Hi all, visiting from a different forum to try and find some answers about AMD's pricing on Vega

[digitalwanderer]

I don't know how it works in England but in the USA the manufacturer can not legally tell the retailer what to charge for their products...that's why it's a "manufacturers SUGGESTED retail price". Once the product is bought from AMD, the retailer can jack up the price to any level they want. AMD is legally barred from telling them not to or what to charge, and AMD doesn't see any of that extra profit...so why all the hate for AMD for the Vega's price mark ups? I just don't get it.

I was hoping someone here could explain it to me since the original story seemed to come from here. I mean no offense and I'm not looking for any fights, I'm just honestly curious and would really like to understand this better if anyone has an idea/opinion they'd care to share with me.

Thank you in advance, and a hello delivered with a warm grin. Please call me Dig, Digi, or whatever else you like...I know my nick is too long. It's a hold over from the 90s and I'm stuck with it.

 

[Hotwired]

Oh it's HardOCP?

I'll quote some posts I made with collected links.

Videocardz posted a week ago that the MSRP would rise from $499 to $599 for Vega 64, which was before the release date and all the current drama.

I'm not saying it is a good thing to do, but it was known about beforehand.

Indeed, one week ago Videocardz was aware from multiple sources that the $499 blower would be to hit the launch price and not be the regular price:

This is not the first time the product is offered at a higher price than first advertised. This usually happens for preorders or shortly after launch. However few shops will still offer Vega 64 at official suggested price, just so AMD can say it was sold for 499 USD.

This is exactly what happened, some preferred shops were given stock to sell at $499 or local equivalent to hit the launch price. (Exactly the same happened on 480 launch, we saw cards at £175 as promised for a very brief moment).

So when Videocardz forgets about this when they claim pricing drama to cause drama as a news article yesterday:

Here’s the thing. AMD cannot force any retailer to sell Vega at fixed price, it’s illegal. That’s why we have MSRP (suggested pricing). Yet somehow most retailers are offering Vega for the same increased price (a true magic I guess).

I'm sure it is Videocardz, magic that you forgot you talked about it earlier and had no issue with it.

Here at OCUK we have Gibbo on launch day saying what Videocardz forgot they said earlier:

AMD Launch price of $499, some posters get it, some do not, but in fairness AMD have wored things poorly causing mass confusion.

Black stand alone card was $499 for a set launch quantity, which is now all sold, as such now all you can buy from OcUK is the bundle packs, Black and Silver which are $599 or the Aqua which is $699.
Stand alone is no more, unless AMD say so.

In a nutshell, it was known about before, done at the last major card launch and it's easily summed up as people venting generic anger after being spoon fed an argument they liked the sound of.

Get over yourselves if you're trying to make drama out of it.

Gibbo has released the SEP (Suggested Etailer Price) for the Vega cards

The SEP is $599 and $699 excluding tax.

As Videocardz said before launch, before they forgot, the launch price was just for hitting launch price.

Gibbo said this on launch day at the very top of his announcement thread:

Now the good and bad news, the good news is AMD are rebating early launch sales to allow us to hit £449.99 on the stand alone black card which has no games. This is a launch only price which AMD at present are saying will be withdrawn in the near future, when if it happens is unknown, but remember do not be shocked if the price jumps nearly £100 in a few days.

This time round there is no early adopter tax, quite the opposite on the stand alone black card, so do be quick.

The actual prices are $599 and $699 and the $499 was only ever meant to be for a limited number of cards to hit a launch price.

Maybe it wasn't clear this time, I'm pretty sure the exact same thing was done when they launched the 480 and there wasn't this drama.

I'm 100% certain a lot of hate is generic unhappiness or mocking of the vega gaming competitiveness being channelled into this.

Vega 64 is not bad, you can get great FPS. It simply doesn't beat Nvidia in any meaningful way at gaming, or apparently pricing, also uses much power. Doesn't leave much to cheer about.


As for legality... easy to suggest that maybe possibly, I don't have any facts, something is illegal. Just hot air really.

 

[pagepack]

The actual prices are $599 and $699 and the $499 was only ever meant to be for a limited number of cards to hit a launch price.

