MP 7,1 Expected pricing for Vega II?

[chfilm]

So I was going over that the verge article again about the 50k full built price- they were speculating that the dual Vega II duo would cost 12k at least and compared the Vega II to a 6000$ Nvidia card.

is it realistic to expect a let’s say 4-5000$ upgrade price just for a SINGLE Vega II?

i guess we will all find out after two more sleeps, but just trying to me tally prepare myself.

 

[goMac]

Apple could charge that much. But my guess is that Vega (Solo) will be a $1000 upgrade. Maybe a little less.

Apple usually uses consumer GPUs as the basis of their GPUs, which means their prices are closer to consumer GPU prices, not workstations GPU prices.

But the 2013 is the only time we’ve seen Apple use “workstation GPUs.”

 

[chfilm]

Apple could charge that much. But my guess is that Vega (Solo) will be a $1000 upgrade. Maybe a little less.

Apple usually uses consumer GPUs as the basis of their GPUs, which means their prices are closer to consumer GPU prices, not workstations GPU prices.

But the 2013 is the only time we’ve seen Apple use “workstation GPUs.”

I was also sure it would be a 1000$ price, but after looking at all the evidence I’m not so sure anymore. It could well be at least 2k. Maybe 1800 or so if the 900$ price for the top card in the iMac Pro with 16gb ram is any reference. I’m scared now..

 

[jinnyman]

I'm pretty sure it will be much more than Radeon 7 x 2 price.
It's all custom & professional model built only for handful of MP users.

But no matter the cost, since MP is justly targeted for the right audience, the price won't matter.

 

[Zandros]

I'm pretty sure it will be much more than Radeon 7 x 2 price.
It's all custom & professional model built only for handful of MP users.

But no matter the cost, since MP is justly targeted for the right audience, the price won't matter.

It's not really a professional model; it doesn't have full FP64 performance.

 

[goMac]

It's not really a professional model; it doesn't have full FP64 performance.

Right. It has more memory than a Radeon VII... but I’d expect it to land somewhat higher than a Radeon VII.

Most Radeon VIIs are around $700, so $1000 as an upgrade price over a 580 doesn’t seem off.

 

[OkiRun]

So I was going over that the verge article again about the 50k full built price- they were speculating that the dual Vega II duo would cost 12k at least and compared the Vega II to a 6000$ Nvidia card.

is it realistic to expect a let’s say 4-5000$ upgrade price just for a SINGLE Vega II?

i guess we will all find out after two more sleeps, but just trying to me tally prepare myself.

ibuildmacs.com has a guesstimated cost for the Pro VegaII at $500

 

[jccmaxon]

ibuildmacs.com has a guesstimated cost for the Pro VegaII at $500

You dont Know Apple. Impossible. Around 2000$

 

[OkiRun]

You dont Know Apple. Impossible. Around 2000$

I was just giving him another source besides the Verge article...

 

[chfilm]

I was just giving him another source besides the Verge article...

Thanks- I also think this is absolutely impossible though...

 

[goMac]

ibuildmacs.com has a guesstimated cost for the Pro VegaII at $500

It’s not impossible, but Apple would be cutting their margins super close. The 580 is a much cheaper GPU than a Radeon VII. I don’t know what they are paying for the GPUs, so maybe using retail as a basis isn’t a great idea. But that still seems low to me.

At the same time, Apple literally has to compete with actual Radeon VII and 5700 XT cards that could be user added to a Mac Pro. So I doubt we’ll see the runaway GPU prices that others are thinking. If they price it too high, people will skip and buy their own cards.

 

[jinnyman]

How it will complete with other card is not the issue. It's made from a custom board and interface for specific purpose. The ram configuration is not standard radeon 7. I think Vega II solo will cost around 1,000 USD if Apple is being decent about it, and upward of 1,500 if usual Apple Tax is applied.

As for Duo, more like USD 4,000 for it.

 

[goMac]

How it will complete with other card is not the issue. It's made from a custom board and interface for specific purpose.

