Hi Team, A friend of mine is in Taiwan and met a whole seller of AMD Video Cards (didn't mention a brand to me). They got talking and thought it might be possible to bring cards cheaper to Aust than what we get here in small / medium batches. They asked me what are the popular AMD models in Aust and i have no idea as I haven't bought a nonlaptop vid card in years. So I turn to you the brains trust, what models of AMD cards would you want to see more of (or cheaper) in Aust?
i was totally going to go amd with the gpu as ive always been a amd fanboy, but just couldnt justify getting one of the current ones. was seriously close but ended up getting a normal 1080 instead, the performance to price and the power consumption all makes it worth while. i only recently upgraded from a r9 290 to a 1060 then to the 1080 and its been quiet a big step up that last step. if your not worried about the power draw then might change things. its just got got 5 hdd's to think of and not the most overly powerful psu atm. (next build might just go the 1000 watt one.
Not to hang shit, but have you thought it all out? How are you factored in import duties and other taxes? Exchange rates? Buffer stock holdings to handle Consumer Rights obligations or any other RA related processes?
I've mentioned some of those concerns to my mate, but end of the day my involvement is purely as his "techy" friend answering his question, business viability is up to him to consider. Personally after reading a few articles on the current state of Nvidia vs Amd chipset, it looks like my type of thing would be the 1080 rather than the level the current amd gear is pitched at.
Well the 1080 is a great card (I have one) but if you really want AMD i would wait for the custom Vega 56 cards...whenever they arrive.
The current Vega 56 isn't too bad not essential to wait for custom cards, you can get power draws around or even below a 1080 from the stock 210w TDP with undervolting depending on silicon lottery luck. It's only becomes great value if you're willing to tweak it, flash bios to Vega 64 to clock ram higher, undervolt to lower power draw so it runs @ boost clock all the time for higher performance. Once you do all that it's around or close to 1080 performance for cheaper (if not an overpriced game bundle variant), and I'd predict it will overtake a 1080 noticably as time goes on/more DX12 and vulkan etc. Vega 64 (300W TDP) though I'd wait for custom AIB, or not bother unless drivers improve and the extra shaders do something more than just drawing more power for no performance gain.
Id think you'd be mad to forget the RX570/580. Pretty sure they sell a greater volume of those cards than the Vega56.
Vega 56 and 470D especially if you can source them into Australia, at 1050Ti price close to 470 performance if you can unlock extra CUs with bios flashing.
A word of warning, it'd be very very difficult to try compete with the massive tech disties like Synnex or Micron... but your friend's choice I suppose But like people said here, purely for AMD, you'd want to wait until the custom cards are out, which should be coming relatively soon
