Ensuring Gamers Get Advertised Price
In a recent interview with HardOCP, AMD‘s Scott Herkelman clarified some things about the Radeon VII’s upcoming release. Herkelman is Vice President and General Manager of the Radeon Gaming Business Unit, so he can speak directly on the matter.
Old school gamers will recognize Herkelman as founder and CEO of BFG, a long-time NVIDIA AIB. Herkelman was even hired by NVIDIA in 2012 as GeForce GTX general manager before he went to the Red Team.
During the height of the GPU price hike last year, Herkelman threw around the idea of AMD selling video cards directly. Primarily to give gamers a chance to buy the hardware at MSRP. Instead of the hyper-inflated pricing due to the mining boom.
Now Herkelman is keeping to that promise and has announced that AMD will indeed be selling Radeon VII directly. The only catch is that this will not be available on all regions yet. Although he states that he hopes to “expand this more broadly in time”.
Although the GPU mining boom has died down now, this move gives users an option just in case a price hike kicks up once again.
NVIDIA has taken similar precautions in case of a mining boom as well. Stacking their RTX 2060 with 6 different variants just in case to maximize profit.
When Will the AMD Radeon VII be Available for Purchase?
The Radeon VII video card was announced at CES 2019 last week. Although it will not be available in stores until February 7th.