Sure, but that's already part of the entry 580 price. The 580 comes on the same custom MPX/Thunderbolt board. So Apple doesn't have to double dip there.

And people don't have to use the custom boards. Apple knows very well they're competing against standard Radeon VIIs and 5700 XTs. They don't want to price themselves out of the market. It'll be more expensive than a standard card, sure. But not so expensive that people will avoid the upgrade.

The ram configuration is not standard radeon 7. I think Vega II solo will cost around 1,000 USD if Apple is being decent about it, and upward of 1,500 if usual Apple Tax is applied.

It does have more memory. But what I'm guessing is $1000 over the 580, not that the Vega 2 will be $1000. Not at all saying the standalone kit will be $1000. A $1000 premium over the 580 would account for the added memory, and the custom board is already built into the 580 price.

 

[throAU]

A "Fair" price for a dual vega card with 16 GB of HBM on board would be $2000-$3000.

So you can bet Apple will be charging $6-12k for it.
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[deconstruct60]

It’s not impossible, but Apple would be cutting their margins super close. The 580 is a much cheaper GPU than a Radeon VII. I don’t know what they are paying for the GPUs, so maybe using retail as a basis isn’t a great idea. But that still seems low to me.

At the same time, Apple literally has to compete with actual Radeon VII and 5700 XT cards that could be user added to a Mac Pro.

The don't have to compete much. The Radeon VII not only doesn't have the full FP64 , but is also doesn't have the Infinity Fabric links either. That's is a big difference. If buy one Vega II now and then a second one later you should be able to 'lash up' those together later with Infinity Fabric. The others you can't and should be a substantive performance difference on apps that can leverage that. ( not sure why more top end apps wouldn't because that is the whole purpose of the Duo card to to that in one "shot". )

AMD and Apple are probably going to charge a decent amount for that 'extra' feature. AMD held it back from the Radeon VII to hit a lower price point ..... so they aren't giving it away for free. Apple has had to do substantive custom work to Metal , libraries , and graphics stack to make this work.... and they aren't typically keen on working entirely for free either.


I think folks are getting more twisted up in how much credit they think Apple is going to give for "trading in" the 580X versus how much the card is gong to cost. I suspect those costs will be different. If Apple sells the Vega II kit for $1,299 then yeah perhaps the BTO increment will be $1,000 over the 580X. But if the kit is around $1,499 then no it won't.

The prices that AMD charged for the Instinct MI50 and MI60 have been cloaked from open public view.

"...AMD never revealed the pricing for the Radeon Instinct MI60 or MI50. But judging by AMD's statement, the price difference is obviously significant, making enterprise customers more inclined to pick up the more cost-effective model. AMD did itself a favor by slapping another 16GB of memory on the Radeon Instinct MI50, as it will make the accelerator even more attractive now. ... "
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/t...-instinct-mi60-meet-the-32gb-mi50-replacement

I think Vega II prices will be lower than MI50 but it is hard to tell when can't say what the MI50 prices are. But like the MP 2013 the "FirePro" variants that only work with the Mac will probably be lower priced. (as they only work in a Mac (but Apple is probably getting a "discount" because will drive much higher volume in deployments. )

So I doubt we’ll see the runaway GPU prices that others are thinking. If they price it too high, people will skip and buy their own cards.

I don't think it will be held really tight to the consumer cards though, but they also can't do what the Vega II can do in terms of connectivity. So it boils down to how much that connectivity is worth in term of throughput. PCI-e v3 x16 versus Infinity Fabric is a pretty decent sized bandwidth gap. Throw on top the extra HBMv2 memory costs and won't be small. ( but no, I don't think will cross the $2K barrier for a 'solo' card. ).

Radeon VII card though probably bad baseline for pricing though. It was a stop gap that AMD probably pretty close to 'at cost'. Apple is doing none of that.

 

[jinnyman]

Well I was making my price assumption based on BTO, but then, I also don't think Apple's going to put much different price tag for BTO and a standalone kit.

