AMD Confirms Radeon RX Vega Soft-launch at Computex

[btarunr]

AMD Radeon Technologies Group (RTG) head Raja Koduri, responding to questions on a Reddit AMA (ask me anything) session, confirmed that while the company will launch the consumer-graphics variant of "Vega," the Radeon RX Vega graphics card, at its 2017 Computex event, availability of the card won't follow immediately after, making it a soft-launch. "We'll be showing Radeon RX Vega off at Computex, but it won't be on store shelves that week. We know how eager you are to get your hands on Radeon RX Vega, and we're working extremely hard to bring you a graphics card that you'll be incredibly proud to own," Koduri said.

The first consumer graphics card based on the "Vega 10" ASIC will be the Radeon RX Vega Frontier Edition. This card will be armed with 8 GB of HBM2 memory spread across two 16 Gbit HBM2 8-Hi stacks, with its combined memory bandwidth around 480 GB/s. From the words of Koduri, we can deduce that AMD is still finding the right clocks to make Vega Frontier Edition a competitive product. Koduri confirmed that there will be faster/bigger implementations of Vega. "Consumer RX will be much better optimized for all the top gaming titles and flavors of RX Vega will actually be faster than Frontier version," he said. In the meantime, check out some groovy concept renders of RX Vega reference board by VideoCardz. Our money is on the one below.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Captain_Tom]

Hmmmm alright well that at least confirms that gaming Vega will launch by the end of July.


Still hoping AMD manages to get 480 GB/s or (please!) 512 GB/s HBM2 into the top gaming Vega card. 410 GB/s just wouldn't be enough to beat the 1080 Ti.

 

[the54thvoid]

Hmmmm alright well that at least confirms that gaming Vega will launch by the end of July.


Still hoping AMD manages to get 480 GB/s or (please!) 512 GB/s HBM2 into the top gaming Vega card. 410 GB/s just wouldn't be enough to beat the 1080 Ti.

Bandwidth wont be the factor so much as the Clocks and architecture. My 1080ti bandwidth is 528GB/s (OC'ed obviously).

 

[medi01]

• Main goal of Vega was to create an architecture that can handle large data sets and game at 4K at 60fps.
• The demo during Financial Analyst day was an air-cooled Frontier Edition, not an RX Vega card. There will be water cooled versions of Vega that will run slightly faster.
• Frontier uses 2 x 8GB stacks of HBM2.
  
• Both HBM1 and HBM2 provide plenty of bandwidth.
  
• Raja will look into OC'ing HBM2 and a 16GB RX card.
• RX Vega will be shown at Computex. It will not be available the same week but nothing else has been ruled out.
• Frontier runs comfortably using 1x6-pin and 1x8-pin but RTG put 2x8-pin on the production card for more headroom.
• Raja is keeping his beard until Vega launches.
• Infinity fabric allows for the joining of multiple engines on a single die, and offers high bandwidth and low latency. There has been no mention of using Infinity fabric with multiple GPUs.
• Frontier was designed for an array of workload usages. RX Vega is for gaming and will be faster than Frontier.
• Vega will support Tensorflow, Cafe2, Cafe, Torch7 and MxNet via MIOpen.
• Pro versions support hardware virtualization. He did not state out right if this included Frontier/Vega or or not.
• The High Bandwidth Cache Controller (HBCC) helps increase minimum framerates and can improve performance even more if it's specifically coded for.
• Developing drivers for GPUs is really hard.
• Raja expects to grow ROCm to improve machine learning and compute. Another ROCm comment.
• Raja replies to a comment regarding particle physics simulation, saying this will be improved via the new cache and infinity fabric.
• New geometry pipeline in Vega improves throughput per clock cycle and will require no extra work on dev's part to utilize.
• Radeon Vega Frontier will be the fastest single GPU solution for compute.
• Radeon Instinct will provide dramatically better performance per dollar compared to the competition
• RX will have different drivers than Frontier that are optimized for gaming as well as additional goodies.
• Vega is the first GPU architecture to use Infinity Fabric and is in no way a re-hash of Polaris
• Radeon Chill will continue to be improved and will be updated soon.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/6bklro/we_are_radeon_technologies_group_at_amd_and_were/


PS
I thought 8GB HBM2 chips weren't available yet.

 

[dj-electric]

Can i just freeze myself for a while? Kinda tired of waiting at this point

 

[jabbadap]

Hmmmm alright well that at least confirms that gaming Vega will launch by the end of July.


Still hoping AMD manages to get 480 GB/s or (please!) 512 GB/s HBM2 into the top gaming Vega card. 410 GB/s just wouldn't be enough to beat the 1080 Ti.

Probably yes, I could imagine that lower bandwidth is due using 8hi 64Gb hbm2:s. 4hi 32Gb hbm2 chips should be able to clock easier targeted 2Gbps. As I don't think there will be consumer vega with 16GB vram, until "vega20" with four stack of hbm2(If it is still in road maps, amd might go straight to the navi).

 

[efikkan]

"Soft-launch", so a paper launch.

 

[dont whant to set it"']

Can I eat it?, I whant to eat it, I'l eat it, figuratively.
le:questionmark

 

[Patriot]

They have been teasing for over a year at this point? I will own a 2018 car before they actually get this thing out the door.

 

[Fouquin]

They have been teasing for over a year at this point? I will own a 2018 car before they actually get this thing out the door.

Great illustration of how long it actually takes to release a new GPU lineup to market.