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This has been a turbulent week for AMD to say the least. RX Vega is officially here, which is positive news but unfortunately, pricing fluctuations have swiftly dirtied the waters and shifted the story. We initially assumed that low stock was the cause of Vega jumping well past MSRP but that doesn't seem to be the case after all. Today, KitGuru has been scouring for answers and from what we know now, it seems that AMD has created quite the messy situation by not properly disclosing RX Vega pricing and effectively blindsiding consumers and journalists.
At the end of July, KitGuru was one of the publications invited to SIGGRAPH 2017, during which, AMD finally unveiled RX Vega to the world. At the time, we were given a $499 MSRP for the RX Vega64, which we were told should work out at around £450 here in the UK. What AMD failed to disclose was that this was intended as a ‘launch day only’ price, causing undue confusion for buyers, putting unnecessary blame on retailers for ‘price hikes’ and even potentially skewing the conclusions of early reviews.
So what exactly is going on with Vega’s pricing? We got in touch with Andrew Gibson at Overclockers UK who gave us the full breakdown:
“Launch price was $499 with NO games for the Black card, as outlined to us by AMD as a launch only price. AMD allowed us to sell a set amount at this price, which was several hundred, clearly not enough as they were sold out in approximately 15 minutes. After this the regular price was $599 with FREE games for both the black and silver cards, $699 for the aqua card plus taxes.”
Gibson’s claims are corroborated by an additional source too, as Norwegian tech retailer, komplett.no, also spoke out, telling the site tek.no that the cheaper launch price for RX Vega64 was limited to just 275 cards to allow it to appear more favourable at launch. Here is the full quote translated:
“Komplett.no today confirms to Tek.no that the price of just over 5,000 kroner was limited to a limited edition of 275 graphics cards, as the company – as one of AMD's “selected” online stores – was allowed to sell at a favourable price at launch. The RX Vega 64 version we had for sale was in a limited edition of this price and will unfortunately not be put up for sale again. When these were sold out, we had to remove this product from our pages”.
As part of the presentation sent out to press following SIGGRAPH this year, AMD included a slide (pictured above) that very clearly shows the Radeon RX Vega64 listed with a $499 price tag. AMD even went as far as to label the card the “new GPU king under $500”. At no point was ‘temporary’ or ‘limited’ pricing ever communicated to journalists or the public. This has led to retailers like Overclockers UK taking a lot of flack from potential customers, as many are of the mind that retailers are just choosing to sell above MSRP. Unfortunately in reality, retailers are simply abiding by the pricing AMD set for them, but did not communicate to the rest of us.
Gibson has told us that with the new MSRP now in place and stock levels fluctuating, we could see RX Vega64 sell for anywhere between £549 and £649, with the £449 price tag being ruled out entirely:
“£449 is not possible, $499 is below what they cost us direct from the board partners by a large chunk of cash, AMD rebated us to hit $499 on a set amount of units. As such $599 is now the minimum”.
“Unfortunately AMD did not make the launch pricing plan clear at all to the press or the consumer, which has caused a lot of confusion, if we could sell cards at £449 and make money, they’d be at that price. If that was the case we probably would have sold around 5,000 units now at OcUK, whereas the reality is we’ve sold a little over 1000”.
For now, we have no idea if AMD will support the the price it originally announced again. We also can’t tell you AMD's ‘side of the story', as company reps are just emailing a generic response that they will have more information to release within a couple of days. In any case, we shall update you all if and when that changes.
Update: Here is AMD's official statement:
“Radeon RX Vega64 demand continues to exceed expectations. AMD is working closely with its partners to address this demand. Our initial launch quantities included standalone Radeon RX Vega64 at SEP of $499, Radeon RX Vega64 Black Packs at SEP of $599, and Radeon RX Vega64 Aqua Packs at SEP of $699. We are working with our partners to restock all SKUs of Radeon RX Vega64 including the standalone cards and Gamer Packs over the next few weeks, and you should expect quantities of Vega to start arriving in the coming days.”
AMD's statement is ambiguous at best and unfortunately, provides no real, definitive answers. You can read our thoughts on the statement itself, HERE.
KitGuru Says: This has honestly been quite a shocking turn of events and it is something AMD really needs to address. With everything AMD's marketing team has been up to these last 8 months, I think it is clear that going forward, they need a new strategy.
wow
unreal! It’s just not competitive at those prices….especially 64. Wow – makes me not even want one anymore.