We can put any 3rd party card we want, but there's no generic Vega II card in the market. So.. I suspect Apple's using it as one of those marketing specialty component where they can show off to all others that such professional and special card is used. Given that, I'd suspect its price on higher side than others.

For extreme prosumers who plan to buy MP, the best bang for the buck upgrade is probably a generic 5700xt with 3rd party power supply adapter. (unless Apple's too generous and include power cable to the basic package).

 

[deconstruct60]

A "Fair" price for a dual vega card with 16 GB of HBM on board would be $2000-$3000.

So you can bet Apple will be charging $6-12k for it.
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if they had a more reasonable mid range card to sell maybe. But they don't. It really can't be old, reilable 580X or $3K (for a solo). [ and they can't go more than linear on the Duo . I'm sure they have to get higher quality binned chips to do Duos but the price will probably be pretty close to plain 2x. ]

If there was something between the 5700Xt and a Vega II perhaps but there isn't. All that cranking up the price too high would do is push folks into more 3rd party cards which would wreck volumes for the MPX variants. ( and Mac Pro to to some extent because can just slap 3rd party cards in big eGPU on other Macs too. ).

 

[jinnyman]

If we cut all the corner, solo Vega 2 will be around USD 1,000, and Duo will be around 2,500. I'd be really surprised if the actual price is actually around that or less.

From very recent development, I sense Apple's mood is changing somewhat, and I sure hope them to come out with sane upgrade price.

 

[deconstruct60]

Well I was making my price assumption based on BTO, but then, I also don't think Apple's going to put much different price tag for BTO and a standalone kit.

Unless they are somewhat suicidal they pretty much have to. Again it goes to the point that there are options for others at this point. If it is glaringly explicit that Apple is making folks buy the 580X and then not giving it to them. They are going to piss follks off. Some will even buy the 580X and then just sell it, jus to spite Apple. That won't be a good outcome for Apple long term.

We can put any 3rd party card we want, but there's no generic Vega II card in the market.

Not really the point. Rubbing folks face into paying for something that you don't give them isn't good for business. Even for Apple.

They can somewhat get away with that game with the embedded GPUs in the iMac (and other macs) because can't swap out the card. But there is always the option to just buy the 580X and get it physically and then just buy the Vega II ( since it is the same price anyway) and then just sell the one you don't want. Even at a $50=100 it is still better than the full loss would take on the 580X. Cheap enough, there will be buyers for that 580x. The higher the price of the Vega II (larger the gap) the more buyers they'll be.

 

[jinnyman]

Not really the point. Rubbing folks face into paying for something that you don't give them isn't good for business. Even for Apple.

I don't disagree with that, but it's Apple. You know any nonsense is possible with them.

 

[deconstruct60]

I don't disagree with that, but it's Apple. You know any nonsense is possible with them.

Possible. Just not very probable. There was a classic Mac Pro slot survey in these forums a while back and one relatively common configuration was 1 Apple "boot card' ( e.g. GT120 , entry 5770 , etc.) and the newer, more high performance card in a second slot. The new Mac Pro has even more slots. So letting the 580X squat in half width in MPX bay 1 isn't going to 'cost' most folks much in terms of slot usage. It isn't like loads of folks haven't already found that solution path. It is common practice for the Mac Pro user base.

Priced too high folks will just skip the Vega II and folks will get a 580X by default any MP 2019 they want to set up.

They are already going to loose the hard core Nvidia folks who are trapped in CUDA. Drive folks away to too high priced Vega II and they'll be in worse shape.

There are already hundreds of margin cushion built into the base price of the Mac Pro 2019. I don't think Apple is going to give "full credit" for the 580X being traded in but at least a $99-200 would be creditable. ( honestly $99 would be just giving back the mark-up that Apple slapped on top of the 580X anyway. You'd still be 'buying' what not getting. Just wouldn't be paying a mark-up for what didn't get. )

 

[goMac]

The other thing about Apple is they usually use these semi custom GPUs to push around their competitors. The 2013’s “workstation” GPUs were sold at a low price point to compete on value with other workstations. Other upgrade prices, like the RAM and higher end CPUs, were inflated.

