Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

AMD slips up as leak indicates its Vega GPUs are coming ‘this quarter’

By

AMD has made some waves lately with its new Zen architecture and Ryzen processors, offering a line of CPUs with competitive performance to Intel’s Core processors and even more competitive pricing. Now, AMD fans are waiting for the company to make its next move by introducing its next generation Vega GPUs.

Until now, AMD hasn’t provided any information on when Vega might be officially introduced, leaving gamers waiting impatiently for stronger competition with Nvidia’s Pascal architecture. Today, however, it looks like AMD might have let the cat out of the bag, with its AMD Poland Facebook page indicating that Vega will arrive this quarter, as Wccftech.com reports.

wccftech.com

Of course, it’s entirely possible that someone at AMD Poland spoke out of turn, and so this information should be considered unverified at this point. But there’s other information that seems to confirm an imminent release, such as a Vega GPU showing in CompuBench benchmark results — something that usually happens shortly before a new component is released.

Recommended Videos

In addition, AMD has now provided Vega OpenGL support for Linux, and the company has apparently devoted 80 percent of its driver engineers to Vega optimization for the past few months. Simply put, while nobody knows when Vega will arrive, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that it’s going to show up in gaming PCs sooner rather than later.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!
Privacy Policy

By the CompuBench results, Vega will offer at least competitive performance compared to the Nvidia GTX 1080 but significantly lower than the GTX 1080 Ti. Without knowing where in the Vega line the tested GPU is positioned, we don’t know if that’s low-end, midrange, or high-end Vega performance. Nevertheless, AMD fans should have some tantalizing options to choose from.

AMD 687F:C1 GTX 1080 Ti
Catmull-Clark Subdivision Level 3: 81.251 mTriangles/s 245.95 mTriangles/s
Catmull-Clark Subdivision Level 5: 239.511 mTriangles/s 353.415 mTriangles/s
Subsurface Scattering multiple view: 6,262.991 mSamples/s 9,610.488 mSamples/s
TV-L1 Optical Flow: 56.729 mPixels/s 64.918 mPixels/s
Level Set Segmentation – 128: 10,281.757 mVoxels/s N/A
Level Set Segmentation – 256: 10,844.834 mVoxels/s N/A

AMD recently released a new Radeon RX 500 Series of GPUs based on its current Polaris generation, and so anyone who wants decent AMD gaming performance without spending serious money has that option to consider. But otherwise, it’s looking like anyone planning on a truly high-end gaming experience won’t have too long to wait before they’ll be able to look outside of Nvidia’s lineup when choosing their next GPU.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Mark Coppock
Mark Coppock
Computing Writer
Mark Coppock is a Freelance Writer at Digital Trends covering primarily laptop and other computing technologies. He has…
AMD’s next GPU already has two big problems
AMD logo on the RX 7800 XT graphics card.

We're about to enter a new era of GPUs, with Nvidia, AMD, and Intel duking it out for slots among the best graphics cards. But this time around, things are different. Team Red, which has traditionally served as a downward force on prices against much more popular Nvidia GPUs, is caught in the middle of a graphics card market that's headed in two vastly different directions.

Although AMD has yet to formally unveil its RDNA 4 graphics cards, the company has confirmed that it's coming early next year. The details about AMD's next-gen GPUs are still up in the air, but you don't need any official specs or benchmarks to see the precarious position that AMD is in. The company's next-gen graphics cards already have two big problems -- Nvidia, which likely will pursue flagship dominance, and AMD itself.
A picture of what's coming

Read more
Don’t get your hopes up for next-gen GPUs just yet
Two RTX 4060 graphics cards stacked on top of each other.

The list of the best graphics cards will probably look a lot different in a month's time. We're standing on the edge of the next generation of graphics cards, and it looks like Nvidia, AMD, and Intel all have big plans in store. At least from the conversations I've had, all eyes are on what the next generation of graphics cards has to offer before making an upgrade decision.

That's generally good advice -- if new hardware is about to launch, there isn't much reason to spend up for last-gen components. You'll likely pay a higher price, and you could be missing out on some big performance gains. This generation, however, it's important to temper expectations. Although the next generation of graphics cards is exciting, it probably won't be a reality for most gamers anytime soon.
Always start with the flagships

Read more
Reviewers hated this AMD GPU. Here’s why I still recommend it
AMD RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT graphics cards.

It's rare that reviewers universally hate a graphics card, but most wouldn't put AMD's RX 7700 XT among the best graphics cards you can buy. As you can read in my own combo review of the RX 7800 XT and RX 7700 XT, the latter GPU just didn't make sense when it launched more than a year ago. Time has marched on, however, and the RX 7700 XT doesn't get the respect it deserves today.

You probably have a negative assumption about this graphics card, and I wouldn't blame you. Tom's Hardware said the GPU got stuck "between a proverbial rock and hard place," while TechSpot was even more harsh: "Purchasing the Radeon 7700 XT at $450 is ill-advised when the 7800 XT is available, leaving us questioning AMD's rationale behind this launch." User reactions were harsher still.

Read more