Well Ryzen Threadripper is out and the next greatest thing from AMD is just a few days away from launch. Yes, The AMD Radeon RX Vega is arriving on Monday, next week and today, TechGage got the opportunity to show off what the reference RX Vega 64 packaging looks like.
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Reference Model Unboxed - Features Lots of Goodies, Including a Dead Vega 64 GPU *Insert Sad Emoji*
Various tech sites have already received their Radeon RX Vega 64 samples for testing ahead of the launch date. The model that TechGage received is a reference air cooled variant which should cost $499 US at launch but recent reports suggest that might not be the case. Anyways, moving forward, we get to see a simplistic design scheme on the base model which uses a blower style fan and is a lot similar to Radeon RX 480 except a bit bigger.
The Radeon RX Vega 64 will be powered by dual 8 pin connectors and takes two slots worth of space. Display outputs include a single HDMI and triple DisplayPort connectors. On the back of AMD's flagship graphics card, we can see the GPU Tachometer switches and LEDs. These tell the load of the GPU itself while the switches let you control the colors (Blue or Red) or disable the LEDs all together. The card is about the same length as the GeForce GTX Titan X and Titan Xp.
Now coming to the more interesting part, the Radeon RX Vega 64 will ship inside a large rectangle shaped package. We don't know if only the press gets such treatment or consumers will get the same packages. The package includes multiple compartments which house the guide book, RX Vega stickers, a wrist band and a crystal square with Vega logo. There's no holocube inside Vega 64 package which confirms earlier reports that the holocube would not be included with the Radeon RX Vega 64.
I think the most interesting thing to note is that the package comes with a defunct Vega 64 GPU. This is a non usable die which means the only purpose to add it in the package is as a showpiece. AMD had done similar treatment with their defunct Fiji GPUs that were shipped with the Radeon Pro Duo graphics cards. Maybe it's just AMD's way of treating the enthusiast community by sending them a chip of the graphics card that they are running within their rigs. Again, we cannot confirm if this is for reviewers only or if it will be included with all reference Vega 64 cards that ship out to retail. Note that all Radeon Pro Duo cards that shipped on retail included a Fiji GPU.
AMD Radeon RX Vega Lineup Specifications – 12.5 Billion Transistors on a 14nm 484mm2 Die, 4096 Cores, 256 TMUs, Max Speed of 1700 MHz and 8 GB of HBM2 VRAM
The graphics chip will be utilizing the latest 14nm GFX9 core architecture which is based on the NCU (Next Compute Engine) design and measures approximately 484mm2. The Vega 10 graphics core deploys 12.5 billion transistors. The graphics chip will feature 64 Compute Units or 4096 stream processors and 256 TMUs. AMD plans on increasing the throughput of the chip through increased clock speeds. This will allow AMD to pump numbers better than the Fiji GPU which is based on the 28nm GCN 3.0 architecture and comes with the same number of cores, 4096 SPs.
There’s also 8 GB of HBM2 VRAM which comes in two stacks (4 GB per stack). The graphics card has a total rated bandwidth of 484 GB/s which is lower than the 512 GB/s on Fiji. It also features a pixel fill rate of 90 GPixels/s. Additionally, the cards will feature 4 MB of L2 cache and 45 MB of SRAM across the GPU.
AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Launch Prices (Credits: Videocardz):
| GPU Name | AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Reference | AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 Limited | AMD Radeon RX Vega Liquid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official MSRP | 499 USD | 599 USD | 699 USD |
| ShopBlt (US) | 650 USD | 650 USD | 758 USD |
| LambdaTek (UK) | 703 GBP | 703 GBP | 789 GBP |
| Mdcomputers (India) | 71,500 INR | 72,725 INR | 85,350 INR |
| PCThemes (Singapore) | 999 SGD | 999 SGD | 1149 SGD |
| Eurozone | 599 EUR | 599 EUR | 699 EUR |
| Japan | 73,800 YPN | 73,800 YPN | 85,800 YPN |
The AMD Radeon RX Vega 64 graphics lineup officially launches on Monday around the globe. The cards will come in reference, limited and liquid models. There will also be exclusive Radeon packs for the RX Vega lineup which adds lots of goodies to every purchase. They will be limited in terms of quantity so make sure you grab yours as soon as they are available.
