A few days ago there were rumors that the Radeon VII would have very limited availability.
The rumor spread like wildfire and was blunt: AMD would only produce 5,000 units of the Radeon VII, there would be no special models and the price could be inflated by a supply that could not meet demand even if demand was not too high.
- It is scheduled for February 7, 2019
- And the cost will be $699 (about £550, AU$980)
AMD has sent an official statement stating that the Radeon VII will be available from 7 February both in its reference version and in models adapted by various fitters. The price of 699 dollars will be maintained and the offer of this graphics card will be sufficient “to cover the needs of the gambling sector”.
Radeon VII: Why is it important?
The announcement of the Radeon VII should cheer us all up. Whether NVIDIA fan or AMD fan, with the introduction of this model there will again be competing in the high-end sector, as it theoretically works like an RTX 2080, which means that there may be price fluctuations.
The arrival of Ryzen showed the importance of competition in the market. Thanks to this generation, AMD fans could buy high-performance processors from their favorite company at a good price, and Intel fans could do the same with Intel’s Core 8000 series.
The same was true of the graphics sector a few years ago. The arrival of the Radeon RX 400 and RX 500 shook the midrange and forced NVIDIA to raise prices. I’m talking about before the “boom” in crypto-currency mining, a date when the newly introduced Radeon RX 470s could be bought for less than 180 Euros and the 3 GB GTX 1060s were available for just over 200 Euros.
Apart from the personal fanaticism of each individual, it is ultimately beneficial to all, and for this reason, we should be pleased that the big names in the industry have interesting and competitive products, because in the end, we are the ones who benefit.
Before concluding, let us remind you that AMD has confirmed that Radeon VII will not be the only important new product to be launched in the graphics sector this year. There will be new mid-range models, and hopefully mid-low and low-end, too, although we are not sure whether they will use a revision of Polaris, a trimmed version of Vega in 7 nm, or whether we will (finally) see Navi, the architecture of the new generation of AMD, which, as we know, will use PS5 and Xbox Two.