AMD Radeon RX VEGA to Launch at SIGGRAPH 2017

[HKZeroFive]

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AMD at its Computex 2017 event announced that you may have to wait a lot longer for the consumer graphics variant of its "Vega" architecture. The Radeon RX Vega, the consumer graphics product based on the architecture, will launch at SIGGRAPH 2017, that's 30th July thru 3rd August. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, on the other hand, will launch by late-June, 2017. This card has a full-featured "Vega 10" silicon, and will be overpriced. We're not exactly sure who its target audience is, but it could mostly be enthusiasts wanting to try out "Vega" or for software/game-developers to begin optimizing their games for "Vega."

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First off, the previously announced Vega Frontier Edition card will be available on June 27th, just making AMD’s previous H2’17 commitment for Vega. The Frontier Edition is AMD’s first batch of Vega-based cards, and is being marketed specifically towards early adopters in the professional segment. A price has not been announced, but expect it to be high.

 

Finally, in the piece of news that pretty much everyone has been on the edge of their seats for, AMD has finally announced a date where they’ll announce the consumer-oriented Radeon RX Vega. The mythical card’s launch will be taking place at SIGGRAPH this year, the Association for Computing Machinery’s annual graphics conference. SIGGRAPH is an interesting choice for a venue, as it’s not a consumer event (as opposed to say E3 or IFA), but AMD is no stranger to the show, having launched their Radeon WX professional products there last year. SIGGRAPH runs from July 30th to August 3rd, so it’s almost exactly 2 months out.

 

The presentation for Vega was... pretty bad to be perfectly honest. They used two Vega cards at 4K in Prey when a GTX 1080Ti can get about 88FPS with high minimums, yet it's rather clear that the game was exhibiting a large amount of tearing... could be because they're getting a higher framerate than the monitor can actually output in terms of refresh rate but AMD using two cards is a bit worrying. The fact that they're rather conservative on specs and pricing is concerning to say the least... so if there's a time to lower your expectations, this is the right time IMO. I have my doubts... I hope I'm wrong.

 

Sources:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/11481/amd-vega-updates-vega-frontier-edition-available-june-27th-vega-rx-to-be-launched-at-siggraph-at-end-of-july

https://www.techpowerup.com/233887/amd-radeon-rx-vega-to-launch-at-siggraph-2017-frontier-within-a-month

[JJVGaming]

Dissapointed, really. AMDs obsession of using HBM2 on gaming PCs is really digging them a hole in the high end market of GPUs. The VEGA delays basically prompted everyone to buy 1070s/1080s/1080ti and when VEGA actually comes to the market, VOLTA well come out soon which will most likely offer 20% better performance than top end single GPU VEGA, again it will gtx 1070 vs fury x all over again. Sucks that many people expected VEGA to launch right after Polaris, and it has already been a years since Polaris was announced

[Taf the Ghost]

Some of the conjecture that the new driver architecture that Raja mentioned is eating up a lot of resources. There might also have still been issues with HBM2 availability.

 

Though that whole 16k units at launch might actually be true. There's not going to be a huge market for the Frontier Edition.

[Taf the Ghost]

2 minutes ago, JJVGaming said:

Dissapointed, really. AMDs obsession of using HBM2 on gaming PCs is really digging them a hole in the high end market of GPUs. The VEGA delays basically prompted everyone to buy 1070s/1080s/1080ti and when VEGA actually comes to the market, VOLTA well come out soon which will most likely offer 20% better performance than top end single GPU VEGA, again it will gtx 1070 vs fury x all over again.

AMD committed to HBM a while ago, the supply issues were, I'm sure, not something they expected. Though it seems like Vega is actually only going to be maybe 2 months late.

[Grinners]

"VOLTA well come out soon which will most likely offer 20% better performance than top end single GPU VEGA"

 

I suspect that vega won't touch the 1080ti... and as such believe that volta will be far more than 20% ahead

 

Need more competition in the top echelon otherwise Nvidia have no reason to push the limits...

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

AMD has finally announced a date where they’ll announce

Um? LOL? Announcing an announcement in true AMD style . 

[SteveGrabowski0]

So Vega might match a GTX 1080 fourteen months later. 

[The Sloth]

11 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

So Vega might match a GTX 1080 fourteen months later. 

for the right price, that's not bad, the gtx 1070 is a power efferent 980ti. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, nerdslayer1 said:

for the right price, that's not bad, the gtx 1070 is a power efferent 980ti. 

and freesync too

[Techicolors]

so NVIDIA will delay Volta as long as Vega is a no-show? 

[Blake]

29 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Um? LOL? Announcing an announcement in true AMD style . 

Except the slide says LAUNCH SIGGRAPH 2017... So, it'll launch then, can't really say if it will be at volume or paper. Considering Vega FE is launching on the 27th of June (or at least I remeber somthing offical showing that), i'd say more then likely not a paper launch.

