XFX is known for its audacious graphics card designs. The company even adds uniqueness to the design of its retail boxes, with the signature X-shaped cartons. It looks like the company is finally getting its design mojo back, with a boldly-styled custom-design Radeon RX Vega series graphics card, which it teased in three pictures released to social media. The design of this card involves a tall aluminium fin-stack cooler, which consists of two dense fin-stacks, to which heat drawn from the GPU is fed by a series of copper heat pipes, along their ends.

These fin-stacks are ventilated by large (100-120 mm) fans. The gap between these fans cuts out to the shape of an "X" with the PCIe power connectors being located bang in the middle. From the looks of it, XFX's custom-design PCB for the RX Vega is just 3/5 the length of the card, taking advantage of AMD's compact multi-chip module approach for the "Vega 10" silicon, about the length of the reference R9 Fury PCB. Carbon fiber finish, and a glowing XFX logo on top finishes off the design. XFX and other AMD add-in board (AIB) partners could launch custom-design RX Vega series graphics cards before Holiday 2017. XFX could use this board design for both RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56.

ASUS may have been among the first to unveil its custom-design Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics cards with the ROG Strix Radeon RX Vega 64 (model: ROG-STRIX-RXVEGA64-O8G-GAMING), but kept its clock-speeds under the wraps. The company updated its product page, revealing the clock speeds. Out of the box, the card is clocked at 1298 MHz core, with 1590 MHz boost, and an untouched 945 MHz memory, against AMD-reference clock speeds of "up to 1546 MHz" GPU clock for the air-cooled RX Vega 64. It still pales in comparison to the RX Vega 64 Liquid Edition SKU, which ticks at 1677 MHz core and 1750 MHz boost. The company is yet to update the product page of its ROG Strix RX Vega 56 O8G.

In an interesting turn of events, AMD's latest flagship videocard, RX Vega 64, has seen a gaming performance analysis from fellow publication computerbase.de, which brought about some interesting - and somewhat inspiring findings. In their test system, which was comprised of a 4.3 GHz Intel Core i7-6850K (6 cores), paired with 16 GB of DDR4-3000 memory in quad-channel mode, and Crimson Relive 17.9.3 / GeForce 385.69 drivers, the publication found that the Vega 64 was outperforming the GTX 1080 Ti by upwards of 23%, and that percentage increases to 32% when compared to NVIDIA's GTX 1080. The test wasn't based on the in-game benchmark, so as to avoid specifically-optimized scenarios.

In what might be shocking news to AMD fans, GIGABYTE has stated that there are no current plans to make a custom Radeon RX Vega 64. This might change in the future. But for now, early Vega 64 adopters have no choice but to settle for the reference design or or custom design cards coming out from other vendors. There is still a light hope for the Vega 56 though, since GIGABYTE didn't discard the possibility of releasing a RX Vega 56 Gaming G1. However, the actual number of units is still unclear considering that GIGABYTE is unable to start production immediately due to various technical difficulties surrounding Vega.

Due to the inconsistency in quality of chips that AMD are providing, AIB partners are having a difficult time establishing a standard GPU frequency for their factory-overclocked cards. Furthermore, temperature reporting is broken. The actual GPU temperature is different from the temperature reported by the GPU which can become a big problem for stability in the long run. And to top it all off, there are three different Vega 10 GPU packages floating around. The molded package consists of the GPU and HBM dies sharing the same height, while there's a 40 μm height difference between them in the unmolded package. Although it seems insignificant, this small difference prevents manufacturers from standardizing a single heatsink design to accommodate all three GPU packages.

MSI's "custom" take on AMD's RX Vega graphics card has made an appearance in front of the camera. Dubbed Air Boost edition, this is really a glorified, MSI-branded reference edition Vega, with the same blower-type cooler that AMD seems to have used since forever. It keeps to MSI's Gaming X color scheme (and AMD's own at that) with black and red colors, and breathes custom innovation in the increased breathing space on the I/O port's second slot, since all 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMI connectors have been moved to the first slot. As recent reports peg AMD's AIB's custom cards as coming only towards the second half of October, it seems that for now, this is the most "custom" edition of a Vega graphics card we're going to get.

AMD announced today they are bringing multi-GPU support for RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 with their upcoming Radeon Crimson ReLive Edition 17.9.2 drivers. This CrossFire support is for two GPUs only, so it appears AMD is going on the same path as NVIDIA in not having official support for three or more GPUs, which by itself is a point of discussion. Note that these drivers are not out yet, and this announcement serves to alert the user base to what is coming up.

