AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56 Hits Store Shelves Today (But You’ll Need Luck Securing One)

Let’s get the obvious out-of-the-way: RX Vega 56 is going to be just as difficult, if not more so, to acquire, than Vega 64. It’s going to be even more difficult securing it at the SEP of $399, based on initial information. As of the time of writing, very few etailers have Vega 56 listed at all, much less have one available. If a listing pops-up, and it’s out-of-stock, it’s probably because it was never in stock in the first place.

At the moment, the only place I’ve found definitive stock has been UK-based Scan, which has cards available (again, as I write this) for £379.99~389.99. Other models are all sold-out, and are more expensive (interestingly enough).

Over at Newegg, a single RX Vega 56 has appeared up to this point, and like most of the others, it was on pre-order as soon as it appeared (I have been running some tabs on 1 minute refresh to track this). If there’s an upside, it’s that this first SKU to appear costs $399, but that’d be more useful if a preorder were available.

And speaking of preorders, some people around the web have suggested that they’ve managed to preorder a card, namely at Amazon, although there isn’t a single available model that I can see right now. Still, it’s worth refreshing lots if you want your chance at a similar preorder.

Over at Best Buy, of all places, an XFX Vega 56 is available as of the time of writing, but for a not-too-attractive price that matches the SEP of the Vega 64 ($499.99).

I’ve checked other etailers as well, and no one has any stock. Overclockers.co.uk doesn’t (see note below), and NCIX doesn’t, either. But, if you’re not adverse to shelling out $1,300 CAD for a Vega 64, NCIX does have one of those.

I haven’t taken an in-depth look at Vega 56 up to this point, except to explore its gaming potential at 4K and ultrawide, and overall, the card delivers a nice punch against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1070. In fact, it can be argued that Vega 56 is actually a more attractive card than the Vega 56, from a dollar-to-FPS standpoint. That of course assumes you can acquire either for SRP, however.

If you want to better track stock for either Vega, you may want to bookmark this (Vega 64) and / or this (Vega 56). I am not sure how I’ve never heard about this site until just this morning, but it appears to be one I will monitor quite closely for launches going forward.

Addendum: After publishing, Overclockers.co.uk gained Vega 56 stock, and while no models are available right now, there are three available for preorder, starting at £389.99.