I suspect we’ll see a repeat of that here. Semi custom “workstation” GPU prices kept low to give Apple an edge. Higher prices on things like RAM where Apple would rather squeeze people.

Apple doesn’t have a history of overcharging that much on GPUs. Their GPU prices have been a bit high for what the hardware *actually* is. But they’ve been perfectly happy to undercut everyone by using rebranded consumer cards.

Apple being locked into using the Vega branding, and not FirePro or Instinct is an additional hint that they’ll be undercutting everyone else’s prices with those GPUs. AMD wouldn’t let them use FirePro or Instinct branding at a low price point. Their other partners would be furious. The Vega branding is probably a big hint at the likely price range.

If Apple was going to charge as much as a FirePro or Instinct, they’d actually make sure to use the same branding. They’d look foolish for selling a Vega at FirePro prices.

 

[deconstruct60]

Apple being locked into using the Vega branding, and not FirePro or Instinct is an additional hint that they’ll be undercutting everyone else’s prices with those GPUs. AMD wouldn’t let them use FirePro or Instinct branding at a low price point. Their other partners would be furious. The Vega branding is probably a big hint at the likely price range.

If Apple was going to charge as much as a FirePro or Instinct, they’d actually make sure to use the same branding. They’d look foolish for selling a Vega at FirePro prices.

But Apple (and AMD ) are using the current AMD "Pro" branding. 'FirePro' is the former "professional workstation" brand. If go to AMD then Radeon Pro Graphics drop down menu, you'll land on.

https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstations


Up until AMD has the new bleeding edge Radeon Pro product of W5700 to talk about that lead card there was The Pro Vega II Which took you to a link here:

https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstations-radeon-pro-vega-ii

Now if you go to AMD's "show me all the Pro cards" page is the Vega II there? No. But pragmatically if you don't have a MP 2019 you can't use the Vega II. So not sure who they'd be selling to that wasn't already an Apple customer. We'll see if AMD sells MPX GPU kits or that is a Apple store (apple approved retailer ) exclusive.

Yes, the FirePro D300 , D500 , D700 were substantially less that the roughly equivalent mainstream FirePower models that used the same die (with some functions turned on.) But they also were substantially higher, that the consumer models 30-40% like mark ups instead of 80-100+ % mark ups.

The Vega20 implementation here is not a "consumer" design. It isn't like they are "upselling" a consumer implementation. This actually is the "big compute" die that is not aimed primarily at gamers at all. Comparing to Nvidia upper end Quadra and V100 and T4 card prices is likely very wrong. ( not the same ecosystem selling into), but AMD was below that with the MI50 MI60 but not in the bargain bin either. ( just better $/performance than the Nvidia stuff on some workloads.)


These Vega II card also have Thunderbolt controllers on them. Bringing an implementation of those to market doesn't come free at the dime store. ( seen prices of two port TBv3 periheerals? Well thre are 4 ports here. ) If the Redeon VII is basically around cost if add another 16GB HBMs. , Infinity Fabric connectors. possible PCI-e swtich to providing two x4 bundles , two TBv3 controllers , the MPX connector stuff... probably looking at something in "consumer" guise would be $900. Slap a 45% mark up on that ( 30% Apple 15% AMD) and would be in the 1,300 range.

The $1,000 stuff pretty much ignores that it is more than just a simple consumer GPU card. There is just substantially more electronics there. That is going to cost more. It isn't thousands more, but it will be much more than price anchoring on mainstream cards that AMD sells.


P.S. the MPX 580X ( which doesn't appear to be a kit that Apple is going to sell) that doesn't have the TBv3 controllers or the Infinity Band stuff. It has only generic mainstream connectors ( HDMI). So price controlled and not "early next gen" (precursor to Display Port 2.0) tech. But does have a "Pro" prefix in its official name so that will be a marl up.