 

I'd say I don't like it, but if we get another 290x but without the shitty stock cooler, I'm fine with it, heck Im still rocking 2x 290 tri-x, all these years later, and I picked them up at launch.

[zMeul]

50 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

the game was exhibiting a large amount of tearing... could be because they're getting a higher framerate than the monitor can actually output in terms of refresh rate

you will get tearing also when the FPS dips below the display's refresh rate

[Curufinwe_wins]

28 minutes ago, zMeul said:

you will get tearing also when the FPS dips below the display's refresh rate

either way not a good comparison against the single 1080ti

 

Pretty disappointing imho

[captain cactus]

RTG marketing is failing hard here. Ironic, since AMD's Ryzen team is kicking all kinds of ass in the CPU department, you'd think some of that marketing drips down into RTG.

 

Welp, time to advice people to not wait for Vega. Get a 10xx now, enjoy the performance because AMD isn't going to give it to you.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Blake said:

I'm fine with it, heck Im still rocking 2x 290 tri-x, all these years later, and I picked them up at launch.

I'm running 2x 290X with EKWB blocks, ref cards . Still rather good today but I have been hitting that 4GB wall recently cos my monitor native res is 2560x1600.

[Polakki]

2x vega? Where´s fpr counter? What are we waiting for?... not good...

[Dylanc1500]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I'm running 2x 290X with EKWB blocks, ref cards . Still rather good today but I have been hitting that 4GB wall recently cos my monitor native res is 2560x1600.

Glad I'm not the only one that likes that resolution. What monitor are you running if you don't mind me asking?

[leadeater]

Just now, Dylanc1500 said:

Glad I'm not the only one that likes that resolution. What monitor are you running if you don't mind me asking?

Dell U3014, damn nice monitor .

[Dylanc1500]

11 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Dell U3014, damn nice monitor .

Very much so, definitely love me a good Dell monitor, they are making some fantastic displays. I'm using a NEC PA-302W-SV. 30" seems to be quite common with that resolution.

[Daiyus]

Hmm. While I'm desperately trying to stay fairly positive about VEGA it doesn't bode well that they used two and didn't display any performance metrics; it just doesn't scream "confidence" to me.

 

That said, if they can offer a SKU that matches a GTX 1070 in performance with a price similar or lower I'll still probably get one. Just because VEGA won't beat an £600- £800 (depending on model) offering from Nvidia doesn't mean the lower SKU's won't be worth looking at, after all I don't really need more power than that right now, and you never know how these things will perform until they're benched by third parties; we could be surprised yet.

Edited May 31, 2017 by Daiyus
Pricing correction thanks to JediFragger.

[Humbug]

two possible reasons for the delay

 

-AMD needs more time to optimize Rx Vega gaming drivers due to it being such a radical new design.

-Due to HBM 2.0 supply issues they know they can only sell a small quantity of GPUs so they may as well focus on the expensive high margin vega frontier edition to maximise $$

[JediFragger]

7 minutes ago, Daiyus said:

Just because VEGA won't beat an £800 offering from Nvidia

 

£600;

 

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/kfa2-geforce-gtx-1080ti-reference-blower-11264mb-gddr5x-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-09l-kf.html

[JediFragger]

5 minutes ago, Humbug said:

so they may as well focus on the expensive high margin vega frontier edition to maximise $$

 

Yup, but as soon as it's launched people are going to benchmark it to death and at least we'll get some solid numbers   (whether AMD moan about it or not, we'll take it as a rough guide to performance)

[Taf the Ghost]

39 minutes ago, Humbug said:

two possible reasons for the delay

 

-AMD needs more time to optimize Rx Vega gaming drivers due to it being such a radical new design.

-Due to HBM 2.0 supply issues they know they can only sell a small quantity of GPUs so they may as well focus on the expensive high margin vega frontier edition to maximise $$

It's probably both. Raja mentioned the driver issues in the AMA, and we know the HBM2 issues as well. Considering the hype going in (which is a little strange, as the AMD Hype machine seems to have been self-generated on Vega rather than paid for, though maybe since Ryzen over-performed, that's got something to do with it), it's far better to get the drivers in a better state and enough supply.  The RX480/580s are sold out almost everywhere, so it's not exactly like AMD isn't moving product. (Granted, that's for other reasons than gaming.)

 

What would, to AMD, be a worse scenario is drivers in a rough state and minimal supply. So the early benchmarks are all not great and no one can really buy the card.  Bad situation all around.  Though I do have to note, it really seems like Paid Shills are out in force.  I know fanboys are real, but I'm getting really curious to look into Intel's Financial Reports on their advertising.  WAY too many people that are "concerned" about Vega.

[dip_991]

Though the guys who have been patiently waiting for Vega might end up buying the Nvidia 10 series cards. Practically speaking before we get the custom cooled cards i.e evga, asus, gigabyte etc (taking in mind the HBM2 availability) guys will start looking forward for volta announcement or even leaks, and all VEGA hype will die. its poor planning on AMD's side.