AMD Vega GPU Release Date, Specs, Price News: Next-Gen Graphics Cards Arriving Second Quarter of 2017
2017 is shaping up to be a very promising year for AMD as the chipmaker is gearing up to release its next-generation products in the following months. Gamers, especially, have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Vega — flagship-level graphics processing units (GPUs) that are touted to be comparable to NVIDIA's high-end Pascal-based graphics cards.
During the company's recent fourth quarter and annual 2016 financial earnings call, it was announced that the first Vega-based GPUs will be released during the second quarter of the year. Rumors suggest that the launch will be sometime in May. This particular release window will give AMD a quick breather as they have also recently confirmed that the Zen-based Ryzen central processing units (CPUs) will be arriving in March.
According to AMD, the Vega-based graphics cards will feature a new memory hierarchy using second-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM2) technology that will allow the transfer of large volumes of data per second. Aside from gaming, the Vega chips can also be used for a wide variety of professional applications. The upcoming GPU's next-generation compute engine enables it to operate at higher frequencies and will be flexible enough to handle different types of workloads.
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Unfortunately, AMD has not revealed the specific technical specifications of the first Vega-based GPU. Nevertheless, reports have been rife about what Vega 10 might offer once it is released to the market.
According to WCCFTech, the Vega 10 GPU will be built using 14 nm GFX9 core architecture and will feature 64 compute units or 4096 stream processors, 12.5 teraflops of power, a 2,048-bit memory bus, a bandwidth of 409.6 GBps and a thermal design power of about 225 watts. The base version is said to feature 8 GB of HBM2 but the graphics card will reportedly support up to 16 GB of HBM2.
It hasn't been confirmed yet if the Vega 10 GPU will be marketed as the Radeon RX 490 or if AMD will release it as a 500-series offering.
Meanwhile, the Vega 11 platform is said to come in the second half of 2017. At this time, the upcoming GPU's specs have yet to be revealed.
In terms of price, reports suggest that AMD's Vega-based GPUs will cost about $500.
