Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed today's video is based on an interesting topic but ultimately for consumers it doesn't really mean all that much so I hope to have you intrigued I recently came across some information regarding AMD's Radeon rx Vega GPUs I don't want to share and explain what I think it means after having a bit of a think so just quickly AMD released the Vega 56 and 64 graphics cards back in August of last year some five months ago now at the time they sold out in seconds and since then supplies been unable to meet the demand and miners are mostly to blame for this there was also some pricing controversy regarding rebates just days after release but I think that's been proven to be inaccurate now as they were briefly available in November at the MSRP before supply once again ran out in spite of poor availability a good many of you have been pressuring me to review a custom rx Vega graphics card from one of AMD's partners this is likely due to the fact that I keep openly bashing AMD's reference design claiming it's hot loud and you shouldn't buy it numerous custom design models have been announced now but getting your hands on one is next to impossible I myself can't even get one despite AMD stating they're willing to support me directly I've been told for months now they're coming that was until last week when two of AMD's board partners told me they're no longer coming at all this all had me a bit confused and after making a few more inquiries it was confirmed by one exclusive partner and one massive partner that the custom models had effectively been cancelled as they were no longer receiving Vega 56 or 64 GPUs from AMD and this meant even the reference design AMD models weren't being supplied so no Vega graphics cards were being sold by their of these partners I thought that can't be right and began digging a little more first I decided to see who actually has rx Vegas stock and what models slash brands are in supply so I popped over in yo egg and found well nothing they did list some custom gigabyte models at insane asking prices with no stock along with a single power color model also out of stock and a reference model solved by XFX which was also out of stock what was in stock was the Vega frontier Edition and I'll come back to that shortly every other us-based retailer I checked and there was more than a dozen I looked into also showed zero stock for the Vega 56 and 64 graphics cards then hopping over to the local Australian based retailers and again I looked at over a dozen different retailers I found the same story in fact PC case gear now lists just a single mag of 56 model and of course it's out of stock I also tried the AMD shop on their official website and checked all the links they provide there for various retailers and again none of them had stock either I also decided to have a look at pre-built systems though there are almost none that feature rx Vega graphics cards that said I do know of one a Cybertron PC packing and AMD risin thread grip in 1920 X with a reference rx mega64 graphics card heading over to Best Buy there are over two dozen models to choose from but just one of them sports an RX Vega graphics card inside and guess what it's the only one out of stock there is one exception to all this though and that's Apple AMD obviously don't want to upset the applecart so you can still buy a horrendously overpriced Iron Mac Pro to get a Vega 56 or 64 graphics card it's only eight thousand two hundred and sixty dollars for a Vegas 64 version with an 8 core Xeon CPU 32 gigabytes of memory and a one terabyte SSD I'll include an affiliate link for you guys in the video description below I'm always looking out so at this point on you two things there appeared to be not a single Vega 56 or 64 card in stock anywhere in the US or Australia that's not completely unusual for Vega but coupled with the fact that two of AMD's partners told me that AMD is not currently taking orders for either GPU had me intrigued what did this mean exactly my first thought maybe there was some sort of serious issue with production could yield really be that bad at this point though you'd expect that yields of the massive 486 millimeter squared I'd had to start to improve so it probably had to be something else then I noticed that while there wasn't a single Vega 56 or 64 card for sale anywhere there did appear to be a few Vega frontier edition graphics cards in stock I also recalled seeing the frontier edition moles for sale in the US and hopping back over in new egg we can see the air-cooled version selling for a cool $1500 or more conveniently for minors half a dozen for $9,000 us with a free six piece riser kit included oh what a nice deal for miners I should note these frontier edition graphics cards are being sold via Newegg through a third-party seller called you shop more so not Newegg themselves at the time of putting this video together new egg didn't actually have stock so the frontier Edition can still be difficult to track down especially at a reasonable price at that point the penny started to drop I began to speculate that AMD probably hadn't reduced supply there Vega GPUs rather they had redirected all available supply to their frontier Edition line by choice miners would prefer to buy Vega 64 it's essentially the same product well it's the same GPU but with half as much HBM to memory and it comes at an MSRP of $500 u.s. Vega Frontier Edition on the other hand boasts an MSRP of $1,000 u.s. so in other words it cost twice as much and the only difference is the HBM to memory capacity granted HP m2 memory is expensive and best estimates put the cost of 8 gigabytes at around 150 dollars u.s. so assuming you can double that for 16 gigabytes which you should be able to do