They are available NOW, at least in china.
These cards are for serious farm owners, it is their answer to the shortage.
They don't want low volume customers.
And once the market is saturated and mining isn't that profitable they wont produce these anymore I assume, AND these cards will have 0 value to anyone but a miner.
I read that one of the ASUS cards will be available to the general public. Not sure about the ones that are currently out or the NVIDIA cards. Yeah, I read that the resell value won't be as good because you won't be able to sell on the gamer after market.
Even if they are available to us normal folks, the cards will sell out in a couple seconds on most sites anyways if the price is halfway decent. Resale isn't good, but on the cards that at least have DVI they can still be used. Haven't seen one with Display port yet, which is probably a deal breaker for any potential gamer in the future.
Appreciate the info! I'll probably just stick with the AMD's.