Re-do the reviews with the new pricing in mind.
AMD truly showing the cloth they’re made of
what a bunch of cunts
To my mind this was deception by AMD pure and simple, no if buts or maybe, pure deception.
inb4 Raja seppuku
Year and a half later to match the 1070 and cost more, use more power and run hotter? At least Fermi was faster, despite it’s flaws.
like that would ever happen knowing how many shills there are in the media ..
I don’t want to jump to conclusions until we see a definitive announcement from AMD, but if $600 is the actual pricing for Vega 64 and Vega 56 is $500, I won’t be buying those GPU’s. They are not competitive at all. As a Freesync/Fury owner who was also hoping to build a Ryzen system with Vega in the coming months, I’m very disappointed.
Agreed. Very shady practise.
True. Vega is acually *worse* than the 480GTX launch! Wow.
Just stepping in here as the bloke who sat in those particular AMD briefings. I wrote news based on hours of presentations, complete with slides that detailed the US$ prices and those same prices were repeated in the Press release. Luke took over to do the review, based on the same information which was confirmed by AMD. At launch the graphics cards went on sale at the stated prices. It was AFTER that the wheels came off.
nah
A lot of different reviewers are actually doing it. tek.no said that they would redo it, based on the new price.
Once again the AMD marketing (and strategy) team is a massive let down. I love comment from Overclockers UK about “free games” so it hurts less paying for a 600 dollar card that is hammered in everyone’s mind at 500. Sad nonetheless because I was really hopefully for another good launch and combination in the future. Hope these prices plunge.
I am too…I was looking forward to some killer freesync/fury builds. This will sting if true
dont get one then 🙂 more for the rest of em haha
YA that is why a RX 580 is selling for $500 because of AMD. Mining has messed up everything from AMD to retailers. Well except retailers they are making out like bandits.
Maybe AMD doesn’t give a fig as they know anything will be buy by miners.
Why would a man who went to University in India commit A form of Japanese Suicide? I believe you have your cultures mixed up but thanks for the contribution.
well…no matter what..ppl will still buy it at the increased price…$500 is still better than $1500 @ amazon LOL
serisouly all these dum dums complaining about price…
one or two marketing errors ( if they did actually exist) are normal…for the numeber of products AMD is rolling out one after another..
For example: Wallmart misprints a flyer…you guys gonna go crazy over tht mistake..does wallmart care ..NOPE..they don’t give a shit, They would just be like ” we r sorry for the inconvenience….geez
live with it..If you cant afford it..dont buy it..SIMPLE!
except that 499$ was never the MSRP as it turns out, that price was only few units in select shops that AMD themselves discounted
Whats with all the dollars ? is the GBP more volatile than Petrol on the forecourts? Why not quote price in ETHereum/Britcoin?. Luckily I dont give a fig atm. Why re-do the review ? card is the same, just the price is worse, take a star off and de-list the recommend. I predict Miner crash 8 weeks when the DAG grows to 128Mbs
.
The whole unboxing embargo, then the benchmark embargoes seemed pretty much but the main thing noted was the delay in launch was due to AMD building up stock so consumers would be able to get a card, or at least stand a chance. a) Seems like the stock build up was a flat out lie, all the pieces send to the UK sold out in minutes. b) Pricing also a lie, AMD allowed reviewers to quote the initial low prices, a company would make the clear distinction between normal RP and essentially a early bird offer but even after reviewers quoted the price, no corrections were made.
Look name of the game is to move merchandise and they are doing that, hyped as a game changer that barely threatens the gtx 1080 and comes nowhere near to gtx1080ti but for those prices I will go ahead and buy the gtx1080ti. Let the crytominers line AMD’s profit margin.
The whole RP and Marketing department should be fired… what a fiasco, it also make us all long amd supporters look like stupid fanboys.
Thanks #AMD …
That is exactly my point. There was never any mention of a ‘launch special’ during those briefings so the revelations from OCUK have come out of the blue and are a total shock.
It’s not about it being affordable. It’s the value aspect and the performance. AMD was already struggling enough from it’s power situation but this is more expensive than NVIDIA’s cards that were released one year ago. The fact that NVIDIA is somehow better than AMD’s cards in terms of value.