Only reviewers disagree with you. To directly quote kitguru...

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.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Thank you Hotwired. Uhm, as for the HardOCP thing yeah I guess I'm a forum member there...but me and Kyle haven't always gotten along since about 99? I met him at the original Phenom launch for the first time after spending the better part of a decade fighting/arguing/debating/goading/having fun with him online and when we met in person we actually got along pretty well! I mean, he was all about Intel and nVidia and I was an ATi and AMD guy so of course we'd but heads on technical forums...but when you actually meet you realize you've got a whole lot more in common that with most folks just because you're both in to the hardware. We had a great and very sociable and friendly argument about our fights over the years, but we both smiled and shook hands at the end and I we greet each other and get along well when we meet at events. He's banned me from his forums more times than I can remember, ESPECIALLY during the FX scandal! ROFL But he let me back in and changed my official title to "I CONTRIBUTE NOTHING!!!!" which I sort of liked because it's just sort of how we are, but I do respect him in my own way as much as I plan to keep disagreeing with him in the future. (Oh, I've been out of the tech scene for about 2-3 years due to some family stuff and I'm just getting back in to it. Sorry, it's late and I've been up for too many days and my daughter just went back to school after 3 years of hell and I'm somewhere between occasionally weeping with joy and freaking out that I will FINALLY have a bit of time to pursue my own life soon!)

I was originally a mod at Rage Underground, but all us mods got sick of the owner and we quit en mass and started our own little site called Elite ********. I LOVED the place, it was the best little tech site no one knew about and we had the advantage of having some of the top people from the best sites as members because it was a great place to talk where no one would notice. I also helped start Driver Heaven during that time, but as much as I loved the folks there me and management didn't quite work out so I just went back to admining at Elite ********. The site had been stagnate for a couple of 3 years, I will take the blame on that one because my real life got busy but EB was my hobby and my family is my life. I'm a stay at home dad for about 20 years now, which is also why I got so heavily involved with forums because I was stuck in my house with 2 babies for about 5 years and the only social life I had was on the web.

I have no complaints, i made some of the best friends of my life online and I still haven't met 1/1000 of 'em. Doesn't really matter if I do or don't since we're in touch either way, but it is a trip to meet someone you've know for years but not have any clue who they are until you ask them if they're who there forum name was, and then the real fun starts!

Currently I'm a lame facebook person since I'm old, but I'm still very active on Beyond3D just because I keep learning so much there. They put up with my ignorance in exchange for my wit, or else they're just humoring me.

Oh, I also spent a great deal of time over at Rage3D and nVnews before Mike got ****** at me and permabanned me. I think I'm still banned at Anandatech too, not sure.

So I hope that clears things up about me. Currently I'm not with any company/site but I'm looking in to starting something new now that I've got time. I got back in just in time for the Ryzen launch and the return of AMD to be competitive in the CPU market is something I've been waiting for 13 to happen, so I'm a little pumped about everything right now. It's gonna be an exciting time for gaming over the next 6 months to a year!

The thing with the card price is bugging me though, because I asked some AMD people about it and they explained to me they were literally barred by law to set what the retailers charge for their cards. I know they did the pack thing to try and get some in to gamer's hands before the miners sucked 'em all up, which I think is at least trying but doomed to fail. The pack deal just isn't that good IMHO, the monitor you can save $200 on is $200 less at most places that don't carry the bundle and the games are only a deal if you planned on buying them anyways. I tend to think games included with viddy cards should be like a bonus freebie to show off the card on a highly optimized game for it, but I suck with business and monies so what do I know?

Sorry if you thought I was here to cause drama, that really ain't my intent. I'm just trying to understand the discrepencies between what you're saying and what I'm hearing from AMD, is that fair? I do believe I opened with "i'm not looking for a fight" because I tend to do that when I'm genuinely coming to a forum for information and not drama.