 

[goMac]

Now if you go to AMD's "show me all the Pro cards" page is the Vega II there? No. But pragmatically if you don't have a MP 2019 you can't use the Vega II. So not sure who they'd be selling to that wasn't already an Apple customer.

That does give Apple more room to set their own prices though. AMD doesn't have to worry about about Apple cannibalizing their usual market.

We'll see if AMD sells MPX GPU kits or that is a Apple store (apple approved retailer ) exclusive.

My guess is a Vega 2 MPX card will only be available through Apple. That doesn't prevent AMD from doing direct sales of third party MPX cards later, but I'm guessing that's pretty low priority.

Yes, the FirePro D300 , D500 , D700 were substantially less that the roughly equivalent mainstream FirePower models that used the same die (with some functions turned on.) But they also were substantially higher, that the consumer models 30-40% like mark ups instead of 80-100+ % mark ups.

I don't think Vega 2 will be close to consumer prices. But Apple's previous practice with the FirePro cards makes me think they'll be undercutting other professional cards pretty substantially.

And Apple's prices on the 2013 were especially low considering that it was for dual cards. They typically charged well below the price of one equivalent FirePro at retail for the price of two.

The Vega20 implementation here is not a "consumer" design. It isn't like they are "upselling" a consumer implementation. This actually is the "big compute" die that is not aimed primarily at gamers at all. Comparing to Nvidia upper end Quadra and V100 and T4 card prices is likely very wrong. ( not the same ecosystem selling into), but AMD was below that with the MI50 MI60 but not in the bargain bin either. ( just better $/performance than the Nvidia stuff on some workloads.)

Compute units are a *very* small step up from the consumer Radeon VII. It has more memory than a consumer Radeon VII. And Infinity Link isn't on the consumer Radeon VII. And all those will be at a premium.

But.... none of those are that dramatically huge of adds.The compute units are likely a binning thing (and stuff I'm seeing hints at that.) The memory is a board add in that does add to cost a bit (HBM2 seems like it's ramping up.) And Infinity Fabric is a feature of consumer Vega, they just don't come with the edge connector. (Infinity Fabric is a required component of Vega to act as an APU for Ryzen, it's supposedly present on the consumer standalone boards as well.) Nothing here seems like that big a cost or required Apple to go out and add something unique.

The edge connector is also likely only present on the Apple cards because it's an Intel system. Infinity Fabric is supposed to be a pairing advantage of using an AMD CPU. I don't think edge connectors for Infinity Fabric typically even exist outside of the Mac Pro. I might have seen something about Instinct cards with an edge connector?

These Vega II card also have Thunderbolt controllers on them. Bringing an implementation of those to market doesn't come free at the dime store. ( seen prices of two port TBv3 periheerals? Well thre are 4 ports here. ) If the Redeon VII is basically around cost if add another 16GB HBMs. , Infinity Fabric connectors. possible PCI-e swtich to providing two x4 bundles , two TBv3 controllers , the MPX connector stuff... probably looking at something in "consumer" guise would be $900. Slap a 45% mark up on that ( 30% Apple 15% AMD) and would be in the 1,300 range.

....

P.S. the MPX 580X ( which doesn't appear to be a kit that Apple is going to sell) that doesn't have the TBv3 controllers or the Infinity Band stuff. It has only generic mainstream connectors ( HDMI). So price controlled and not "early next gen" (precursor to Display Port 2.0) tech. But does have a "Pro" prefix in its official name so that will be a marl up.

So the one thing I did not know is that the RX 580 does not have the Thunderbolt controller on board. That will add to the cost. Shouldn't be that prohibitive though, even though it will add a bit. The Black Magic eGPUs use the required controller. While they're expensive, they don't head into the >$2000 price range or anything.

 

[Coyote2006]

Vega II: $850
Vega II Duo: $2450