ASRock Phantom Gaming (ASRock GPUs)

Apparently it’s officially official now, ASRock is going to be making GPUs in the (near) future. From what I understand they’re going to be Red Team only initially, but I also cannot find anything that confirms or denies the possibility of them working with the Green Team in the future.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/03/17/confirmed-the-graphics-card-market-gets-a-new-competitor/#327face64ec5

EDIT: From ASRock’s Facebook page:

UPDATE 2018/04/25: RX 580 and RX 560 confirmed. See post #49.


Opinion: This should be interesting. As of right now I think ASRock makes some of the better motherboards on the market for the price brackets they are in (looking at you X370 Taichi). My personal experience with ASRock has also been great, I’ve used a few motherboards from them without a hitch on any of them. They should be able to leverage that experience to make a pretty fine lineup of graphics cards.

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Interesting. I had heard that they were getting in on the GPUs all right, but that it was to cash in on the mining end of things. With further speculation that it would not arrive for some time, possibly years, due to them having to develop the PCBs and so on.

That they are now being named as gaming cards with a branding to go with it thats the interesting news. Always good to have another supplier out their.

Now… What will AMD provide? Their gaming end has been lacking for a while now with the RX 580 being basically the best they have. Yeah I know Fury/Vega exist but they are not practical. I hope it might push them again to make a good run of cards that are actually aimed at gamers.

Why not? I have both and they are great.
[EDIT] Oh, you probably mean not practical for ASRock, gotcha.

This is very interesting.
I think that we might see them very soon.
Developing a pcb for those Vega cards isnt really rocket sience.

The timing of this is kinda weird unless 1. AMD is releasing low(er) end GCN 5.0 chips soon, or 2. AMD is not releasing said chips any time soon. I mean ASRock could be making them to cash in on miners and the “gaming” branding is just there for PR, but to me it would make more sense if ASRock timed their release with new architecture to maximize the hype around it.

If, and that’s a big if, AMD releases RX cards based on GCN 5.0 I expect it to be fairly soon since the 300, 400, and 500-series cards were all released in late Spring to very early Summer of 2015, 2016, and 2017, within the April-June time frame. Which would make sense for ASRock to start marketing now since it would drum up some hype without being too early and people becoming apathetic, nor too late and being drowned by general new chip hype. I don’t think it will be Vega related since Vega is just about 7 months old, it’s a few months newer than the RX cards.

If AMD isn’t releasing GCN 5.0 chips soon I don’t think it would be much of a hindrance for ASRock since they could probably make an R5 250, upcharge the shit out of it, and still sell an absolute fuckton of them. It does hinder gaming on AMD because, and let’s be honest here, the RX cards really aren’t that great even without the insane street price, let alone with.

Uhm, what? o0

For 1080p gaming RX570/580 are completely fine. And I am guessing that is exactly what ASRock will start with.

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Just to remind everyone:
On 11th April 2017, ASRock announced their strategic partnership with Sapphire Technology. That is close to a year ago. Source: http://www.asrock.com/news/index.asp?id=3580

Both Sapphire and ASRock are not the worst at making PCBs. Maybe I am reading to much into the little information that is public. But this should be interesting.

Gaming brand or not?
Does it really matter? When someone has money, they will buy what fits their need and budget, end of the story.

Reason for ASRock to enter GPU market
Much more important then the “how” is the “why”.
ASRock has to have some financial interest in entering the market, a low margin market at that. AMD cards only means tons of mid-range (RX 570 & RX 580). Comparing MSRP between those and the GTX 1050ti and GTX1060 results in a decision of games and favourite color (= does not really matter). So when ASRock hits close to 580s MSRP, they will be praised and move a ton of cards, if they don´t, money is money!

Another idea would be bundling GPUs with mainboards. Would be an interesting attempt at keeping miners from buying the cards.

As GN pointed out, the teaser showcased a dual fan design with a single 8pin PCI-e power connector limiting the card to 225W total. Vega 56 and 64 are out of the equation, however maybe there is smaller Vega?

Miners VS supply & demand

I am 85% sure someone will bring this up. I present, my mildly informed opinion:
Ehm… Not so sure about them beeing able to increase GPU production. Samsung would not be looking into building another factory if they had capacity. And as I don´t think Samsung is blowing 30 somthing billion for fun, I bet they expect demand for semi-conductor products to remain high (increase) for the next 10 to 15 years. This is long term investments beeing done. I would expect other semi-conductor manufacturers to follow soon (6 to 12 months).

That makes a ton of sense actually. And the marketing would write itself.
Bundle up X470 board with RX580 GPU, charge 450,- for both.

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Ryzen 2 is due on 19th/20th April according to the Amazon leak, right?
I guess we will see arround that time.

Pardon the janky phrasing, I don’t always English well.

I would never deny that the RX 580 is a good card, it really is, but’s it’s not great in my opinion. It’s got a lot of VRAM, it was the best value card for a while, et cetera. For 1080p it does very well, but it’s starts to suffer at resolutions going above that. The GTX 1060, what’s probably its closest competitor, is in a similar situation where it’s definitely a good card, but it’s not great.

I don’t know, maybe I’m just spoiled by my GTX 980 Ti.

Well, that sits somewhere between a 1060 and 1070…
So it is slightly better than not great? :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, if you want to make a dent into the market, you have to sell something the majority of the market can actually afford. And that is still 1080p gaming stuff.

Well if asrock see´s a way to cash on the miners,
they probablly also want a slice of that cake.

They might. But the more I think about the bundling idea, the more sense it makes.
There has probably never been a better opportunity to establish a gaming brand with one release. Think about that, they would also force other brands to do the same. And they could use that as free marketing.

Pretty much. Have never had much of an issue with 1080p and I can actually run quite a few games at 4K 60 FPS. Vega 64 or a GTX 1080 would crush it though.

The sweetspot for GPU price seems to be about $250 or less, and that’s pretty much nothing above a 1050 Ti or RX 560 right now. Unfortunately the cheapest RX 580 I’ve seen recently from a reputable seller was well over $400, compared to the $200 to $220 I was seeing some cards go for not too long after release. Hell, I could sell my 980 Ti on Ebay and make money on it, and I bought the card new.

did he also mention at what time did he saw the 8 pin connector ?

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As someone who have been looking for a 580 card and haven’t been able to afford one / find one IRL, I prey hopelessly to the PC gods. Also hope the design is cool seeing as they apparently partnered with Sapphire.

No I did mean for people.

They both came out with really short supply, not great support initially, huge power draw, high price, comparatively low performance and then once all that got out they just faded into obscurity.

They are certainly options but I never saw either as gaming cards. They did not seemed marketed to that audience. They might do well now but they were no great shakes on release. Which was a huge shame, I was looking forward to both but they just fell on their face.

That’s nothing new about the nature of GCN cards. The Fury came out and was barely as fast as a 980, a year later and it was in spitting distance to a 980Ti/1070. And btw.: for months you could buy a Fury for less than 300,- Euro, a lot less actually.
People still bought 1070s because people are dumb. Has nothing to do with the cards.

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Well we’re going to have an intel desktop graphics card in like 2 years so maybe they’ll shit on nvidia for being fascists or something and go to intel like hey fuccboi finna give me a nut.

Aight I’m done with today I’m going to bed.

Interesting though. Maybe thuy’ll actually make GPU’s for the length of the GPU’s life and the miners can all hang themselves after that.