AMD Vega Frontier Edition Now Available For Pre-Order With $999 Price Tag
AMD's first graphics card to feature the Vega GPU architecture, the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, is now available for pre-order.
We first heard that AMD was readying the Vega GPU back at CES, where the company revealed that a new graphics architecture was on the way. We were later given more juicy details about the new GPU when AMD announced the Vega Frontier Edition, which is aimed at users leveraging AI, creative, and deep learning applications. Now, the highly anticipated graphics card is finally available.
To refresh your memory, the AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition features 64 Next-Generation Compute Units (nCUs) for a total for 4,096 stream processors and supports double-rate 16-bit math, which accelerates image/video processing, ray tracing, and AI computations.
The 16GB of High-Bandwidth Cache (HBC) memory (which is really just AMD’s marketing slang for HBM2) sits on a 2048-bit memory interface. It can be used to cache external memory and storage devices, giving the Vega Frontier Edition the ability to access up to 256TB (yes, TB) of virtual memory.
AMD had previously estimated that the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card could attain up to 12.5 TFLOPs in FP32 single-precision compute performance, but the company has upped the ante with the card’s retail launch, claiming that it can achieve up to 13.1 TFLOPs. The same goes for FP16 compute performance, which was previously estimated at 25 TFLOPs and now sits at up to 26.2 TFLOPs.
The AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition comes in two varieties: air cooled or liquid cooled. The air-cooled version has a max TDP of 300W, whereas the liquid-cooled model will have a considerably higher ceiling with 375W. Both sport two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, giving away the GPU’s thirst for a decidedly high amount of power. For display output, there are three DisplayPort 1.4 interfaces and an HDMI 2.0 port.
The air-cooled version of the Vega Frontier Edition is available for preorder now for $999 from Newegg, with a release date of July 1. The water-cooled version is slated to arrive in Q3 2017 with an MSRP of $1,499.
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| Product | AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition 100-506061 (Air-Cooled) |
|---|---|
| Stream Processors | 4,096 |
| Memory | 16GB HBC (HBM2) 2,048-Bit |
| Virtual Memory | Up to 275TB |
| Display Output | - DisplayPort 1.4 x3- HDMI 2.0 |
| TDP | 300W |
| Power Connectors | 8-pin (6+2-pin) x2 |
| FP32 Performance | Up to 13.1 TFLOPs |
| FP16 Performance | Up to 26.2 TFLOPs |
| MSRP | $999 |
Derek Forrest was a contributing freelance writer for Tom's Hardware. He covered hardware news and reviews, focusing on gaming desktops and laptops.
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Shotta06 Will this be better than the 1080ti by it's Specs ? 16GB Mem should be amazingly good...Reply -
Danilushka Anyone know if the water cooled version is full AIO or just a water block for a custom loop? I hope the latter, since I do my own loops.Reply -
Altherix Reply
Benchmarks will tell that story, but this isn't aimed at gaming so I wouldn't hold your breath. Definitely don't pre order until benches get released as this smells of early adopter tax.19871534 said:Will this be better than the 1080ti by it's Specs ? 16GB Mem should be amazingly good...
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bloodroses Reply19871534 said:Will this be better than the 1080ti by it's Specs ? 16GB Mem should be amazingly good...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vega-frontier-edition-gpu,34427.html
If you're looking at gaming, this card is for a completely different market so it really can't be compared. Last I heard, we won't hear much about Vega gaming cards until sometime near the end of July. -
Kenneth Barker I am not sure why people are saying that the Vega Frontier card is not for gaming... It is nearly 100% marketed towards the Titan Xp crowd. Which is a combination Gaming/workstation card. That is what this is. I will probably get slammed for saying it is a "gaming card" is the same right as the Titan because AMD fans are very super protective, but the marketing of this card is 100% consumer/gamer who does prof. work on the side. The colors, the metal shrouds, the fancy looks, the ads, the marketing all screams Titan competitor. Nvidia also claims that the Titan is not a gaming card btw... even though it is used for gaming primarily. I expect this to be little to no different. Even the pricing of the air cooled version is competitive with the Titan Xp. The water cooled "gold" card is a bit ridiculous though... much better to get the air cooled FE card, and spend the $600 saved between the two on a complete custom water cooled loop with huge rads and blocks for the CPU and GPU with the $600. That kind of money will get you a pretty awesome custom loop.Reply
This is the Vega answer to the Titan Xp. It will do gaming, and it will do professional apps.
There have already been benches released/leaked on both the gaming and professional performance.
The Vega FE is slower than a 1080Ti for gaming, but faster than a 1080.
The Vega FE seems to be beating the Titan Xp in professional application use though. So... its a trade off. If you care more about professional work performance, and less about gaming performance, than the Vega FE is for you. -
anbello262 This is way too expensive and not efficient enough to be of good use to cryptocurrency mining, I believe.Reply -
Lucky_SLS just to compare, the titan xp costs $1500 and has a FP32 of 11.3TFLOPs ? not bad i guess, except for the power consumption.Reply
i think we will see a similar card to the 1080ti which will be priced around $600 ? -
KD_Gaming @Angelo, you believe? If your commenting on something you have no 1st person knowledge of.. Why make a statement at all, rather you should maybe ask as a question.Reply
And to answer that question, it very well may return a good profit but obviously it has more upfront cost to pay off first. I DON'T know of a single new card that isn't profitable... Just some are a bit slower at it.