[QUOTE=diep;535768]Note that the 'losing money on each card' ...[/QUOTE]That is just marketing-speak for "we are not making as much as we could", [u]not[/u] a literal "it costs us more to make than the sell price".

[QUOTE=retina;535769]That is just marketing-speak for "we are not making as much as we could", [u]not[/u] a literal "it costs us more to make than the sell price".[/QUOTE]

Retina - As a GPU manufacturer AMD isn't publicly showing its future plans. Suddenly DANG there is something - or it isn't.

It's not like the endless drumbeats intel shows prior to producing something.

[QUOTE=diep;535770]Retina - As a GPU manufacturer AMD isn't publicly showing its future plans. Suddenly DANG there is something - or it isn't.

It's not like the endless drumbeats intel shows prior to producing something.[/QUOTE]Sure, they have difference strategies with regard to announcements. But my comment was more about the misleading "we make a loss" vs "we could make more" thing.

[QUOTE=diep;535768]nomead: being EOL would be interesting info as some hardware reviewers on websites i spoke didn't pick up that info yet. Note that the 'losing money on each card'- info is also old info from end 2018.[/QUOTE]

August 2019:
[URL="https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-VII-confirmed-to-be-EOL-just-6-months-after-its-launch.432773.0.html"]https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-VII-confirmed-to-be-EOL-just-6-months-after-its-launch.432773.0.html[/URL]

[URL="https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-vii-end-of-life-status,39861.html"]https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-vii-end-of-life-status,39861.html[/URL]

Original source for the info:
[URL="https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-GPU-Roundup-NVIDIA-SUPER-vs-AMD-RX-5700-XT-1563/"]https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-GPU-Roundup-NVIDIA-SUPER-vs-AMD-RX-5700-XT-1563/[/URL]
[QUOTE]Radeon VII is 100% EOL, we confirmed that directly with AMD before we started this round of GPU testing. Leftover supply does not mean it is still being manufactured.[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=retina;535772]Sure, they have difference strategies with regard to announcements. But my comment was more about the misleading "we make a loss" vs "we could make more" thing.[/QUOTE]

Well a gpu is always a loss until they manage to get the yields up of it.

The yields any manufacturer manages to make at a relative new process technology is more secret than any military secret.

Once they start mass producing it's easier to guess yields as you need a specific high yield number to break even which is easier to guesstimate.

As for the design that's the easy and cheap part so to say. Some years a very small team designs such gpu. It's usually no more than less than half a dozen of guys.

They make a design. Get paid each teammember some millions or a tad more. They leave the AMD headquarters and say "good luck and goodbye" - and they go without a job yet with cash loaded into their pockets back home and hope the hundreds of engineers that now in the 2nd phase to to work on their gpu design trying to get up yields, are succesful.

They hear no nothing then from AMD - no feedback - no nothing. They know just as much as you and i do at that point. Speaking of giving 'feedback' to designers there. Doh. How simple the world always works...

The expensive phase then starts trying to get up yields at usually a new process technology.

What always amazes me is how little manufacturers 'bet' at having several design teams.

[QUOTE=nomead;535774]August 2019:
[URL="https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-VII-confirmed-to-be-EOL-just-6-months-after-its-launch.432773.0.html"]https://www.notebookcheck.net/Radeon-VII-confirmed-to-be-EOL-just-6-months-after-its-launch.432773.0.html[/URL]

[URL="https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-vii-end-of-life-status,39861.html"]https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-radeon-vii-end-of-life-status,39861.html[/URL]

Original source for the info:
[URL="https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-GPU-Roundup-NVIDIA-SUPER-vs-AMD-RX-5700-XT-1563/"]https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/DaVinci-Resolve-GPU-Roundup-NVIDIA-SUPER-vs-AMD-RX-5700-XT-1563/[/URL][/QUOTE]

That's not an official AMD statement.

That's only saying odds are there in this case they do not manage to get yields up or the gpu will live on in a different incarnation (mi50?) .

It's obvious they manage to produce it somehow high clocked and output a considerable amount of Tflops with it.

Moving to an entire new gpu design and abandonning this one would be a huge step to take for a manufacturer.

[QUOTE=diep;535776]That's only saying odds are there in this case they do not manage to get yields up or the gpu will live on in a different incarnation (mi50?) .

Moving to an entire new gpu design and abandonning this one would be a huge step to take for a manufacturer.[/QUOTE]

They are not abandoning the chip design, just the Radeon VII end product. The full featured (and priced) MI50 is still in production.

[QUOTE=diep;535734]Please note but this is a personal opinion on gpu's is that if a chip clocks higher than 1 Ghz the manufacturer is doing something wrong. Because if it can clock like 1.5Ghz or whatever above 1 Ghz - they could've equipped the gpu also with more cores (SIMDs). It's better to have 120 SIMDs at 1Ghz than to have 60 at 1.4Ghz - but this is just my 2 cents :)[/QUOTE]So, without any proof, you claim to know better than the world's leading IC manufacturers. That's persuasive.
Process technology->feature size, yield, and die size per core->economic optimization->product design and specs

[URL]https://www.pcworld.com/article/3281386/amd-next-gen-radeon-navi-gpu-multi-chip.html[/URL]

[QUOTE=nomead;535779]They are not abandoning the chip design, just the Radeon VII end product. The full featured (and priced) MI50 is still in production.[/QUOTE]Which is exactly what you would get if MI50 yield improves over time, as processing gets improved, as it generally does, and the accumulated inventory of sub-MI50-spec chips got used up in making Radeon VIIs. Just like the 486SX came and went.

Alleged simple 10C-lower cooling hack
 

While preparing to physically install my R7 - turns out the 2-tier mounting bracket, pictured below, doesn't quite fit my ATX case, I'm looking at Dremeling out the cleft between the 2 tabs to make it ~1cm deeper, and was looking for "radeon vii replacement mounting bracket" online, in case I end up having to return the card - found this review of the R7 which claims a very simple 10C-lower cooling hack, the expedient of simple adding a small thin washer to each of the 4 screws that attach at the corner of the X-shaped backplate opening of the R7 in order to increase the pressure between the cooling plate and the chip. Said hack is described in the context of an overall product review:

[url]https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-vii/33.html[/url]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;536072]While preparing to physically install my R7 - turns out the 2-tier mounting bracket, pictured below, doesn't quite fit my ATX case, I'm looking at Dremeling out the cleft between the 2 tabs to make it ~1cm deeper, and was looking for "radeon vii replacement mounting bracket" online, in case I end up having to return the card - found this review of the R7 which claims a very simple 10C-lower cooling hack, the expedient of simple adding a small thin washer to each of the 4 screws that attach at the corner of the X-shaped backplate opening of the R7 in order to increase the pressure between the cooling plate and the chip. Said hack is described in the context of an overall product review:

[url]https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-radeon-vii/33.html[/url][/QUOTE]

I tried the washer hack, didn't work for me.
Warning: the thermal pad that the GPU comes with is very good -- it's hard to replace it with anything with comparable performance. When taking the cooler apart, the termal pad may be demaged and need to be replaced which would be a net loss. Personally I would recommend against trying out the washer hack.

OTOH what does work is improving the air flow to the card; putting the GPU in an open-air "mining" rig did improve temperatures by more that 10C.