Skip to main content

AMD’s ultra-high-end Vega GPUs set for release in the first half of 2017

AMD’s big release in 2016 has been its line of RX series graphics cards, which despite falling far short of Nvidia’s flagship cards when it comes to performance, offer tremendous bang for your buck. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a plan for those with deeper pockets and desires for even greater visual fidelity. It’s been confirmed that Vega, its ultra-high-end graphics processor (GPU), will be released in the first half of 2017.

The new target for release is a delay from the speculative October 2016 date that has been floated around in recent months. While that rumor did originate from AMD staffers, it’s now been put to bed, with the company stating for the record that we can expect Vega sometime between January and June 2017.

Recommended Videos

It could be that Vega is designed as the second in a two-punch combination from AMD, with its reportedly powerful Zen CPU possibly showing up in late 2016 or early 2017, but there’s been no word on any kind of joint launch or promotion as of yet.

It wouldn’t be a bad plan, as releasing the two new technologies in the same general time frame could easily lead to a new range of AMD-only systems, as well as gamers and enthusiasts doing two big upgrades to their rigs in one go, rather than staggered, singular upgrades.

As the true successor to AMD’s Fiji lineup cards that comprised the Fury range, Vega should offer serious performance and much better efficiency regardless of when it arrives. Dropping down to the 14nm FinFET design from GlobalFoundries will make AMD’s hardware architecturally more advanced than Nvidia’s Pascal lineup, which utilized 16nm FinFET transistors.

It will also boast High Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2), which should offer huge bandwidth improvements over just about any graphics line available right now.

The question from Nvidia’s side of things will be whether it can bring out the 1080Ti in time to compete directly. While price-wise it’s likely to be similar to the Titan X — in that it’s out of range for most people’s budgets — AMD’s Vega cards won’t be cheap either.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…
AMD’s two new GPUs significantly undercut Nvidia
AMD's Scott Herkalman presenting the RX 7800 XT graphics card.

AMD has just unveiled two new graphics cards aimed at gamers -- the Radeon RX 7800 XT and the RX 7700 XT. Set to rival some of the best graphics cards in this generation, the two GPUs are a way to bridge the gap in AMD's modest RDNA 3 lineup. AMD teases that both cards are suited for 1440p gaming, which could help them compete in the mainstream gaming market.

The prices are what stand out: the RX 7800 XT starts at $500, while the RX 7700 XT goes for $450. That significantly undercuts Nvidia's RTX 4070 at $600, though the RX 7700 XT is more expensive than the RTX 4060 Ti at $450.  Nvidia could really use some competition, so let's hope that AMD's new GPUs will be powerful enough to make a dent in Nvidia's market domination.

Read more
The first performance numbers for AMD’s anticipated new GPUs leak out
Two AMD Radeon RX 7000 graphics cards on a pink surface.

AMD has two new GPUs expected to launch as part of the RX 7000 series, and now we've got our first look at some early possible benchmarks for these new cards.

The alleged 3DMark performance scores are for the Radeon RX 7700 and RX 7800 graphics cards were recently published online by Twitter user @All_The_Watts. 

Read more
AMD might crush Nvidia with its laptop GPUs — but it’s silent on the desktop front
A woman sits by a desk and plays a game on a laptop equipped with an AMD processor.

AMD's graphics card lineup for laptops is on the way, and by the sound of it, it's shaping up to be pretty exciting -- and it's already bigger than Team Red's current desktop range.

According to a recent leak, AMD may even be able to rival Nvidia's best desktop GPUs with its Navi 32 cards. But where are the desktop equivalents?

Read more