AMD’s new $499 RX Vega 64 and $399 Vega 56 top-end graphics cards launch in August
It’s high time for launch details regarding new AMD RX Vega cards that were teased in May — high-end graphics cards designed to challenge NVIDIA’s domination with the GTX 1080 and 1070.
Both cards are going on sale August 14, at $499 for the Radeon RX Vega 64 and $399 for the Radeon RX Vega 56.
For the specs intro, the RX Vega 64’s core specs include 64 compute units, a base clock of 1,247MHz and a boost clock of 1,547MHz, with 8GB of HBM2 memory — a new GPU memory technology that spots 484GB/s of bandwidth.
All this power means you could technically drive a 5K display via a single cable, without breaking a sweat. Or, go mining for cryptocurrency.
Power requirements for the RX Vega 64 are high, with 295W needed for power — more than the GTX 1080’s TDP (thermal design point) of 180W. But AMD is banking on the growing ecosystem of FreeSync-equipped curved monitors and supported games to justify the higher power requirement, with the top-tier gaming performance to match.
Meanwhile, the Vega 56 is expected to perform like the GTX 1070, which is a step down in performance but also $100 less. It sports 8GB of memory like its more powerful sibling, but has fewer texture units and a slower boost clock speed of 1471MHz.
Between now and the holiday season, it shouldn’t take long for NVIDIA to respond in turn with updated specs for a new top-end GPU of their own.