Full article is an interesting read, but since Sapphire and ASUS were the only ones modeling a custom Vega card, it isn't very hard to determine who these partners are.
Radeon RX Vega GPUs are next to impossible to buy: Is AMD hitting pause or simply prioritizing Front...
Despite the poor availability, a good many of you have been asking us to review custom RX Vega graphics cards from one of AMD's partners. This request likely comes at least in part due to my comments openly bashing AMD's reference design, claiming that it's hot, loud and that you simply shouldn't buy it. Many custom models have been announced, but getting your hands on any one of them is next to impossible -- I can't even get one, despite AMD saying that it's willing to support me directly. I've heard for months that the cards are coming, until last week when two of AMD's board partners told me that they wouldn't be coming after all. This had me confused and after making a few more inquiries it was confirmed by one exclusive partner and one massive partner that the custom cards have been effectively canceled as the companies are no longer receiving Vega 56 and 64 GPUs from AMD, and its reference models weren't being supplied either. No Vega graphics cards were being sold by these partners. |
Let us just hope the following is true. AMD's earnings report is due out today (likely at 5:01 PM EST as usual), and some experts have a price target of $17 a share on AMD stock, though if they miss their EPS by a cent Wall Street will sell off their stock like it's toxic.
In the short term, the situation sucks for gamers and I'd bet some of you are ready to put the blame on AMD. But as I said, I don't really have a problem with this, if that's indeed what AMD is doing. When retailers start selling Vega 64 graphics cards for over $1,000, AMD doesn't make a single extra dollar from that sale. Where they do make many more dollars is when they sell that same GPU on a Frontier Edition card. And if that profit contributes toward developing better gaming graphics cards down the line, then that's great. Let's be honest, on the gaming front, AMD is being bested by Nvidia at almost every price point. Had it not been for this seemingly never-ending mining boom, AMD's GPU division would be in 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 would have already bought one. |
