AMD Radeon VII & Vega 64/56 Allegedly Reach ‘End of Life’ Status

Alexander Buck

It seems as if AMD's final GCN-based GPUs will cease production. The GPUs in question, Vega 10 and Vega 20, have reached 'End of Life' status, with the decision being made as recently as June. To say the least, if you have an interest in either of the three GPUs listed, the time to buy may be now. Take this information with a grain of salt, though.

Vega 20 - Radeon VII Supply, Pricing, & Demand

Vega 20 GPU Die

AMD's latest high-performance GPU offering, the Radeon VII, may just be on its last legs in its fight against NVIDIA. With the RTX 2080 SUPER priced at the same level as the Radeon VII, the Radeon VII may become tough to recommend unless the user's workloads are compute intensive, or if the user frequently requires firepower for workstation and productivity tasks. The RTX 2080 and the Radeon VII tend to trade blows with each other, but the RTX 2080 SUPER should bring enough of an improvement to gain the $700 performance crown.

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As of right now, the ASRock variant of the Radeon VII may be found for $679.99 on Newegg, but as far as other models from alternative AIBs go, they're nowhere to be found. A quick search on eBay returns results of Sapphire and ASUS cards going for over $1000.

It seems as if now that AMD's limited run of the Radeon VII 50th Anniversary Edition is over, AMD has made the final decision to pull the cards from shelves. AMD does have the choice to lower the price of the Radeon VII, but due to the high cost of manufacturing such a card, especially with the abundance of HBM2 it contains, warrants a high-cost product in order to earn a return.

Vega 10 - Vega 56/64 Supply & Pricing

AMD's Vega 10 offerings also seem to have met the end of the line. Both the Vega 64 and Vega 56 are increasingly difficult to find for a reasonable price, especially custom models like Sapphire's Nitro+. AMD had various supply issues with Vega, as well as difficulties with AIBs due to the manufacturing of both molded and unmolded Vega dies. Vega also was released at a difficult time as well, with cryptocurrency miners quickly purchasing all available Vega GPUs in extremely large quantities creating a shortage and inflation in price. Vega is still very much a great compute option due to the GCN microarchitecture, and when compared to the Radeon VII, if FP64 performance and extra HBM2 isn't a priority, Vega may be an exceptional option if found for the right price.

The Vega 56 and Vega 64 are also fair gaming GPUs as well, especially now with certain eBay sellers clearing out stock. GamersNexus demonstrated a power mod on the Vega 56 allowing it to beat a stock RTX 2070 at a fraction of the cost.

Polaris & Fiji - Previous GPU Families

After the announcement of Polaris, AMD had taken a step back from the high-end, declaring Fiji parts as 'End of Life'. At this point in time, AMD neglects to recognize the existence of any previous GPUs before Polaris 10. Fiji GPUs also utilized expensive HBM memory, so it would make sense for AMD to pull the product from shelves if the profit margin is slim. It seems as if AMD is taking the same road with Navi, with the previous Vega parts now becoming obsolete and exclusively pushing Navi. As far as Polaris' current position on the market goes, it is still a very much affordable and feasible option for gaming at 1080p.

AMD Responds to Rumors of Vega 10/20 'End of Life' Status

AMD has issued a statement to Tom's Hardware reading the following:

We continue to see strong availability of Radeon VII in the channel for both gamers and creators.

This statement is somewhat vague and generally fails to clear anything up. From the looks of AMD's own website, the Radeon VII seems to be sold out just about everywhere. AMD also failed to comment on Vega 10, and from the looks of Newegg, Vega 10 is also almost out of stock with select models retailing at the $700 range.

What's Next? AMD RX 5000 Series - RX 5800/5900 Series Incoming

AMD could very well be canceling the Radeon VII due to an imminent successor such as the RX 5800 or RX 5900 series. Sapphire has registered over a dozen product names pointing at both high-end Navi and cut-down Navi variants on the horizon.

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