So it will barley beat a Vega FE at gaming and is priced high. What other reason could there be to even bring up the "total cost" debate. Only reason is your product (GPU) doesn't offer great performance/$ and performance/watt compared to competitor.
If it has trouble even matching a GTX 1080 (at twice the TDP for the watercooled SKU) and is going to be more expensive at retail due to manufacturing costs, then why release it at all? Who would buy something like that? Are the handful of sales to die-hard AMD fanboys really worth the scathing reviews that will inevitably result?
This is what I don't understand. Isn't there anyone at AMD/RTG willing to say "No, we're not going to release this because it's a pile of crap and will make us look like laughingstocks". The WX 9100 and Instinct MI25 can remain, they're fine for their market niches, but it's clear that Vega 10 as it currently exists is a complete flop for gaming. The biggest questions at this point are: (1) can this be fixed with a respin or new tapeout, and (2) is it due to the unbalanced nature of Vega 10's resources or does the entire architecture just suck for gaming?