AMD Vega Frontier Edition Now Available For Pre-Order With $999 Price Tag

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Danilushka

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Anyone know if the water cooled version is full AIO or just a water block for a custom loop? I hope the latter, since I do my own loops.
 

Altherix

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Benchmarks will tell that story, but this isn't aimed at gaming so I wouldn't hold your breath. Definitely don't pre order until benches get released as this smells of early adopter tax.

 

Kenneth Barker

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I am not sure why people are saying that the Vega Frontier card is not for gaming... It is nearly 100% marketed towards the Titan Xp crowd. Which is a combination Gaming/workstation card. That is what this is. I will probably get slammed for saying it is a "gaming card" is the same right as the Titan because AMD fans are very super protective, but the marketing of this card is 100% consumer/gamer who does prof. work on the side. The colors, the metal shrouds, the fancy looks, the ads, the marketing all screams Titan competitor. Nvidia also claims that the Titan is not a gaming card btw... even though it is used for gaming primarily. I expect this to be little to no different. Even the pricing of the air cooled version is competitive with the Titan Xp. The water cooled "gold" card is a bit ridiculous though... much better to get the air cooled FE card, and spend the $600 saved between the two on a complete custom water cooled loop with huge rads and blocks for the CPU and GPU with the $600. That kind of money will get you a pretty awesome custom loop.

This is the Vega answer to the Titan Xp. It will do gaming, and it will do professional apps.

There have already been benches released/leaked on both the gaming and professional performance.

The Vega FE is slower than a 1080Ti for gaming, but faster than a 1080.

The Vega FE seems to be beating the Titan Xp in professional application use though. So... its a trade off. If you care more about professional work performance, and less about gaming performance, than the Vega FE is for you.
 
just to compare, the titan xp costs $1500 and has a FP32 of 11.3TFLOPs ? not bad i guess, except for the power consumption.
i think we will see a similar card to the 1080ti which will be priced around $600 ?
 

KD_Gaming

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@Angelo, you believe? If your commenting on something you have no 1st person knowledge of.. Why make a statement at all, rather you should maybe ask as a question.

And to answer that question, it very well may return a good profit but obviously it has more upfront cost to pay off first. I DON'T know of a single new card that isn't profitable... Just some are a bit slower at it.
 

falchard

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Ethereum mining will eat this up right now. HBM2 AMD GPU with 13.1 TFLOPs. R9 Fury X is 8.9 teraflops and averages 30 mh/s. Considering the architecture and memory it should scale uniformly if not better due to 4 times the memory. I would estimate 44~50 mh/s. The RX 580 does about half that and the GTX 1070 does less. Right now the RX580 can only be found on ebay for $400 ~ $500. If you were to take one 4 GPU rig with this over two 4 GPU rigs with RX 580s, this may be the cheaper option not only upfront but operationally. Since these are pre-orders they have not been subject to price markups yet.
With the deflation in Ether right now, the mining prospect is decent although a bit volatile. With no current dedicated method to mining Ethereum due to it's memory bound nature, this is one of the best options. Of course benchmarking is necessary to understand it's potential. Personally I expect the Crypto Currency warehouses to simply buy up all the pre-orders as they can quickly benefit from the card and afford to do so.
 

msroadkill612

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"this smells of early adopter tax."

- which is; economically logical and acceptable to both parties mostly.

Getting one to test, for an intended multi buy e.g.
 

Star Pilgrim

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Since this is not a gaming variant, NO ONE should espect it to approach 1080 Ti.
Same as no one should pit Nvidia Quadro 6000 against 1080 Ti, or even 1080 for that matter.
That gaming mode this FE has, is only a middle road so people can "somewhat" use it in gaming also.
Wait for Vega RX+ if you are a gamer..
 

msroadkill612

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ken barker - "it is a "gaming card" is the same right as the Titan because AMD fans are very super protective, but the marketing of this card is 100% consumer/gamer who does prof. work on the side. The colors, the metal shrouds, the fancy looks, the ads, the marketing all screams Titan competitor. Nvidia also claims that the Titan is not a gaming card btw... even though it is used for gaming primarily.".

Sage. Ta for sharing. Certainly credible that its marketing - a toy disguised as a tool can have many advantages, especially psychologically to men.

But the "lovable nerd" from amd seemed sincere urging gamers to wait for the gaming model.
 

msroadkill612

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"The 16GB of High-Bandwidth Cache (HBC) memory (which is really just AMD’s marketing slang for HBM2) sits on a 2048-bit memory interface. It can be used to cache external memory and storage devices, giving the Vega Frontier Edition the ability to access up to 256TB (yes, TB) of virtual memory."

amd have adopted the term cache wisely imo. its no longer vram, its just one cache resource in a pool of resources totalling up to 256tb.

"It can be used to cache external memory and storage devices" is v exiting imo.

This includes system memory AND ~7GBps raid nvme w/ no system bus latency. i.e. unlimited vram workspace. Thats potentially huge.
 

msroadkill612

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Just sayin fyi?, previously published numbers dealing with this ~256TB address space has specced ~512TB of space.

Moot, but interestingly?, something has changed their mind in the interim.
 


AMD's Raja Koduri said it is not for gaming and has stated the gaming cards will perform better at gaming since this card is not getting game optimized drivers. Its getting compared to the Titan because of price. That is why since you were not sure.
 

Star Pilgrim

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Wrong.

FE is aimed at the prosumer market.
At game developers and VR creators.

Where the hell did you get the idea it is aimed at gamers? At that price, and with that drivers?
Hell AMD went out of their way to say the opposite. Many times now.

What more do you need? A written voucher, sticker or banner?
 


This version of the card may be priced similar to a Titan XP, but it is intended to compete more against Nvidia's high-end Quadro cards, which cost significantly more. For many professional applications, Vega Frontier Edition has been shown to perform significantly faster than a Titan XP. I suppose we could say that it's targeting a middle ground, for professionals who don't want to overpay for a card with professional-class performance, but I certainly wouldn't say that they've been targeting gamers at all with the Frontier Edition. In fact, they actually recommended for gamers NOT get this version of the card, since they will be launching the consumer versions soon, which will cost less and have drivers focused more around gaming performance. None of the marketing materials I've seen for the Vega Frontier Edition have been targeted toward gamers.

And in case you didn't notice, Quadro cards also have "fancy metal shrouds" with chrome and neon green accents that make them look more like gaming cards than the Vega Frontier Edition. The simple, brushed metal boxes of the Frontier Edition cards arguably look more like professional products than the current Quadro designs.
 

sigma3d

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My Geforce GTX FE Edition easily does 31 mh/s average with ethereum on 80watt power draw. If you know how to overclock it properly you can easily achieve it while lowering the power draw.

I believe this card is overkill, too pricey and wont be efficient for mining.
 

kyotokid

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...it may have any GTX or the Titan X beat with regards to VRAM and processor threads at less than the price of a Quadro P5000, but it is totally useless for Iray/Octane rendering. The only hope is that it may drive down prices for the Titan Xp. however, it will have no effect on Quadro pricing.

Also, if it uses HBM2, why the full size form factor instead of 2/3 size like the FuryX?
 
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