So Yes, i will not buy RX Vega for an extra $100+ Fluctuation because of the manufacturer raising prices. I will not support this idiotic decision.
you should not be supporting AMD, nor Intel nor nVidia – their goal is to make money off customers no matter what
you should treat these corporations like they’re your enemy, and be very careful to what they sell you
I support the underdog so we don’t end up in a monopoly. So far AMD was a good price performance ratio in the right price with no shitty moves like this one. I had no reason not to support them and in extension us all.
that’s not how you prevent the creation of a monopoly
You are not fun at parties are you?
Well AMD clearly stated $499 for the card and they never said that was the intro price. This is very deceptive of them and if they actually intended to sell it at a higher price then that is the price they should have been listing right from the start not some scam price to get people all interested. I am wondering if they will get sued for doing this?
You treat everybody you buy something off as the enemy? Grocery shopping with you must be a fucking blast lmao.
IDK, what was AMD to do set MSRP for miners and then say when mining goes bust… the price will drop $100? Would the reviews factor it in that way, hell no! AMD is in rock and a hard place, set MSRP low and let retailers line there pockets with exorbitant mark-up, and miss-out on profit… they’ve the right to recoup also, right? Present the higher launch and have all the reviews and history judged by that higher the Launch MSRP? Is this any much different than Nvidia and the Founders edition?
Face it whatever the price “miners” are still gobbling up the production, and other than a die-hard early adopters on the gaming side who’d buy then no matter the cost are you really hurt. Sure it sucks but while the market is the way it is… I’m ok with AMD pulling in some profit. While then it does go “bust” AMD does a price-cut of below the original MSRP, and miners have to lose more on their resale profit.
The only way to do this was again the CPU/Mobo/Monitor bundle but even that as you had to buy all of it at the same time that was a great option for everyone. It would take a lot of checks and balance to still be sure any hardware purchase hardware rebate is abused by miners in various sell offs or such.
I would like to thank all of you guys for such insightful ADVICE.
This type of Developement will certainly delay the long put off Rebuild of my Gaming PC. ?
This market is just too volityle for my wallet. ?
I am cool with that since the drivers are crushing it on the mining gaming realm!
LMAO than don’t buy their product go back to paying for the affordable Intel products you know and love hahahahahaa
Is that why Threadripper & Ryzen CPUs are so cheap? Interesting how you could make such a wild assumption. You must be the slow kid in your class.
AMD have shot themselves in the foot with this gaffe. The card would struggle for sales at the $499 price point, never mind $100 more. Having said that – it is well nigh impossible to get ANY amd card on OCUK – apart from the 460/550 level gpu’s. It is apparent that the fab plants can’t make them quick enough, so there must be a fair bit of revenue for AMD and their board partners.
Another site has verified this pricing strategy:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/news-pc/3023-aib-partners-to-gn-yes-vega-price-will-change
You know the article is about their GPU and not their CPU right? Just confirming only. You sound confused. You’re welcome.
They must have hired that John Fool guy back and put him in charge of pricing.
DMG Control 101
You’re very butthurt rly.
“serisouly all these dum dums complaining about price…”
Which coincidentally is exactly what AMDuh’s always do..
“one or two marketing errors ”
Yeah they …”Forgot” …to mention that the MSRP was a $100 then the only price they ever managed to mention anywhere /s
*Reviews where done
” Oops yyyeeeah about that price btw…. “
” Is this any much different than Nvidia and the Founders edition?
erhm… Nvidia said beforehand that founders editions would be $100 more expensive and that AIB MSRP was set $100 lower.
Which is the exact opposite of what AMD did here. Do you notice the difference now or is that fanboy hat glued to your forehead?
Packing a Ryzen 7 atm, move along no fanboy to see here.
This is a giant AMD CON to get favorable reviews, good media knowing the cards were turds.
Now the Tame Press have left most of their reviews un altered. After being duped. I am not saying
it was their fault, just saying they are not removing video’s and redoing them with the latest info.
The 56 should have been compared to 1080
The 64 to the 1080 TI
In this case the cards would have been universally trashed even worse than they were.
Simply put you would have to be nuts to buy one of these AMD cards.
To my mind, AMD knew that their perf/price crown could not be worn with these cards. They seeded the market to BUY the most favourable reviews they could because as we know todays gamer/YT watchers have the sort term memory span of a Goldfish.
It’s simple AMD tried to play watch the lady with the community. At the TRUE retail price these things are dead in the water. After 12-18 months these cards are busting a lung just to keep pace with the SECOND rung of the gp ladder at a massively inflated power draw and markedly higher price, we have all waited for sweet fa.
