Skip to main content

AMD’s Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is now available for pre-order

Updated: We added pre-order information and confirmed the rumored pricing for the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. 

After what seemed like a long wait for Radeon fans, AMD finally announced the first graphics card based on the Vega architecture. The card, called the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition, is designed for “AI, creatives, and science pioneers.” In other words, it is not a card built for PC gaming.

Recommended Videos

And now, as PCPer reports, the cards are available for pre-order at the expectedly high price of $1,200 for the air-cooled model and $1,800 for the liquid-cooled model. The cards are expected to ship on July 3.

The cards’ non-game focus may disappoint some enthusiasts, but it will interest others. The numbers put forth by AMD are impressive. AMD says the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition will have 64 “next-generation compute units,” which will produce 13 teraflops of peak single-precision 32-bit compute performance. By contrast, the Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti offers 11.3TFLOPs, and the Nvidia Titan Xp quotes 12TFLOPs. AMD’s calling its Radeon Vega Frontier Edition the “fastest graphics card on the planet.”

The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition also boasts an impressive 16GB high-bandwidth cache, provided by High Bandwidth Memory 2 technology, which is capable of moving up to 480 gigabytes of data each second (GB/s).

Note the name. Although built using High Bandwidth Memory 2, AMD is calling this a cache instead of memory or video RAM, as is typical. That is related to how AMD is pitching the Vega architecture. The company is making a big deal of its “revolutionary memory engine,” which AMD says can access terabytes of memory.  That memory is not part of the GPU or video card itself but instead can be attached as its system builders desire.

This is touted as one of Vega’s key advantages, particularly in the enterprise and supercomputing arenas, since it theoretically grants quick access to huge amounts of data, with some customization possible.

However, despite the name change, we think enthusiasts can fairly interpret the 16GB HBC as the equivalent to video memory, which is still very impressive. The Nvidia GTX Titan Xp has 12GB of video memory, though the Titan’s memory is quicker, with a peak throughput of 548GB/s.

AMD also thinks highly of its “new compute engine,” which the company is abbreviating as NCU. The company says it enables the use of “double packed math” to double throughput by using 16-bit data, if it’s appropriate for the workload. Doing that essentially doubles potential throughput to 26TFLOPs. But don’t get too excited; this is a feature meant for very specific uses and probably won’t have any immediate impact on games or other everyday applications.

AMD provided several benchmarks to prove Vega’s potential. AMD says the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is up to 27 percent quicker than Nvidia’s Titan Xp in Catia, a 3D CAD program. In Solidworks, another 3D CAD program, Vega’s lead jumps to 70 percent. Of course, these are internal benchmarks from AMD itself — real-world results won’t be available until the hardware is released.

Gamers may be disappointed to hear that the first Vega card will focus on enterprise, rather than PC gaming. That’s understandable, as AMD fans have been waiting a long, long time.

Air-cooled:  

Liquid-cooled:  

Matthew S. Smith
Matthew S. Smith is the former Lead Editor, Reviews at Digital Trends. He previously guided the Products Team, which dives…
AMD’s RX 9070 XT could soon cost a lot more than it does now
An Asus RX 9070 XT TUF GPU.

After the way Nvidia's RTX 50-series ended up being called a "paper launch," many breathed a sigh of relief when AMD's RX 9000 series appeared on the shelves in much larger quantities. However, once this initial shipment is sold, AMD could face the same problem as the rest of the best graphics cards: Price hikes, price hikes everywhere.

The cards officially hit the shelves yesterday, and many were spotted far above the recommended list price (MSRP), with some overclocked models priced at up to $250 more than the $600 starting price. However, AMD spoke several times about working with its partners to ensure wide availability at MSRP, and indeed, many retailers had some models up for sale. Those MSRP cards were only around for a short time, though, and they might never come back, according to retailers.

Read more
An AMD RX 9060 XT with 16GB would ruin Nvidia’s second-hand market
Several AMD RX 9000 series graphics cards.

I know, I know we're all hopped up about the RX 9070 XT and 9070 launch -- I know I am. But looking beyond the potential big win AMD is on for with its first RDNA4 graphics cards, I'm also particularly excited about the potential for the rumored 9060 XT. Not because it'll be cheaper again -- it will be -- but because it might have up to 16GB of VRAM. That's going to wreck Nvidia's long-term second-hand card market, which could have a much greater impact on AMD's market share over the long term.

It's all just rumors for now, and some of my colleagues are much less excited by this than I am, but I think there's some real potential here for this little card to be a game changer.
Hitting the VRAM wall
Video memory, or VRAM, has been a front-and centre feature of graphics card spec sheets for generations, but it's started to matter a lot more in recent years. While flagship graphics cards have exploded in their VRAM quantities, with the 5090 now offering 32GB, most mainstream cards have been getting by with less. It was only a couple of generations ago that the flagship RTX 3080 only had 10GB of VRAM, and outside of the top few models, you'll still see 12GB, 10GB, or even 8GB.

Read more
AMD RX 9060 XT might not be the Nvidia-beating GPU we first thought
The RX 7600 XT graphics card on a pink background.

A new leak tells me that AMD's RX 9060 XT may repeat the same mistake as the RX 7600 XT, all the while missing out on a chance to win against rival Nvidia. While AMD's RX 9060 XT may not compete against some of the best graphics cards, it's going to be a mainstream card, which is great news for gamers. The downside, as is often the case, might lie in VRAM.

As shown in this listing filed with the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC), Acer has just registered several new trademarks for its upcoming GPUs. This includes the Acer Predator Bifrost RX 9060 XT OC in two variants: One with 8GB VRAM and one with 16GB.

Read more