AMD paperlaunches its Radeon RX Vega lineup, promises GTX 1080-like performance

So AMD's Vega launch party at SIGGRAPH was quite a bummer, not only was it a paperlaunch but the performance level is pretty much in-line with the Frontier Edition. There are no third-party benchmark results until August 14 but the performance results AMD presented were not very promising.

Here's the base pricing:

Radeon RX Vega 56: $399

Radeon RX Vega 64: $499

The Radeon RX Vega 64 model has 64 NCUs, 4096 stream processors, a 1247MHz base clock, 1546MHz Boost, 8GB HBM2, 484GB/s memory bandwith, peak SP performance of 12.66 teraflop, and peak half-precision performance of 25.3 teraflops. The RX Vega 56 is a cut-down version with 56 NCUs, 3584 stream processors, 1156MHz base clock and 1471MHz Boost. From what we hear, the RX Vega 56 has a 210W TDP, the RX Vega 64 has a 295W TDP and the higher-clocked liquid cooled version takes it all the way to 345W. The memory clockspeed of the "64" cards is 945MHz, while the "56" is limited to 800MHz.

Then there will also be special Radeon Packs, these are more expensive hardware and gaming bundles. The Limited Edition Vega and the liquid cooled version will exclusively be offered in these packs. The Radeon Packs include a $200 discount for the 34" Samsung CF791 curved ultrawide FreeSync monitor, and a $100 discount on Ryzen 7 1700X or 1800X processors in combination with select X370 motherboards. In most regions, the bundle will also include Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Prey. The offer varies from region to region.



Here's the pricing:

Radeon Red Pack – Radeon RX Vega 56, an air-cooled card priced at $499.

Radeon Black Pack – Radeon RX Vega 64, an air-cooled card priced at $599.

Radeon Aqua Pack – Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition, the most powerful of the Radeon RX Vega graphics cards, priced at $699.

So how will it perform? We'll have to wait another two weeks for third-party reviews but even AMD is saying the Radeon RX Vega 64 card "will trade blows" with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. AMD is pushing minimum framerates and "smoothness" as it believes it has a competitive advantage in that area. But in terms of raw performance, Vega doesn't seem a match for NVIDIA's Pascal. And that is despite Vega's much higher power consumption.