AMD Vega hits milestone, not coming soon though

Although cards from AMD's new Polaris line up have yet to even hit store shelves, AMD is already looking to the future. Its next-generation graphics cards, currently codenamed Vega, have just hit a new milestone, according to senior VP and chief architect at AMD, Raja Koduri, but he did warn we won't see the cards for some time.

In Shanghai this week…In Vega mode!

— Raja Koduri (@GFXChipTweeter) June 22, 2016

While Polaris cards like the upcoming RX 480 are seemingly designed to help lower the entry level costs for virtual reality and to make high-end, gaming hardware much more affordable for consumers, Vega is more traditional. Sporting the hard-to-get-hold-of high bandwidth memory two (HBM2), Vega could potentially steal back the performance crown from Nvidia.

Design team is thrilled with your response. Celebrated a milestone with the team. Long way to go before you see it pic.twitter.com/duQVBBGict

— Raja Koduri (@GFXChipTweeter) June 23, 2016

Specifications other than the use of HBM2 are almost non existent, though we have seen some speculation that it could feature 4,096 graphics core next stream processors, though that is very much unconfirmed.

Incredibly proud of our gpu design team here in shanghai that delivered polaris family and next Vega pic.twitter.com/ejvFJW1DoY

— Raja Koduri (@GFXChipTweeter) June 23, 2016

What we do know though, thanks to Koduri, is that Vega's development is progressing well. In a series of tweets he praised the team behind its design, though did warn that it would be a “long way to go before you see,” their efforts in a real product.

Considering the expected release for the design is sometime in 2017, it will need to be powerful, as by then we'll be looking at Nvidia having a GTX 1080Ti and probably this generation's Titan too.

We may get our first look at Vega at CES 2017, so although it's still a “long way,” off, we might at least get an idea of what Vega is like within the next six months.

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KitGuru Says: How do you guys feel about AMD targeting mid-range with the RX series and holding off on Vega? Do you think that was a smart move?

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