AMD Radeon RX Vega caught hiding in plain sight

An eye-catching entry in the TechPowerUp GPU database caught our attention. The data shows the intimate details of none other than the AMD Radeon RX Vega, a card which, just a couple of days ago, AMD had said it would be launched sometime this quarter. If you remember, just last month we'd reported an AMD official saying the launch was “just around the corner”.

It seems it may be closer than you'd think. According to the database, the card has a release date of today (28th April 2017).

In addition to the release date, the database describes the Radeon RX Vega as having the following features: a 1 GHz core GPU clock, with a 1.2 GHz boost clock, and 8 GB of HBM2 memory running at 1 GHz (2 GHz effective). The Vega seems to carry a dual memory controller, doubling the memory bus width to 2048-bit, when compared to first generation HBM. The graphics engine contains 4096 shader units, as we'd already reported a month ago. It counts 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs and 64 compute units. The total computing power of Vega is 9.8 Tflops, shy of the GTX 1080 Ti's 10.6 Tflops.

In terms of power consumption, it's very much what you'd expect from a high-end card, but just enough so you don't splurge on a new power supply: 225W, which translates to one 6-pin + one 8-pin PEG connectors. The site further describes the card as having 267 mm in length in a dual-slot configuration.

As for performance, the GPU Database has little to offer that will be considered definitive, as a flagship card like Vega must be thoroughly measured, well beyond “1080p” games performance. If the information contained on the site is accurate, we would recommend that AMD fans wait with bated breath until full benchmarks are available because, according to TPU, AMD's best effort is lagging behind Nvidia's (non-Ti) GTX 1080 and is considerably slower than a GTX 1080 Ti, in 1080p gaming. It's been our experience that AMD fares better when you up the resolution and level the playing field. For a card of this caliber, 1080p is indeed not the resolution you'll be playing at.

KitGuru Says: We're more than happy to catch as much info on the Vega as we possibly can. The performance listed by TPU, however, is a little eyebrow-raising, to say the least. Let's wait for real-world benchmarks…

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