There is still not much known regarding the Vega graphics processing unit architecture, which AMD unveiled at CES 2017 in January. However, recently leaked specifications claim that the next-generation graphics cards, which will be named the AMD Radeon RX Vega, will be able to challenge Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
What Is The AMD Radeon RX Vega?
AMD made massive changes to the architecture of its GPUs to be able to develop the Radeon RX Vega, which is expected to be released within the second quarter. Rumors, however, claim that the release of the GPUs will be nearer the end of the quarter, so excited users should expect to wait until the middle of June or later.
There is said to be a Vega 10 and a Vega 11, with the Vega 10 being the more powerful of the two versions and the Vega 11 being the low-end variation.
AMD Radeon RX Vega Details
According to leaked slides, the specifications of the Vega are as follows:
• 14nm GFX9 GPU
• 4096 stream processors
• 64 NCUs
• 2048-bit memory bus
• 16 GB HBM2
• PCIe Gen 3 x 16
• 512 GB/s bandwidth
• 225W TPD
The AMD Radeon RX Vega also comes with two features named Draw Stream Binning Rasterizer and Primitive Shader, which work together to determine the pixels that will not be seen in a frame, saving the need to do unnecessary calculations and using up processing time for these pixels.
Scott Herkelman, the VP and general manager of Gaming for AMD, confirmed that the add-in-board partners of the company will be able to configure the Radeon RX Vega GPUs with various memory capacities. The examples that Herkelman gave were 8 GB and 4 GB memory capacities through the usage of HBM stacks with different densities.
The HBM2 stacks in the AMD Radeon RX Vega offers double the bandwidth with the aforementioned 8 GB maximum capacity compared with AMD's HBM technology. This has the advantage of having a wider bus compared with the narrow bus of GPUs using GDDR5 memory such as those of Nvidia.
Herkelman also confirmed that the Radeon RX Vega GPUs will be coming to notebooks in some manner, though not much else is known. Perhaps it will be the Vega 11 with a single HBM2 stack that will be included in high performance notebooks for gaming and professional purposes.
The features and specifications of the Radeon RX Vega will make video games look great, but developers will need to optimize their titles to function with AMD's new technology. This is why the company has teamed up with Bethesda and other major video game developers to create titles that utilize AMD's Vulkan API, which was designed as an alternative for DirectX 12.
AMD Radeon RX Vega vs. Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
The GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, which is described as the most powerful Ti card ever released by Nvidia, comes with a price tag of $699.99.
Comparing the Radeon RX Vega with the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti could not be fairly made at this time without knowing the price tag of AMD's latest GPU. However, from its rumored and leaked details, the Radeon RX Vega will indeed be a worthy challenger to the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti.
AMD will be releasing more information about the Radeon RX Vega as its release date draws even nearer.
