News UK gets just 100 Radeon VII cards at launch, claims OCUK

If that's the case you'd expect they'd have VII's coming out of every orifice as if VII are down-binned MI50's, as suspected, and making them has a high failure rate wouldn't you expect more working parts as you move down the complexity scale.

 

In theory yes but in practice it's complicated because they can only go down so far on the complexity scale before other problems appear, like ending up in competition to their other products (RX 590, Vega 56 etc), plus of course the cost of HBM2.

 

Scan have preorders at 649 and MSI/Gigabyte ones available to add to basket at 699

 

Ebuyer has 8 Powercolor ones @ £699.
AWD has the "biggest" selection of cards in stock:
5 Gigabutt @ £719
4 Sapphire @ £700
5 Powercolor @ £719
5 Asus @ £719
3 MSI @719

Amazon, CCL, Novatech, Alza have none (Caveat Emperor: Amazon have the MSI one listed but it is sold and dispatched by Scan)

That makes 30 in stock, plus add in the 7 at Overclockers Gareth mentioned and we're up to 37 for stores that reveal a specific number.

Then there is the 10+ MSI ones at Overclockers plus the anyone's guess quantity at Scan, so either launch day sales where below 50 units or the only around 100 cards for the UK was false.

Edit: Looking at mindfactory.de which mentions quantities sold that one shop in Germany alone sold at least 190, so sub 50 sales for the entire UK can be pretty safely considered as debunked and along with it also the claim of only around 100 cards having reached our shores.

 

To be fair, Alza had 5-9 units in stock from ASRock yesterday, but obviously they sold out considering those units were reserved for their home market (Czech Republic and Slovakia).

 

Having worked with Gibbo and known him for a number of years I can say that if he says he has 44 cards he will indeed have 44 cards.

If launch stock is 100 cards then there will be 100 cards.

As for more stock, there could very well be 1000 cards coming in to the UK 3 days later. That's the bit you won't hear and that's the bit that may push an opinion that he is lying.

At the time of publication I'd say it would be bang on accurate.


As for the card... Meh. It's £50-100 too expensive to be an issue for Nvidia. With limited stock factored in too it's a bit of a let down.

 

I've only seen people with Sapphire cards in their hands atm. They're the cheapest on OCUK, though there are none left in stock.

Once the drivers are sorted (because they're a horror show at present, with the 64 beating the 7 in some games) I am confident this will be a good card. I reckon with the correct drivers on and good DX12 implementation* it will actually be faster than the 1080Ti.

*What I mean is the games that work well in DX12 and show improvements over DX11. So BF1, BFV, SOTTR and so on. Not games that had it added in after the fact and run horribly. In those games my 64 is right up there just above the 1080 and sometimes sniffing on the Ti. I'd say that headed into the future games will all be DX12, then things should improve even more.

I do agree that it's too expensive though, even with the great games bundle. I would say £50-£75 cheaper and it would be worth having over Nvidia cards. I should also mention that like Vega 56 and 64 this reacts well to being under volted which results in higher boost clocks. AMD went and overdid it again.

 

Nah, not with those noise levels.
I'd say at least one waterblock cheaper to be competitive, if reviewers drop lines like "headphones recommended" there is no way I would allow one in my home without a WC block.

 

Under volting fixes the noise. Then again all air cards are annoying if you want the performance . That's why I got addicted to water. Just so tranquil man.

 

That's why I bought headphones.

 

Haha aye, that is why I transferred three pairs to my mother's with a pre/power headphone amp combo lol. Dear god the noise that Devil makes at full clip ! whirry whirrrrrr. I hadn't heard that noise in years. Scared me half to death when they first sprang into life.

 

I spent more time than I care to remember trying to make a quiet pc (without WC but I guess there's pump noise).

If it's not the gpu then you can hear the cooler. If it's not the cooler it's the case fans. If it's not the case fans it's someone trying to talk to you - headphones stop all that

 

Having to put something uncomfortable on my head in my own home? Just feels undignified to me.

 

I don't even notice them anymore tbh.

 

I've been tremendously busy over the past few days but IIRC it was Gibbo who started this whole "100 for the whole of the UK !" rumour, right?

 

To be fair that 250 number doesn't just cover brands with stock, some of it will have been preorders.

But ultimately that doesn't really matter because look at the date and time, he posted that like half an hour after orders went live...
So there is no way any shop could have had stock left the morning after if there would have only been a 100 cards for the whole country.

 

Yeah, one retailer selling 250 cards within half an hour of them going on sale is pretty impressive when the UK only got 100 in total. Pretty impressive indeed.

The guy is full of it.