Spotted: AMD's Radeon RX Vega, Air & Liquid Cooled
by Ryan Smith on July 29, 2017 9:20 PM ESTIn a very brief update this evening, as part of their trickle marketing campaign, AMD has allowed us to release photos of two of their upcoming Radeon RX Vega cards. Cards as in plural, you say? Yes, just like the already-released Radeon Frontier Edition cards, RX Vega will come in air and liquid cooled variants.
To little surprise, both cards look like a palette swap of their Frontier Edition counterparts, with the same brushed metal finish, fan position, and Radeon "R" logo in the corner. However for any other information besides that, well, AMD is saving that for another time...
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extide - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
Better/higher res image: https://i.redd.it/f4enyemf6icz.jpgBenSkywalker - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
Given the information we have about the die size and power envelope it would normally be a safe bet that they would be coming in ~20% faster than the 1080Ti, but given this really, really odd hype train they must have something substantially better then that. Clearly with the way they are rolling this out, we must be looking at 30%-50% faster then the 1080Ti/TitanXp, nothing else would possibly make sense for this roll out.Now given, they have to hit those numbers, but if they do hit those numbers this will be remembered as an utterly brilliant launch. Worst case scenario, it's only ~20% faster then the 1080Ti and AMD will look very, very foolish. I'm hoping their PR people aren't that profoundly inept.
Those benches people are trying to float around having this in the non Ti 1080 range, come on. Given the size and power requirements of this part, the timing, the launch hype- AMD would have be the biggest group of morons on the face of the Earth. A remotely competent company wouldn't dream of releasing anything that was close to that slow this big, this power hungry, this late with this extremely lengthy hype train. They would have to employ all of the dumbest people in the industry.
It can't be real. ~30% faster then Ti would be the absolute bottom of the barrel for this roll out that wouldn't be laughable.
FaaR - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
Are you being sarcastic?BenSkywalker - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
No, analytical. We know the die size is larger then the Ti, we know the power consumption is higher then the Ti, it is launching long after Pascal, unless we assume that the engineers at AMD are utterly and completely inept, a bottom of the barrel worse case scenario should have this showing up at ~20% faster then Ti.That would be if we were just looking at a normal launch and assuming reasonable levels of competence in their job. Given this absurd hype train, I was seeing Vega benches AMD was promoting for a long time now, they must have something markedly better then that. Why on Earth would anyone with an iota of PR savvy allow these sorts of shenanigans to draw immense levels of scrutiny on to their launch if they had anything but a monster part that was going to simply blow Pascal out of the water.
There is no other rational reasoning behind it. You have to assume a level of idiocy that due to the nature of publicly traded companies would flirt with criminal activity for any executive to allow this to continue unless they had something that could smash Pascal and smash it hard.
Volta is right around the corner, we know this, expecting Vega to be closer to Volta in performance then Pascal given the timing of its launch is not only reasonable, it is the only logical conclusion one could make unless you consider AMD to be the biggest group of idiots in the world.
xype - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
You’re reading way too much into this. They need all the PR they can get, and even Vega being 5-10% slower than 1080 won’t matter much if it’s >25% cheaper.Going by your logic companies releasing a product that’s _not_ top of the line would be doing less PR — why? Spend years developing Vega and then _not_ tell the world about it because a fraction of the enthusiast market is very loudly dissapointed? That’s what wouldn’t make sense.
Your post just sound like you need a reason to be overly optimistic. You’ll just end up disappointed that way, though.
nevcairiel - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
Actually, being slower then a 1080 would matter, especially at this time. Sure, they can keep offering more value solutions like they have with Polaris, but if they can't compete in the high-end segment, its really quite a sad day for GPUs.xype - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
I don’t have the numbers so I can’t say. But if middle price range is where most sales are done, as long as Vega offers much better performance that Nvidia at the same price I also don’t think buyers will not care much.But we’ll see. My point was more that the whole "they would only do agressive marketing if there were zomg 7369 times faser than 1080 ti" argument does not seem logical.
Nagorak - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
Being slower than a 1080, while drawing twice the power would honestly be quite pathetic at this point.xype - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
True technology-wise — but do you believe that matters for most people buying a GPU? I think most people on a budget (AMD’s target audience for the most part) might be fine with that as long as it’s much cheaper.ddriver - Sunday, July 30, 2017 - link
I don't see vega coming on top of the 1080 ti. It uses almost the same power, and vega will inevitably be less power efficient, since it is more of a "generic" chip that will go into several products, including prosumer accelerators, whereas the 1080 ti is essentially stripped from everything that is not essential for gaming.A realistic optimal case is vega eventually coming within 10-5 % below a 1080 ti as drivers mature.
Then again, as already mentioned, since AMD will be forced to price it very competitive, most of vega will go into mining rather than gaming.
Which kinda sucks for AMD. They will have to offer vega at a good price to retailers, only for retailers to price-gouge as mad dogs and pocket all the premium due to strong demand and weak supply.