If you want drama I can provide, but man please let me get a decent nights sleep first! One of my dogs got skunked on Sunday and it took me until Tuesday to recover/fix the dog and house and then the next two days were spent getting my daughter back in to high school for the first time in 3 years...which went REALLY well and I'm still a bit slap happy with relief over. (YOU try being stuck in a house for 3 years with a suicidally depressed teen spending every day trying to get her help. We finally ended up doing a genetic screening, turns out she's missing the gene that produces serotonin which is the brain's "happy juice" and all she needed was a heavy duty folic acid supplement. Within 2 months she was back to her old twinkly eyed self, and today was her triumphant return to the world of academia!)

So no, i'm really not here to cause trouble...just to understand. I really don't get the story here and I just want to very badly so i thought I'd ask for help. If I'm causing trouble please just post up and I will stop posting as I don't mean to be a disruption.

Oh, and I take no offense at the general jumping to conclusions it was the start of some forum war dramas. I've had my fair share of them and yeah this did sort of look like one, that's why I thought I'd post this second one trying to be as open and honest as possible with y'all.

I will make a few disclaimers. I am a huge AMD fan and have been since they bought ATi. ATi I wasn't just a fan of, I genuinely loved that company. Fought 'em in the mid 90s with a few other forums since they were so bloody unhelpful with the community, and got to watch and be a part of them change their corporate attitude around to start embracing the community. Now a lot of my ATi friends work at AMD and after 20+ year or so a few (most, it's weird!), of them are in upper management of AMD so I have weird information contacts there that a lot don't. They also have an annoying habit lately of hiring all my friends over the last few years, so there's that too. I also have friends who work for Intel and nVidia, but nVidia hates my guts ever since the FX fiasco and Intel just never felt the pressure from AMD to have to make many friends. (Although my buddy who works there says it's a great place to work, same with my nVidia friends. <sigh>)

See? It's not about which brand is better or who has the bigger e-peni, it's about enjoying the geek to the gaming. I've found that to be a pretty good point of reference for most tech minded games to meet on.

So are you guys saying that AMD is ************ me? I AM NOT ASKING THAT AS A LOADED QUESTION!! I'd really like honest opinons on that too so hopefully it'll make me understand this thing a whole lot better.

Sorry for the imposition for information, but isn't that what it's all about?

Again, if you think I'm just here causing trouble just ask me to leave and I will trouble you no more. I don't like wasting my time in places I'm not wanted and it just seems rude to over stay one's welcome.

I throw myself upon the mercy of your judgement. Please either try and help me understand or just tell me to sodoff, I won't take it personally either way because I've been where you're at and it ain't always an easy call.

EDITED BITS: Oh, I was at that AMD thingy at SiGGRAPH too and got all the lectures/dives/info and the info from vidoecardz isn't wrong. Nothing was mentioned of a launch price and then a later price hike, just the package deals and the MSRPs that were reported.

EDITED BITS II: Ok, if you had the ear of the guy at AMD who said this wasn't real what would you ask or say to him? I'm pretty sure i can get answers to those questions fairly quickly, I just want to make sure to communicate them clearly and I can't if I don't understand.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Oh, and is "SEP" the same thing as "MSRP"?

 

[andybird123]

Oh, and is "SEP" the same thing as "MSRP"?

Yes, its manufacturers suggested retail price.

Basically in this instance, AMD appear to have made available some discounted stock for launch day for as little as a few hundred units. AMD cant control the retail price directly, but they can offer rebates or discounts through the AIB's for a certain amount of stock. The retailers could have jacked up the price from the first unit but chose not to.

Whether or not a US court would see this as price fixing would have to be tested in court.

 

[pagepack]

Yes, its manufacturers suggested retail price.

Basically in this instance, AMD appear to have made available some discounted stock for launch day for as little as a few hundred units. AMD cant control the retail price directly, but they can offer rebates or discounts through the AIB's for a certain amount of stock. The retailers could have jacked up the price from the first unit but chose not to.

AMD or any manufacturer can control the minimum price, which is essentially the RRP.

 

[andybird123]

AMD or any manufacturer can control the minimum price, which is essentially the RRP.

Under US law they arent supposed to, a retailer should be free to sell at low, no or even negative profit if they want to.

 

[pagepack]

Under US law they arent supposed to, a retailer should be free to sell at low, no or even negative profit if they want to.