this means there's about 150 dollars u.s. worth of extra memory on the frontier edition card AMD though they're charging at least $500 u.s. more so they're pocketing let's say $350 US on that deal this is assuming when they're selling directly to retailers such as Newegg AMD aren't increasing the price themselves but I have no evidence of that and it is possible they could be but again no evidence of that what I do know is that AMD sells their reference design RX vega cards to their partners who then slap on their own branding before pushing them out to distributors and retailers generally this has done a take up the slack before the board partners produced their own custom design models at that point AMD is just selling them the GPU with the frontier Edition AMD makes those exclusively or rather contracts and manufacturer to produce them this means AMD sells their radio and pro brand of graphics card directly to distributors and all retailers so they have a bit more flexibility when it comes to pricing in there of course cutting out the middleman so with market conditions that see every last GPU you can produce snapped up almost before you can get it at the factory door at alarmingly high prices thanks to price gouging by board partners distributors retailers and maybe even AMA themselves why would aim to even entertain the idea of selling that product for $400 or $500 when they can get at least $1,000 speaking of price gouging Newegg sellers for example are selling the $1,000 frontier Edition for $1,500 but they're also selling Vegas 64 should it become available for $1,400 again the blame here might not be entirely on retailers we just don't know what AMD are really charging for them though I tend to believe AMD's not overcharging anyway as for shipping frontier Edition models only or at least focusing the bulk of the production here it just makes sense for aim to do this and honestly I can understand why they are doing this anyway I'm just speculating that this is what they're actually doing and the evidence I have certainly suggests that this is the case their compute heavy GC and fifth-generation architecture is highly desired by minors and there's really not much they can do about that for now the goal would be to pump out as many Vega GPS as they can slap them on frontier edition graphics cards and make maximum profit I'm not saying AMD has discontinued or even stopped producing Vega 56 and 64 graphics cards but the evidence would suggest that they're shifting focus to the frontier additional models at the moment as I said earlier it looks like apples still getting their Vega graphics cards and some retailers have told me they're expecting fresh shipments sometime next month how large those shipments are that was hard to say reading between the lines though it's not expected to be that significant at least for most retailers anyway in the short term this really does suck for gamers and I'm sure many of you are getting ready to comment something about how corrupt or unfair AMD is below in the comments section but as I said I don't really have a problem with this or at least I understand why they're doing it if AMD are indeed doing this and if they are I think this is exactly what they should be doing when Tayler start selling vega 64 graphics cards for well over $1000 Amy doesn't make a single extra dollar from that sale where they do make many more dollars when they sell that same GPU on a frontier edition graphics card if that profit is then used to develop better gaming graphics cards then that's great let's be honest right now on the gaming front AMD is really getting abused by Nvidia as the Green Team is smacking AMD around at almost every price point it's a brutal way of putting it but I think most of you will agree it's also very true had it not been for this seemingly never-ending mining boom AMD is GPU division would be in very poor shape right now and you'd see loads of Vega 56 and 64 graphics cards on shelves because just about every gamer who wanted one probably would have bought one by now of course I have reached out to AMD for a comment on this story and as you'd expect at this point they're neither confirming nor denying all they've told me is that they are working on a formal statement but it will come after they announce their earnings for now this is all I have to say in an official capacity we are currently in a quiet period in advance of announcing our fourth-quarter financial results on January 30th and I'm unable to comment at this time on certain financial related items such as GPU demand or market pricing again just to be clear I'm in no way bashing AMD and I do think they are making the right move here assuming I am right about all this of course I am they also told me they're 100% committed to gamers and they're working on devising ways of getting graphics cards into the hands of gamers going forward and gamers again are their primary focus when it comes to developing new graphics cards I know everything we've discussed here contradicts this statement but remember this is a quicker action to solve an issue AMD currently faces or at least capitalize on an issue that they're currently facing and long-term solutions could look very different anyway in summary don't expect to see any custom Vega 56 or sixty-four graphics card reviews here at harbor unboxed anytime soon this point it kind of goes without saying but at least this provides a little bit more information as to why that is that's a real shame hopefully this is just some short-term pain for gamers and it will result in a brighter future where we see stronger competition - I am being an NVIDIA much like what we're seeing between AMD and Intel right now that's going to do it for this one I'm your host Eve see you next time