Apr 29, 2024 | Updated: 11:35 AM EDT
Mar 15, 2017 10:43 AM EDT
AMD is in the spotlight currently because of its new range of Ryzen processors. They may not be beating Intel's best at outright performance, but they certainly are at affordable prices. The Radeon RX Vega is the name of AMD's next-generation graphics cards, which will take the fight to Nvidia, which has just announced the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
Vega is the name of the new Radeon graphics cards from AMD that will launch this year. The full name is AMD Radeon RX Vega, which means that the rumoured RX 490 or RX 580 names were wrong. AMD RX Vega is set to compete with Nvidia's best graphics cards because AMD has made huge changes to the processor's architecture and has already shown a few demos which are hinting at big performance increases, as per PC Advisor.
Currently we don't know about the exact specifications of the AMD RX Vega which, but AMD has revealed enough to whet gamers' appetites. According to the leaked slides, the Vega '10' (high-end model) will be having 14nm GFX9 GPU, 64 NCUs, 2048-bit memory bus, 512GB/s bandwidth, PCIe Gen 3, 4096 stream processors, 16GB HBM2, x16 and 225W TDP.
The first Vega GPU, the RX Vega, will be using Vega 10 silicon and is expected to see AMD coming out with a high-end halo graphics card first, back-filling the rest of the range after that. This first card is likely to be the AMD Vega card that we've already seen during the operation at the New Horizon event, rocking "Star Wars Battlefront" at 4K and over 60fps.
That's an 8GB card, and it can also be featuring second-gen high bandwidth memory (HBM2), which will give it an insane level of video memory performance. A 2,048-bit memory bus with bandwidth around the 512GB/s mark in the card is also expected. However we don't know any other specifications for Radeon RX 590, but AMD have spoken about the Next Compute Unit (NCU) which they're using with Vega, as per PCGamesN.
AMD though are possible to also release a higher-level GPU than that 8GB HBM2 card, one will be based on the same, spec they dropped into their MI25 professional-class GPU. The high 14nm Vega 10 chip will come with capably 4,096 of the newly designed Graphics Core Next (GCN) cores ideally on one monster slice of silicon.
The MI25 professional card can deliver 12 teraflops of single precision computing. That would put the card ahead of the Nvidia GTX Titan X which gives around the 11 teraflop mark, so it's not unfairly to think that could end up being a new AMD RX Fury. This top Vega chip will be boasting 16GB of HBM2 and, thanks to the 14nm production process, AMD are also aiming to keep it below the 300W point in terms of TDP too.
Even though AMD revealed very few details about the RX Vega at the Game GDC, it hasn't yet said anything regarding its price. Nvidia's GTX 1080 Ti is $700, which makes it the most expensive element in most PCs, as of today. In reality, AMD can keep the prices either up or down.
For the release, WccFtech claims that AMD will be launching the cards at a special event during the month of May. It's possible, however, but would be the first time when AMD have ever released a graphics card at Computex.
AMD have already confirmed that Vega graphics cards will be released in the first half of 2017. We also know the first Vega GPU designs have passed the South Korean National Radio Research Agency certification (RRA) that is normally a positive indication that they're almost ready for retail launch.
