If you don't give me a Fury X reference design at no premium after Fury X JUST came out, I'll be pretty annoyed. REALLY annoyed actually. On top of that though, I'm tired of the Fury X only 1 cooler thing. AMD... don't piss us off. Let AIBs also make coolers too.
I certainly wanted Fury X WC, but man, sometimes you also just want to be able to throw in 2 air cooled cards quickly without having to redo your WHOLE cooling airflow in your case.
I want options, not being FORCED into something. Really wish those fans hadn't had to be mounted horizontally, I had them ready for vertical placement
Fury X came with no premium upon release. It was just 100 dollars more than a regular fury and considering the substantial amount of disabled shaders and the water cooler, it was underpriced relative to it's cost to make. Most AIB cards with a water cooler cost 100 dollars more than standards cards. In AMD case, you got a water and the full chip for 100 dollars more. In the past, AMD charged 100-150 extra to get the full chip alone. No upgraded cooler and on much smaller chip which meant the yields between the full chip and cut chip were more similar. Because there was only 100 dollar difference, unless the form factor doesn't allow it, the fury x is a no brainer over a fury.
There was never going to be an AIB fury X because it doesn't make sense from a marketing standpoint.
A so called none premium fury X would be around 599 and at that point it destroys regular fury sales. There needs to be enough difference between the cards that 1 card doesn't cannibalize the sales of another card. With the standard pricing of fury x, it already cannibalized the sales of fury. Fury x were initially sold out for a while, fury were easy to get. And considering the die size of fury, the yields on a fury x were much worse than a regular fury. Getting 100% perfect die on something that's 600mm2 is not easy. So a 50 dollar price difference is too small, even 100 dollar price difference is too small when you take in the water cooling. But for AMD, the design of the fury x was finalized and AMD probably didn't expect to have to price fury x at 650.
The problem came with Nvidia's gtx 980 ti which upon release was 650 dollars. Remember those rumors of a 800 dollar fury x, there was likely some truth to them. But the gtx 980 ti came in so it got a price cut before it was officially released. The Fury and the fury nano have realistic price point in terms of profitability due to the lack of competition. Fury X on the other hand was underpriced but AMD was forced to sell it at a lower price.