While the new 7nm based 16 GB HBM2 RAM, Radeon VII aims to compete directly with Nvidia's powerful RTX2080 card - everything points to" limited quantities" and no third party cards at launch. This might have been expected as Radeon pulled the same stunt with the launch of the Vega cards - but is it to increase sales of their own cards or to do with limitations in production capacity?
According to German Toms Hardwarea "Chinese colleague" of the magazine is quoted as saying:
"regarding AMD ... the quantity of Radeon VII is strictly limited ... not sure if AMD will open AIB to have an own design later"
It could also very well be the availability of HBM2 memory, or the use of 7nm production for CPU instead. One thing is certain, limitations on new cards is not a good thing when entering into competition with a very strong, market-leading adversary.