I should clarify what I said. Minimum price before the retailer is selling at a loss. A retailer will take stock in at an agreed price, sell below a certain figure and there is no profit for the retailer.

 

[Hotwired]

So are you guys saying that AMD is ************ me?

Of course. By saying $499 people will buy it at $599 because that's just how brains work.

As long as you get the $499 price in a review it doesn't matter what the price is ever again because people won't look at what they're paying at the checkout.

The only reason AMD sold any cards is because of that $499 and obviously it worked cos there's no cards left to buy.

We agreed on this on the way back from the pub, the facts just add up. No amount of lies can hide the truth.

Failure to communicate it was a launch price? Yeah right. Look how empty the shops are, they did it on purpose.

 

[pagepack]

people won't look at what they're paying at the checkout.

Are you sure? As I sure as hell do

 

[james.miller]

Barred by law lol. There are plenty of ways around that. Just think something along the lines of "We cant tell you what price to sell it at....but if its around x figure then we'll guarantee you stock". It's common practice, OCuK are quite candid about it. I remember OCuK blowing up on logitech because they'd agreed a new pricing structure for the products in return for being a preferred retail partner, only for grey imports to start showing up in other retailers and waay undercutting OCuK and in some cases products were being solder cheaper than OCuK could buy them from logitech. Logitechs response was basically two middle fingers.

 

[Shin1234]

Under US law they arent supposed to, a retailer should be free to sell at low, no or even negative profit if they want to.

RRP is suggested price, amd will sell at a specific price to retailers then give retailers a specific price to aim for, its for retailers then to set what price they want higher for more profit, lower for less profit. But any company are allowed legally to suggest any price they want to retailers. What your thinking of is price fixing, totally different thing.

 

[andybird123]

RRP is suggested price, amd will sell at a specific price to retailers then give retailers a specific price to aim for, its for retailers then to set what price they want higher for more profit, lower for less profit. But any company are allowed legally to suggest any price they want to retailers. What your thinking of is price fixing, totally different thing.

Yes, suggested or recommended, but they shouldnt for example say that x retailer will get no more stock if they sell below it.

If a particular retailer is selling below rrp and they want ti prevent them doing that they can raise their buy price to make it more difficult.

 

[Shin1234]

Yes, suggested or recommended, but they shouldnt for example say that x retailer will get no more stock if they sell below it.

go on then, i cant wait for this, who have amd told that they will refuse to sell stock to if they sell below the suggested price ?

 

[deuse]

Of course. By saying $499 people will buy it at $599 because that's just how brains work.

Only yours.

As long as you get the $499 price in a review it doesn't matter what the price is ever again because people won't look at what they're paying at the checkout.

Again. Only you.

The only reason AMD sold any cards is because of that $499 and obviously it worked cos there's no cards left to buy.

We agreed on this on the way back from the pub, the facts just add up. No amount of lies can hide the truth.

Failure to communicate it was a launch price? Yeah right. Look how empty the shops are, they did it on purpose.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powe...press-graphics-card-black-pack-gx-18v-pc.html
still in stock and they are starting to show in MM alreadylmfao

 

[Hotwired]

Whoosh.

 

[pagepack]

AMD don't need to suggest a price, just sell to retailers at the price they want for the profit they want. Unless a retailer is an idiot and wants to lose money, they will sell above what they've bought the stock at.

 

[arby1]

I honestly don't get which part of the pricing you don't understand- AMD gave a suggested selling price of $499, which says to every retailer that they will be able to buy it from AMD for less than $499, therefore being able to sell it at $499 and make a profit. The issue is that they are selling it to retailers for more than $499. It's been clearly said by Gibbo that if they sold it at that price they'd be making a substantial loss on each unit sold.

Look at it this way- I'm a new car maker and I make an amazing supercar and publish that it will have a suggested selling price of only £5k. I obviously get loads of attention and marketing, but what I don't say is that I will sell it to dealers for £80k, then it's up to them if they want to make a huge loss by selling it at £5k or not. AMD tried to give themselves good headlines, and it partially worked as most reviews were based on it being assumed it was £100 cheaper than it really is.

 

[deuse]

Whoosh.

Yes I've heard the new Vega fans are loud