AMD

Radeon VII confirmed to be EOL, just 6 months after its launch

With a gaming performance comparable to the more affordable RX 5700 XT, the Radeon VII GPU is already put on EOL status after a short-lived 6 months. Still, the high-end GPU is a solid option for heavy compute tasks and demanding renderings, so the remaining stocks may eventually end up in select workstations.
AMD left fans a bit disappointed earlier this year at CES, as the company did not give any solid previews for its upcoming 7 nm products. Everyone was expecting to at least get some juicy details on the upcoming Navi GPUs, but AMD only offered an estimated late 1H 2019 launch for the Ryzen 3000 CPUs with a peek at the core counts for the top models. After just a few days, AMD announced the Radeon VII GPUs out of nowhere, but these were not the Navi GPUs everyone was expecting.
It is still unclear why AMD chose to launch the Radeon VII a few months before the Navi launch. We knew the red team would be the first to deliver 7 nm desktop CPUs and GPUs; no one was threatening its lead, yet AMD felt the need to launch a US$700 Vega-based gaming GPU that was supposed to compete with Nvidia’s RTX 2080 models. Initial tests showed that the Radeon VII could easily beat even the RTX 2080 Ti in some cases, but gamers were more interested in seeing what the new Navi architecture could bring to the table. This determined somewhat poor sales for the Radeon VII, and, with the launch of the Radeon RX 5700 XT that has similar performance for only US$400, it looks like AMD is ready to put the VII model on End-of-Life status.
French site Cowcotland recently reported that several European distributors could confirm the Radeon VII has entered EOL, and Matt Bach from Puget Systems informed editors from Tom’s Hardware that an AMD representative already confirmed that production for these GPUs has ceased, but AMD is not yet publicly acknowledging this.
It is not hard to see why AMD has chosen this path. The Radeon 5700 XT is clearly cheaper to manufacture, plus the Radeon VII seems to be aimed at content creation and heavy compute workloads rather than gaming. Sites like Newegg still appear to have sizeable stocks for the Radeon VII, but analysts expect these GPUs to eventually be bought for professional rendering systems.

by Bogdan Solca