Wow, nowhere near 1080Ti? Damn.
I'll probably buy one anyway, because typically AMD cards are better for mining than they are for gaming. The mining part of the equation means I can buy one for free essentially.
Regarding driver magic... the good thing about AMD is that we know the driver magic is real. If you look at back at their card history, they do make progress with their performance. Even older cards like R9 290 have got substantial boosts since release.
So, it is not unreasonable to think that in future, performance will rise from roughly equal to 1080 to a good 15% above 1080 - especially considering how different this architecture is.
The problem for AMD is that first impressions count, and a lot of gamers will not give Vega a second look if it doesn't review well.
YES
This is what amazes me about this "launch".
No review samples is the equivalent of movies released directly to rental or theatres without prescreenings- not a good sign.
Phantom Edition availability and $1000/$1500 MSRP? Yeah that will thrill masses of gamers waiting for two years for FuryX follow up.
"Prosumer" card first? There just a "few" less programmers than video gamers. If you release a Phantom Edition gamer card that at least makes it into the hands of 20 review sites and a few hundred gamers the masses are whipped into a frenzy of anticipation and they will wait another month.
My re-spin theory is the
only thing that makes sense to me here. Even if that's true the Frontier launch seems more damaging than positive to me.
I still believe a $499 RX with 1080 level performance and a Freesync monitor is a combination that must be considered in 2017, and that 1080Ti competition is not necessarily relevant.