We're inching our way towards the official launch of AMD's Vega architecture-based GPUs, due some time later this month, but it appears that a couple of US and UK retailers have jumped the gun a tad. Via VideoCardz.com comes the news that SabrePC in the US and SCAN.com in the UK both 'accidentally' listed Vega Frontier Edition GPUs, a range which is tailored to high performance computing workstations and development environments.
Curiously, it appears that the Vega Frontier Edition range will launch in two flavours: one with a standard blue blower air cooler, and one with a more exotic golden closed loop cooler. The former is rated at a toasty 300W, whereas the latter has a still hotter 375W TDP; we're immediately put in mind of the AMD Fury range, a pretty hot set of GPUs in their own right. It's possible that there are base GPU frequency differences between the two VEGA FE cards which aren't being reflected in these preliminary specifications, or that the liquid-cooled versions will automatically clock higher using AMD's boosting features - time will tell on that score.
There is, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite some price difference between these two cards. The air-cooled solution, called simply the AMD Vega Frontier AIR, is listed at £1139.99 inc. V.A.T. ($1199); by contrast the AMD Vega Frontier LIQUID is a considerably more pricey £1656.49 inc. V.A.T. ($1799). This, perhaps more than another other aspect of this product launch, underscores their position outside of the consumer market and pitched firmly against Pascal-based NVIDIA's Titan XP.
Included alongside this listing is an up-to-date product description of AMD Vega FE:
Built for the Pioneers of the World
Who are the pioneers? They are the ones who have cured diseases and strengthened our bodies. They work to heal our planet and explore new ones. They work to undo mankind’s mistakes and protect the next generation from making them again. Harnessing science to fuel creativity, and employing creativity to drive science. They pursue an unerring, unwavering path towards their goals. There are no barriers, no compromises. They are people who see boundaries as starting lines, and who risk everything in pursuit of innovation. They are the early adopters, the people whose passion is to pursue what is new and different. Their achievements won’t be measured in days, weeks or even years. They’ll be measured in centuries.
The Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition
Empowering a new generation of pioneers to analyse, understand and re-shape our lives, now and forever.
• Powered by the Vega architecture
• ~25 TFLOPS Peak FP16 Compute Performance.
• ~13 TFLOPS Peak FP32 Compute Performance.
• 16GB High Bandwidth Cache.
• 64 Next-Gen Compute Units.
• 4096 Stream Processors.
Empower Scientists to Explore New Frontiers
Training techniques used today on neural networks in machine intelligence and deep learning applications have become very complex and require the handling of massive amounts of data when training those networks to recognize patterns within that data. This requires lots of floating point computation spread across many cores, and traditional CPUs can’t handle this type of computation as efficiently as GPUs handle it. The Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition, combined with our ROCm open software platform, paves the way for pioneers to continue pushing boundaries in fields like AI. Developers can now leverage the power of “Vega” architecture to do machine learning algorithm development on the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card before deploying it out to massive servers equipped with Radeon Instinct accelerators.
Harness Vega to Fuel Creativity
Design visualization is playing an increasingly important role in helping manufacturers streamline design to manufacture workflows. Advanced technologies, including real-time visualization, physically-based rendering and virtual reality (VR), give design and manufacturing firms a powerful arsenal of visualization tools that can be used at all stages of product development. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card provides the necessary performance required to drive these increasingly large and complex models through the design phase as well as rendering phase of product development. In the media and entertainment market, tasks like video editing, animation, post-production, and virtual reality (VR), require high-end graphics to support these workloads. They depend on compute speed and driver reliability more than ever for shorter load and rendering times. Closer partnerships with top software makers helps pair reliability with the raw power offered by our new Vega GPU architecture.
No Barriers. No Compromises.
Game development is a creatively demanding, time-intensive process and any solution that can streamline game design workflows is an extremely valuable benefit for developers. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card will simplify and accelerate game creation by providing a single GPU that is optimized for every stage of their workflow, from asset production, to playtesting, to performance optimization. With AMD graphics technology found in many of today’s game consoles and PCs, developers can build and optimize next generation games for a large install base on the latest graphics technologies from AMD.
Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition Features:
Next-Gen Compute Units
The Next-Gen Compute Units (nCUs) provide super-charged pathways for double the processing throughput when using 16-bit data types. This is ideal for image/video processing, ray tracing and artificial intelligence.
Enhanced Pixel Engine
Updated rasterizer technology to improve cache locality and overdraw, enhancing rendering efficiency and leaving more headroom to crank up quality settings while maintaining smooth 3D rendering.
Revolutionary Memory Engine
The state of the art memory system on Radeon Vega Frontier Edition removes the capacity limitations of traditional GPU memory. Thanks to automatic, fine-grained memory movement controlled by the high bandwidth cache controller, Vega enables creators and designers to work with much larger, more detailed models and assets in real time.
Efficient Geometry Engine
The new geometry pipe in the Vega GPU architecture processes millions of polygons due to its efficient load balancing. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition offers 2x peak geometry throughput per clock1 to significantly speed up modelling and design workflows in various rendering engines. Modelling applications will be able to render in real-time heavy 3D models and large scenes.Features• “Vega” GPU Architecture.
• 64 Next-Gen Compute Units (nCUs) (4096 Stream Processors)
• 16GB High Bandwidth Cache (HBC) Memory.
• 483 GB/s Memory Bandwidth.