AMD also provided a (low resolution, we are working on a suitable replacement) internal result chart comparing gaming performance with average FPS as the metric, for two RX Vega 64 cards relative to one. We see very impressive scaling in some games such as Far Cry Primal, Metro Last Night Redux, Sniper Elite 4, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a performance increase of more than 80 percent compared to the single GPU performance. As usual, take these numbers as an indication of how things go since we do not have more details available on the testing methodology at this point either. Lastly, no word yet on what else has changed with these drivers but hopefully AMD have addressed the ongoing bugs with Overwatch at the very least.

Still reeling under supply issues and overpricing, AMD's Radeon RX Vega line of graphics cards may finally be available in custom-design products from the company's AIB (add-in board) partners by mid-October, according to a Hardware.fr report. ASUS was the first to announce custom-design RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 graphics cards under its ROG Strix series, back in August. The cards were, however, nowhere to be found in the markets.

AIB partners will begin announcing their custom-design RX Vega series products in the coming weeks, with retail availability slated for mid-October. Radeon RX Vega 64 is currently available in three AMD-reference design SKUs, the standard reference-design, the premium "silver" air-cooled reference-design, which features a brushed aluminium cooler shroud and LED ornaments; and a more premium AIO liquid-cooled variant with higher clocks. The RX Vega 56 is available in vanilla standard reference-design.

When TechPowerUp released GPU-Z v2.3.0 earlier this week, AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 users who had flashed their graphics cards with the video BIOS of the higher RX Vega 64, discovered that their stream processor count had shot up from 3,584 to higher counts under 4,096. Some of these users felt it more or less explained the performance jump experienced after the BIOS flash. Some users even saw wrong stream processor-counts of their untouched RX Vega 56 reference-design cards. TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.3.0 incorrectly reports the stream processor count of flashed RX Vega 56 graphics cards, and some RX Vega 56 graphics cards out of the box; due to some under-the-hood bug in the way it reads the registers of AMD's new GPUs. We are working on an update to GPU-Z, which will fix this bug.

As we explained in our older article, flashing your RX Vega 56 with the BIOS of RX Vega 64 does not unlock stream processors, and the performance jump can be explained with the increased clock speeds. RX Vega 64 BIOS runs your RX Vega 56 reference-design graphics card at the higher reference clock speeds of 1247 MHz core, 1546 MHz boost, and 945 MHz memory; compared to the 1156/1471/800 MHz reference clocks of the RX Vega 56. This significant increase in clock speed is sufficient to explain the increased performance. Since the TMU count is tied to the number of GCN compute units visible to GPU-Z, the TMU count of certain RX Vega 56 cards is being incorrectly displayed. The upcoming update of GPU-Z addresses this as well.

TechPowerUp today released the latest version of GPU-Z, the graphics subsystem information, diagnostic, and monitoring utility PC enthusiasts swear by. Version 2.3.0 adds support for new GPUs, and comes with several under the hood improvements. To begin with, GPU-Z 2.3.0 adds official support for AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56; Radeon Pro WX 7100 and WX 3100; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Mobile, GeForce MX150, and Quadro M2200. We've added a new VRM efficiency monitoring feature, and VDDC/VDDCI power readings for AMD "Polaris" based graphics cards. Also addressed are bugs with GPU and memory activity monitoring on Radeon RX 500 series; missing or incorrect information on AMD graphics cards running on 17.7.2 drivers; and a rare crash on machines with AMD CrossFire configurations.DOWNLOAD: TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.3.0

The change-log follows.

AMD's RX Vega is more along the lines of an original computing card that was moved over to the consumer segment for gaming workloads than the other way around. Raja Koduri himself has said something along those lines (extrapolating a little more than what he can actually say), and that much can be gleaned with at least a modicum of confidence through AMD's market positioning and overall computing push. In the argument between gamers and miners, Raja Koduri didn't have all that much to say, but for AMD, a sale is a sale, and it would seem that after some tweaking, RX Vega graphics cards can achieve much increased levels of mining efficiency than their Polaris counterparts, further showing how Vega handles compute workloads much better - and more efficiently - than traditional gaming ones.

