AMD Allegedly Loses $100 On Every Radeon RX Vega 64 GPU Sold

AMD’s Radeon RX Vega family of graphics is becoming known not only for its gaming performance, but also for how incredibly hard it is for enthusiasts to get their hands on them. The Radeon RX Vega 64 is supposed to have an MSRP of $499, but retailers have been tacking $100 to $200 on top of that price when they do have them in stock. Similar shenanigans have taken place with the Radeon RX Vega 56.

We’re now learning that AMD’s early run of Vega 64 boards is actually costing the company money… big money in fact. A report hailing from Fudzilla says that AMD is losing roughly $100 on every Vega 64 board that it sells at the $499 price point. This could also explain why AMD has been heavily pushing its more expensive “Gamer Packs” which start at $599 for the Vega 64.

According to the publication, the high production costs of Vega can be directly attributed to packaging and substrate costs. AMD is also reportedly banking on SK Hynix to bring its HBM2 memory production online in October, which should help it gain more favorable pricing on those components.

The report goes on to state that AMD isn’t too worried about the high Vega costs at the moment, and is more concerned about gaining market share from NVIDIA, which has cleaned house in the high-end GPU market over the past year with its GeForce GTX 10-Series.

Late last week, AMD gave us the following guidance on Vega 56 and Vega 64 production and pricing:

Radeon RX Vega 64 demand continues to exceed expectations. AMD is working closely with its partners to address this demand.  Our initial launch quantities included standalone Radeon RX Vega 64 at SEP of $499, Radeon RX Vega 64 Black Packs at SEP of $599, and Radeon RX Vega 64 Aqua Packs at SEP of $699. We are working with our partners to restock all SKUs of Radeon RX Vega 64 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.

The company followed up on Monday with a revised statement:

Radeon RX Vega 56 SEP pricing is $399 and Radeon RX Vega 64 SEP pricing is $499 for standalone product. We expect Radeon RX Vega 56 card availability during the coming weeks to target this suggested e-tail pricing. We are working with our partners to restock throughout the next few weeks all Radeon RX Vega 64 SKUs, including standalone cards and Radeon Packs.  Ongoing supply of these cards are expected to arrive at e-tail throughout the quarter to meet the strong demand.

As for current Vega 56 and Vega 64 pricing, Amazon is selling the standalone MSI Radeon RX Vega 64 8G for a whopping $699.99, or $200 over MSRP — but it is in stock. The Vega 56, on the other hand, seems to be out of stock everywhere, even at Best Buy where the company listed the XFX Radeon RX Vega 56 8GB for $499, which is $100 above its MSRP.