Over the last few months, crypto-currency mining has had a massive resurgence, which has caused a lot of issues for those building gaming PCs. Not only have prices become inflated, particularly for mainstream GPUs like the RX 500 series, but stock levels have been very low in some countries. With that in mind, there is some concern that RX Vega will be snapped up by miners. Fortunately, it seems like AMD has thought about that ahead of time, promising that it will have enough cards to sell to gamers.
In an interview this week with HardOCP, AMD’s Chris Hook mentioned that one of the reasons the RX Vega took so long to get to market was simply down to the fact that the company wanted to ensure it had enough GPUs to go around at launch: “Part of the reason it’s taken us a little longer to launch Vega, and I’ll be honest about that is that we wanted to make sure we were launching with good volume”, Hook said.
He then added that the company needed to compensate for other factors in the market beyond PC gamers, like coin-miners: “Obviously we’ve got to compensate for things like coin-miners, they’re going to want to get their hands on these. We believe we’re launching with a volume that will ensure gamers can get their hands on them, and that’s what’s important to us.”
AMD’s RX Vega will start hitting retail on the 14th of August. Then in September, we will begin seeing third-party cards like the Asus ROG Strix RX Vega. Hopefully when the time comes, stock won’t be an issue for those wanting to get their hands on one.
KitGuru Says: Coin mining has become a problem in the GPU world over the last couple of months. Many have been frustrated by price hikes and low stock. Fortunately, it sounds like AMD is aiming to ensure this isn’t something that will affect the RX Vega launch. Are any of you planning on upgrading to the RX Vega? How do you feel about the recent surge in miners buying up GPUs?
with that TDP, miners will stay the f*uck away
We’ll find out at release.
They’re not staying away from the 290X, they won’t stay away from this. AMD needs to have a specific card that only works with mining, where on gaming cards mining would disable/block the card’s functionality. I don’t see any other way.
Why is it that people think TDP is actual power draw? It seems that there is a general confusion on it… The 1080 has TDP of 180 but actual draw of 330 under load in games? People make it sound like the draw is 180… 330 is still a pretty beef wattage number under load.
If they had just lied and said they were all 450w cards this wouldnt be an issue !
to cash in on Vega they need enough cards on release. In 6 months time Nvidia will have more solutions than just the Ti to beat it
There is never enough…. Nvidia has had supplies of Pascal over a year. And it was ransacked. Of course, Pascal is not quite as dead as Polaris in terms of availability, but it’s not “untouched”. The only solution to the mining parasites – is to disable mining capabilities in the driver. But nobody will be brave enough to take this step, and I can understand AMD – after all, it NEEDS the sales most of all, unlike Nvidia.
Of course he’s saying you’ll have no trouble buying a Vega, but he didn’t say how much you’ll have to pay for the privilege, did he.
I still like the idea of a cheaper/same price card with no display outputs along side the “gamer” normal card. They tried to do it with the 470/480s but I believe it still says its for pre order on Overclockers and it has a massive price premium. Miners specifically want a short ROI and high GPU prices will do nothing for miners or gamers.
The only Vega I’m really looking forward to is Raven Ridge.
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