A ChipHell forum user has done what probably others have already done in relative obscurity: trying (and succeeding) to flash a Vega 64 BIOS onto a Vega 56 graphics card. The result? Well, apparently the shaders won't unlock (at least not according to our very own GPU-Z), but interestingly, performance improves all the same. The lesser amount of shaders on the Vega 56 silicon (3585 Shaders / 224 TMUs / 64 ROPs compared to Vega 64's 4096 / 256 / 64 apparently doesn't hinder performance that much. It appears that the improved clockspeeds of Vega 56 after the BIOS flash do more than enough to offset performance loss from the lesser amount of compute resources available, bumping RX Vega's clock speeds of 1471 MHz core boost clock and 800 MHz HBM2 memory up to Vega 64's 1545 MHz core boost clock and 945 MHz HBM2 clock.

This means that Vega 56 can effectively become a Vega 64 in performance (at least where 3D Mark Fire Strike is concerned), which isn't unheard of in the relationship between AMD's top tier and second-best graphics cards. Now naturally, some Vega 56 samples may even be further overclocked than Vega 64's stock clocks, which means that there is the potential for Vega 56 to have even better performance than Vega 64. The BIOS swap should allow Vega 56 to access higher power states than its stock BIOS allows, which is one of the reasons it can unlock higher core and memory clocks than an overclocked, original BIOS Vega 56 would. However, the fact that a Vega 56 at Vega 64 clocks and a Vega 64 deliver around the same score in benchmarks definitely does raise questions on how well the extra computing resources of Vega 64 are being put to use.

ASUS today introduced the Republic of Gamers (ROG) STRIX Radeon RX Vega 64 O8G graphics card, among its first (and probably the first) custom-design RX Vega 64 to hit the markets (model: ROG-STRIX-RXVEGA64-O8G-GAMING). The card combines a custom-design PCB by ASUS, with the company's latest generation DirectCU III cooling solution the company deploys on its STRIX GTX 1080 Ti graphics card. The cooler features a heat-pipe direct-contact base, from which the heat-pipes pass through two aluminium fin-stacks on their two ends, which are ventilated by a trio of 100 mm spinners. The fans stay off when the GPU is idling. The cooler features RGB multi-color LED lighting along inserts on the cooler shroud, and an ROG logo on the back-plate.

Moving over to the sparsely populated PCB (thanks in part to AMD's HBM2 move), the card draws power from a pair of 8-pin PCIe power connectors, conditioning it for the GPU with a 13-phase VRM. The O8G variant features factory-overclocked speeds that are close to those of the RX Vega 64 Liquid Edition, although ASUS didn't specify them. There's a "non-O8G" variant that sticks to reference clock speeds, boosting to around 1495-1510 MHz. What ASUS is really selling here is better clock sustainability under load, lower noise, and zero idle-noise; besides all the ROG STRIX bells and whistles. The card also drives two 4-pin PWM case fans in-sync with the cards, like most ROG STRIX graphics cards from this generation. ASUS also rolled out the ROG STRIX RX Vega 56, which features the same exact PCB, and sticks to AMD reference speeds. The company didn't reveal pricing.

Overclockers UK staff member Gibbo, who posted the renowned British company's Vega stocks and deals for the red team's graphics cards, has just come out with something that might put our inner buyers to attention. Apparently, AMD has allowed launch prices to be as they currently are ($499 for the Vega 64 and $399 for the Vega 56 in the Americas; £549 for the Vega 64 in the UK) through rebates and other offers to retailers, who, according to Gibbo, couldn't keep those prices at all if that was not the case. According to the Overclockers UK staffer, " (...) the good news is AMD are rebating early launch sales to allow us to hit £449.99 on the stand alone black card which has no games. This is a launch only price which AMD at present are saying will be withdrawn in the near future, when if it happens is unknown, but remember do not be shocked if the price jumps nearly £100 in a few days. This time around there is no early adopter tax, quite the opposite on the stand alone black card, so do be quick."

AMD today has made available for early adopters the Crimson ReLive Edition 17.8.1 drivers. Users of other AMD graphics cards other than the newly released RX Vega 64 beware: these drivers are for exclusive use on those graphics cards.