• 90 Gpixels/s Fillrate
• 13.1 TFLOPS Peak FP32 Compute Performance
• 26.2 TFLOPS Peak FP16 Compute Performance
• 3x DisplayPort™ 1.4 HBR3/HDR Ready, & 1x HDMI™ 4K60 Display Outputs
• DirectX® 12.1, OpenGL® 4.5, OpenCL™ 2.0, & Vulkan® 1.0 API Support
• Dual-slot, full length (10.5”) Form Factor.
• Air Cooling Solution. Liquid-cooled versions also available.
Who are the pioneers? They are the ones who have cured diseases and strengthened our bodies. They work to heal our planet and explore new ones. They work to undo mankind’s mistakes and protect the next generation from making them again. Harnessing science to fuel creativity, and employing creativity to drive science. They pursue an unerring, unwavering path towards their goals. There are no barriers, no compromises. They are people who see boundaries as starting lines, and who risk everything in pursuit of innovation. They are the early adopters, the people whose passion is to pursue what is new and different. Their achievements won’t be measured in days, weeks or even years. They’ll be measured in centuries.
The Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition
Empowering a new generation of pioneers to analyse, understand and re-shape our lives, now and forever.
• Powered by the Vega architecture
• ~25 TFLOPS Peak FP16 Compute Performance.
• ~13 TFLOPS Peak FP32 Compute Performance.
• 16GB High Bandwidth Cache.
• 64 Next-Gen Compute Units.
• 4096 Stream Processors.
Empower Scientists to Explore New Frontiers
Training techniques used today on neural networks in machine intelligence and deep learning applications have become very complex and require the handling of massive amounts of data when training those networks to recognize patterns within that data. This requires lots of floating point computation spread across many cores, and traditional CPUs can’t handle this type of computation as efficiently as GPUs handle it. The Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition, combined with our ROCm open software platform, paves the way for pioneers to continue pushing boundaries in fields like AI. Developers can now leverage the power of “Vega” architecture to do machine learning algorithm development on the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card before deploying it out to massive servers equipped with Radeon Instinct accelerators.
Harness Vega to Fuel Creativity
Design visualization is playing an increasingly important role in helping manufacturers streamline design to manufacture workflows. Advanced technologies, including real-time visualization, physically-based rendering and virtual reality (VR), give design and manufacturing firms a powerful arsenal of visualization tools that can be used at all stages of product development. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card provides the necessary performance required to drive these increasingly large and complex models through the design phase as well as rendering phase of product development. In the media and entertainment market, tasks like video editing, animation, post-production, and virtual reality (VR), require high-end graphics to support these workloads. They depend on compute speed and driver reliability more than ever for shorter load and rendering times. Closer partnerships with top software makers helps pair reliability with the raw power offered by our new Vega GPU architecture.
No Barriers. No Compromises.
Game development is a creatively demanding, time-intensive process and any solution that can streamline game design workflows is an extremely valuable benefit for developers. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition graphics card will simplify and accelerate game creation by providing a single GPU that is optimized for every stage of their workflow, from asset production, to playtesting, to performance optimization. With AMD graphics technology found in many of today’s game consoles and PCs, developers can build and optimize next generation games for a large install base on the latest graphics technologies from AMD.
Radeon™ Vega Frontier Edition Features:
Next-Gen Compute Units
The Next-Gen Compute Units (nCUs) provide super-charged pathways for double the processing throughput when using 16-bit data types. This is ideal for image/video processing, ray tracing and artificial intelligence.
Enhanced Pixel Engine
Updated rasterizer technology to improve cache locality and overdraw, enhancing rendering efficiency and leaving more headroom to crank up quality settings while maintaining smooth 3D rendering.
Revolutionary Memory Engine
The state of the art memory system on Radeon Vega Frontier Edition removes the capacity limitations of traditional GPU memory. Thanks to automatic, fine-grained memory movement controlled by the high bandwidth cache controller, Vega enables creators and designers to work with much larger, more detailed models and assets in real time.
Efficient Geometry Engine
The new geometry pipe in the Vega GPU architecture processes millions of polygons due to its efficient load balancing. The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition offers 2x peak geometry throughput per clock1 to significantly speed up modelling and design workflows in various rendering engines. Modelling applications will be able to render in real-time heavy 3D models and large scenes.Features• “Vega” GPU Architecture.
• 64 Next-Gen Compute Units (nCUs) (4096 Stream Processors)
• 16GB High Bandwidth Cache (HBC) Memory.
• 483 GB/s Memory Bandwidth.
• 90 Gpixels/s Fillrate
• 13.1 TFLOPS Peak FP32 Compute Performance
• 26.2 TFLOPS Peak FP16 Compute Performance
• 3x DisplayPort™ 1.4 HBR3/HDR Ready, & 1x HDMI™ 4K60 Display Outputs
• DirectX® 12.1, OpenGL® 4.5, OpenCL™ 2.0, & Vulkan® 1.0 API Support
• Dual-slot, full length (10.5”) Form Factor.
• Air Cooling Solution. Liquid-cooled versions also available.
As for consumers and gamers... well, we're still some way off more mainstream AMD Vega products. HBM2 memory production is rumoured to be a major bottleneck, and it's understood that the red team will not fall back onto GDDR5/GDDR5X for this range. It's also likely that a 64 CU/4086 Shader chip similar to the Vega FE will an absolute top-end model, although it will be tailored more closely to enthusiast workloads to both improve performance and reduce cost.
The pages on which the Frontier Edition cards were listed have been replaced by a boilerplate acknowledgement of the June 27th NDA. Sounds like we'll me heading more about Vega FE in a little under a fortnight.
SOURCE VideoCardz.com
