schmidtbag:

Bitcoin wasn't as efficient with GPU mining as Ethereum. Once the USB ASICs came out (which seemed to happen relatively early), miners stopped getting GPUs. Also when Bitcoin first came out and was easy to mine, nobody cared about it. By the time it became valuable, ASICs were abundant. Some older GCN 1.0 hardware was bought for mining purposes since it was cheap, but that was pretty much all that was sold. Ethereum, however, was designed with GPU mining in mind, and AMD's stock has been completely depleted as a result. Most companies do not rely on selling 100% of their inventory. Not only is AMD selling faster than they can create, but they can increase the price beyond MSRP which in turn gives them even more profit than they expected. So, I would say they've seen a substantial revenue increase as a result of this. Remember, if it weren't for miners, Vega would probably have sold worse than AMD was hoping.

Ethereum is heading in the same direction as Bitcoin. The mining difficulty has ballooned of late - a couple of months ago I was mining 1.2 ETH a month @ 130 MH/s and today it's down to 0.75, plus there's the eventual move to POS, at which point all GPUs will become useless for Ethereum mining. The point is, you cannot bet the farm on something like mining, which can start and stop on a dime. AMD learned that lesson the hard way the first time, and Dr Su made it very clear that they were not using it as a long-term growth factor. It might help sales now, but I don't think it was their intended or desired target for Vega.

schmidtbag:

For gamers, you're absolutely right. For everyone else, you're very wrong. Vega is fantastic in compute performance-per-dollar, and its wattage suddenly doesn't look so bad anymore. If I were interested in building a server revolved around OpenCL tasks I would absolutely get Vega.

I don't doubt the value of Vega as a computing card. In fact, if I ever found myself buying a Vega card then that's probably what I'd buy it for (the same reason why I bought my Polaris cards). Computing is a very niche market though, and Nvidia sells to the same market, plus growth in this area is not guaranteed - one of the reasons why Nvidia stock sold off after earnings was because their AI and data center business didn't do as well as investors expected.

D3M1G0D:

Ethereum is heading in the same direction as Bitcoin. The mining difficulty has ballooned of late - a couple of months ago I was mining 1.2 ETH a month @ 130 MH/s and today it's down to 0.75, plus there's the eventual move to POS, at which point all GPUs will become useless for Ethereum mining. The point is, you cannot bet the farm on something like mining, which can start and stop on a dime.

I don't disagree, I'm just saying Bitcoin wasn't as efficient with GPU mining, and that Ethereum doesn't really have a viable cost-effective alternative (like ASICs). So GPU demand for it was higher.

AMD learned that lesson the hard way the first time, and Dr Su made it very clear that they were not using it as a long-term growth factor. It might help sales now, but I don't think it was their intended or desired target for Vega.

Of course Su/AMD isn't planning on growth from mining, and they certainly don't prefer it for the reasons you mentioned. But my point is it certainly is helping them do so. Think of it like Corvettes: GM isn't trying to cater to white men having a midlife crisis, but that just happens to be who the car caters to the most, and it helps keep up their sales. GM certainly isn't going to stop these sales from happening, but they still prefer a wider demographic. The only difference here is GM will always have this demographic while Ethereum miners are already on a decline. That being said, AMD must abide by Su's statement, but for the time being, Vega disappointed many people and is currently just buying the company time.

amd or nvdia would be crazy to state that they plan on mining for growth anyway they could not have made over 10k cards at this point you would think right? amd gotta have it hard to keep up the production it sucks because you have fab loses from the gpu and then the hbm on the die, Imho hbm is not ready for prime time for gaming would be great for like a top nv killer "limited" hbm2 blah blah blah type card I think they are all in on it being on the top cards too bad the chips a porker

Here in Portugal only one store has the Vega64 listed from two brands and one costs 625€ and the other 700€, the cheapest 1080 starts at 530€... And they are both out of stock of course... With that kind of prices the Vega is dead for gamers, even for the one who really like AMD and hate Nvidia

Prices are well calculated for the max incoming rate for the company, AMD sold out and they are to happy (I think there is not sold out). They find a way to get prices up, one more time (remember RX480..200usd talk, 350usd on market).... About NVIDIA there is no stress to get volta out, there is no competition from vega and if volta get out, it will not be like volta sort to a strong vega... See intel, all this time we get the same cpu with a different mobo base, 1 pin more, 3 pins more 2 less.... with a strong Ryzen all the new models are out...

RzrTrek:

The mainstream media started the whole "mining craze", it's fake news.

Sorry, but if it's a mainstream hype, then why are mainboard producers building platforms specifically for mining? I think it is very, very real news. The value of those coins is to be seen, but I've seen people getting rich in 5 years (x1000 of their initial investment)

I finally gave up on this waiting forever crud. The AIB cards are going to sell out just as fast as the reference cards did. So caved for the Newegg sale on the STRIX GTX 1080. Going to be my first ever Nvidia card. Hopefully Navi will have something to offer in a timely fashion.

Clouseau:

I finally gave up on this waiting forever crud. The AIB cards are going to sell out just as fast as the reference cards did. So caved for the Newegg sale on the STRIX GTX 1080. Going to be my first ever Nvidia card. Hopefully Navi will have something to offer in a timely fashion.

Yup, it's just not worth it. You'll be very satisfied with a GTX 1080, coming from a RX 480 (I've played games on a RX 580 and GTX 1080, and there is just no comparing the two).