For those early adopters who have a Vega 64 on their hands already, these drivers are for you. If you're currently on the fence on whether or not to make the plunge to a new red-powered graphics card, make sure to read our own resident W1zzard's reviews of AMD's latest foray into the high performance graphics processing market for both the RX Vega 56 and RX Vega 64 graphics cards. You might be surprised. Download the drivers from the link below.DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Crimson Relive Edition Radeon RX Vega Series Driver​

It seems that AMD's RX Vega lineup won't be too far away from the norm, it seems. Street knowledge almost always says that it's the runner-up to the highest performing graphics card that is the more interesting in a price-performance ratio, and it seems that AMD knows this as well. Steve Burke from Gamer's Nexus has reported on AMD's NDA dates and the company's indications to reviewers on changing up the game leading up to reviews: they're asking that publications focus on the Vega 56 ahead of the halo Vega 64.

This might be somewhat bad news for those who wanted to see the Vega 64 compete in favorable terms with the GTX 1080; this decision by AMD is obviously geared towards making the best impact on the company's product line and image. The fact that AMD can offer a more compelling argument over the Vega 64 means that Vega 56 will probably have an easier battle in the $400 camp (if you can find it at those prices on launch, that is.)

The folks at Techgage have already put out some unboxing pictures on AMD's RX Vega 64 review sample. There's not much more new information here - however, it's an opportunity to see how lavish AMD has become with their review sampling. Gone are the times of cardboard boxes, it seems. AMD may be spending more on packaging and presentation for the review samples than for actual R&D on the graphics cards (I kid, obviously.)

EK Water Blocks, the Slovenia-based premium computer liquid cooling gear manufacturer has proven its market leadership once again by presenting Full Cover water blocks for the long awaited AMD Radeon Vega architecture based high-end graphics cards. Customers will be able to transform their GPU into a stunningly beautiful single slot graphics card and the water cooling block will allow it to reach higher frequencies, thus providing more performance during gaming or other GPU intense tasks.

EK-FC Radeon Vega
This water block directly cools the GPU, HBM2 memory, and VRM (voltage regulation module) as water flows directly over these critical areas thus allowing the graphics card and it's VRM to remain stable under high overclocks. EK-FC Radeon Vega water block features a central inlet split-flow cooling engine design for best possible cooling performance, which also works flawlessly with reversed water flow without adversely affecting the cooling performance. This kind of efficient cooling will allow your high-end graphics card to reach higher boost clocks, thus providing more performance during gaming or other GPU intense tasks. Moreover, such design offers great hydraulic performance allowing this product to be used in liquid cooling systems using weaker water pumps.

Remember that awesome Vega Holocube that made its way around the web some time ago? How it looked like a über-cool tachometer of sorts for GPU utilization. Well, as you might have noticed, AMD's RX Vega pricing is extremely competitive in regards to the technology they offer on-board; this, coupled with AMD's play for a higher price-performance ratio than the competition, means that AMD is left with less wiggle room for bundling this kind of extras with their RX Vega graphics cards.

However, AMD has released a statement, which while confirming the sad news of no Holocube bundling or availability to accompany RX Vega's launch come August, leaves the door open for a later-in-time launch. The statement reads "AMD appreciates the excitement and curiosity surrounding the Radeon Holocube. The Radeon Holocube was developed as a prototype and at this time, it is one of very few that exist in the world. The Holocube will not be shipping with Radeon RX Vega in August." You can check some videos of the Holocube in action after the break.

It has been a huge weekend of product announcements and launches from AMD, which expanded not just its client computing CPU lineup on both ends, but also expanded its Radeon graphics cards family with both client- and professional-segment graphics cards. This article provides a brief summary of everything AMD launched or announced today, with their possible market-availability dates.

The first custom AIB partner graphics card that we have a chance to look at is none other than ASUS' ROG Strix. AS usual, everything about this particular offering from ASUS screams customization - from the purpose-built PCB and power delivery, to the oversized, triple-slot cooling design with three fans, and premium backplate design for better heat dissipation; all of these should greatly improve temps over Vega's reference design with better acoustics, at the same time. As with almost all AIB partner offerings, there will be two offerings based on this model, differing only in regards to out-of-box clock speeds.

ASUS' latest DirectCU III cooling system makes an appearance, combining Super Alloy Power II components and their Auto Extreme manufacturing technology. Max contact GPU technology makes its way here, as does FanConnect II, which provides hybrid-controlled fan headers and a comprehensive set of tuning options with GPU Tweak II to optimize system cooling and performance even further. As with most ASUS ROG products nowadays, the ROG Strix Vega 64 graphics card will feature support for ASUS AURA RGB LED. Display outputs include 2x HDMI (for VR systems), 2x DisplayPort and 1x DVI. No pricing was announced at time of writing, though you should count on this offering being near the top pricing bracket between AIB cards.