Skip to main content

MSI employee confirms concerns over high TDP of AMD Vega graphics cards

As hyped as many people are for AMD’s Vega graphics cards, MSI’s marketing director may dampen that excitement a little by hinting that there are concerns about how much power they may actually draw. However, he did claim that MSI was working on it, so we may see a few different versions with varied power requirements.

While we have been told repeatedly by AMD that its upcoming Vega line of graphics cards were real top-tier parts, easily able to square off with Nvidia’s high-end graphics cards, power draw is not something we have heard much about. As Hexus points out, one source recently suggested it could be as much as 375W for the water-cooled Vega Frontier Edition card, but that has not been confirmed.

Recommended Videos

However, if MSI’s marketing director’s statements are anything to go by, clearly Vega draws more than people would normally expect of a graphics card. Considering Nvidia’s Titan XP pulls as much as 250W, Vega must need a lot of juice to function correctly.

Videocardz translated the original quote from the MSI employee who posted on the Tweakers forums. They said: “I’ve seen the specs of Vega RX. It needs a damn lot of power. We’re working on it, which is a start so launch is coming closer.”

The employee later confirmed that saying this had not breached any non-disclosure agreements and does not expect any repercussions from AMD or MSI, though of course, the news has got tongues wagging.

These statements suggest that MSI will be able to lower the power requirements or thermal design power (TDP) of the Vega graphics cards with its own cooling and power solutions. However, whether they are set to debut alongside the Frontier Edition remains to be seen.

Despite all the concern over high power draw though, if AMD can offer the kind of performance it has been teasing in recent months, then a 100 or so extra watts of power is unlikely to turn off the big PC enthusiasts out there who want bleeding-edge performance over anything else.

We will need to wait a few more weeks to confirm any of this though. AMD is set to launch the new range of cards at Siggraph 2017 which runs from July 30 through to August 3.

Jon Martindale
Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…
AMD’s next GPU just leaked, and it could give Nvidia trouble
Radeon logo on the RX 7900 XTX.

Just a day after AMD announced its plans to launch new Radeon 7000 desktop GPUs at its quarterly earnings call, we’ve got credible information on one of the upcoming models. AMD GPU board partner PowerColor briefly posted a listing for its upcoming Radeon RX 7800 XT with complete specifications before pulling down the page.

The listing was spotted by Twitter user @All_The_Watts who had previously shared alleged performance numbers for the RX 7700 and RX7800. According to the page, the PowerColor RX 7800 XT ‘Red Devil’ graphics card will feature 3840 stream processors, 60 compute units, and a 256-bit memory interface with 576GB/s bandwidth. It will feature 16GB of GDDR6 memory and offer boost clock speeds that can go up to 2,565 MHz in OC mode.

Read more
Microsoft Edge opens AI-upscaled video to AMD graphics cards
The Microsoft Edge browser is open on a Surface Book 2 in tablet mode.

Microsoft is rolling out a new super resolution for its Edge browser, but unlike Nvidia's recently announced RTX Video Super Resolution, Microsoft's take works with AMD graphics cards.

Edge is taking the same name. Video Super Resolution (VSR) leverages AI to upscale videos directly in your browser. Microsoft's announcement reads, "It accomplishes this by removing blocky compression artifacts and upscaling video resolution so you can enjoy crisp and clear videos on YouTube and other streaming platforms that play video content without sacrificing bandwidth."

Read more
AMD wants to build on AI with its next generation of graphics cards
AMD RX 7900 XTX standing up on a red background.

AMD's RDNA 3 lineup is still very new, but the company is already looking to the future. In a recent interview, AMD executives talked about the potential of RDNA 4. They also discussed AMD's approach to artificial intelligence (AI) and how it differs from Nvidia's.

It seems that AMD may be eager to increase its AI presence going forward. It's a good call -- so far, AMD has been losing the AI battle against Nvidia. Here's what we know about its plans for RDNA 4.

Read more