Complete clusterfuck by amd. Threadripper was such a good launch even with a direct dollar to pound conversion. And now this – their marketing has always been bad but this hits a new low.
I am happy AMD put the price up as miners should pay more.
The fact is cards will remain in short supply and unbtil they do, why let miners have for less??
Yeah, sad turns of events to consider Intel and nVidia as the cheap options.
That’s what I bought.
AMD took ‘little white lie’ marketing from Nvidia and bettered the instruction. It seems that even on that they couldn’t get it right.
Sun261s
Posts in the OCUK forum claimed about 1000 cards, that’s not the same as “100s” to me.
Also people had issues with the checkout where they were listed as in stock but then they didn’t get one and were told they were now on back order.
Surely any proper etailing system puts a lock on a product when the user has checked out preventing several people trying to buy the the same in stock item?
Also, there was a thread discussing the say one sale, but the links to the items were not posted there so people didn’t see the links until later when a regular user (as opposed to “Gibbo”) posted the links in that thread.
Thus some people had a better chance that others of getting the cards (they were not available in the search system on the site, so someone coming on launch day and not being aware of the forum had no chance).
This is a total mess from all sides. A “one item per customer” and telling people it’s a launch deal (in public, from AMD) would be much better.
Or indeed having actual pre-orders go up several weeks before launch, with the “special price” and then everyone could gauge demand.
What a total nightmare – the latest prices put them out of reach of a lot of folks that were OK with the launch price, myself included.
Very, very disappointing …
The early comment on said forum hinting at a “huge hash rate” was very bad and apparently wrong too ….
I would suspect, based on that and other comments a large portion (more than 3 per customer) went to some of their “special” mining customers.
I have nothing against miners buying the cards, but in this case they should have the same quota as everyone else.
You mean mining-only people? The shouldn’t pay more or less, but there should be a quota for low availability items IMO.
Also, some people mainly game but also use their card for mining to off-set their costs when they can (i.e. when it is profitable, especially in the winter etc.).
IMO OCUK added gasoline to the fire!
Given their life spans in the wild, fish memories are not that bad! 🙂
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/4158477/Fishs-memories-last-for-months-say-scientists.html
And the free games were also included in one of the packs being sold at a lower price on “launch day”. I would really like to see a press release from AMD confirming/denying/explaining this – it stinks.
Now that we find this is a lot of fake news…. KitGuru needs to revise this:
“This has honestly been quite a shocking turn of events and it is something AMD really needs to address. With everything AMD’s marketing team has been up to these last 8 months, I think it is clear that going forward, they need a new strategy.”
Thank you,
Joker already said he will review compared with 1080 instead as they are on equal price points. https://www.youtube.com/user/jerzybakes420
It is absolutely not fake news. AMD’s statement did nothing to deny the claims made here. I suggest you read our piece dissecting the statement: https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/matthew-wilson/amds-official-statement-on-rx-vega64-pricing-answers-absolutely-nothing/
It’s clear what has happened here here. AMD knew 2 things. 1. retailers could not sell Vega 64 and Vega 64 Liquid below $599 and $699 respectively. 2. Vega just doesn’t have the performance to justify those prices when you can get 1080s for $500-$600 and 1080 tis for $700-$750. Enter the packs. Throw in 2 game keys that cost them next to nothing and rebate some retailers so a few cards really are $499. Now they can make it look like the the card is $500 and you’re just paying $100 more for $120 worth of games (MSRP for the games is $59.99 I know you can easily get them for much less). So now when it gets reviewed it look like an ok price for the performance. Still not what everyone was hoping for but at least competitively priced especially if Vega Liquid could end up beating OC 1080s by 10% with better drivers. But even with better drivers it’s not worth $699. You can get 1080 tis for that which will no doubt always be faster for the life of the cards no mater what drivers AMD manages. At $499 Vega 64 air is an ok alternative for AMD users and those who want freesync vs a 1080. At $599, well not so much. This explains the packs, the the low stock, and the beta drivers for miners. AMD knows the cards are just a bad buy for gamers at the price the retailers have to sell them at.
Neah. The actually did sell some cards at the lower price so it’s all legal. That’s why it was only a few hundred per retailer and only at a select few retailers. AMD sold just enough at the unsustainable price to avoid running afoul of truth in advertising and bait and switch laws.
grocery shopping doesn’t cost 700EU a tomato
Facts. AMD are the ones who created the fire.