it's just some more speculation in a thread steeped in speculation.

I speculate that your speculations about that other speculation  is probably right, but only if my other speculation about their speculation is wrong.