Ban on AMD: ASRock is not allowed to sell graphics cards in Europe
4/4/2018 5:06 pm
Frank Hüber
With a lot of secrecy and good staging,
ASRock announced its entry into the graphics card business at the end of March and intends to exclusively rely on graphics cards with AMD GPU. Nevertheless, AMD has banned the manufacturer from selling the new graphics cards in Europe, as is now known.
Tom's Hardware Germany had been able to test one of ASRock's new models, the ASRock RX 580 Phantom Gaming X, in
advance, attesting that the manufacturer had a very successful debut. After the test, ASRock asked Tom's Hardware where the ASRock RX 580 Phantom Gaming X came from, not the manufacturer itself. ASRock's Senior Sales Manager
also revealed that selling phantom gaming graphics cards in Europe is not possible, as AMD has not approved this release: "
The problem for me is that AMD has not agreed to sell in EU, that is really a pity. "
Accordingly, AMD ASRock has banned the sale of the new graphics card range, which currently offers four models with the RX 580, RX 570, RX 560 and RX 550 with Polaris GPU, in Europe. The exact reasons why AMD ASRock does not allow the sale of AMD graphics cards in Europe have not been publicized so far. There may be contracts against other graphics card manufacturers, or one of them, after the announcement of ASRock, has successfully resisted an introduction to Europe and has persuaded AMD to make that concession.
Restriction so far not communicated
An announcement from ASRock on which markets the
Radeon RX 500 series phantom gaming graphics cards will be available was not available in advance, nor are there limitations or any announcement that they will not be available in Europe. The advance notice and announcement was initiated by ASRock Japan. So far none of the new graphics cards from ASRock have been listed in the German trade.