GeForce Countered: AMD Launches RX Vega Gaming GPU

The wait is finally over as Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD launched its Radeon RX Vega series graphics cards, based on its Vega architecture.

The product was initially announced at the CES 2017 event held in January.

AMD said in a release there are three variants of Radeon RX: Radeon RX Vega Liquid Coolant Edition, Radeon RX Vega with air cooling, and an entry level Radeon RX Vega.

Pricing And Availability

AMD said the Radeon Packs and Radeon RX Vega graphics card would be available starting August 14. Pricing ranges from $399 for the Radeon Red Pack (entry level) to $699 for Radeon Aqua Pack.

Irresistible Offers

AMD said it would offer deep discounts on select Ryzen multi-threaded CPUs and motherboard combos as well as select Samsung Electronic SSNLF displays with Radeon Free Sync displays and two extraordinary AAA game titles.

Customers get $100 off if a select AMD Ryzen 7 1700X or Ryzen 7 1800X CPU and motherboard combo are purchased and $200 off if a Samsung 34" Ultra WQHD curved monitor with quantum dot and Radeon free sync technology is bought.

Vega: Cut Above Rest

• More than 200 percent of the throughput-per-clock over previous Radeon GPU architectures.
• High bandwidth cache composed of 8GB of leading-edge HBM2 or High bandwidth Memory2, memory.
• Up to 13.7 TFLOPS of peak performance to power through even the most demanding games and VR applications.

How Does Vega Stack Up Against Nvidia?

AMD is launching a product that can compete at the high-end after Fury X, which was launched in 2015, according to Verge. Subsequently, NVIDIA Corporation NVDA countered AMD's fury with its own launch of GTX 980 Ti.

Since then, the high-end market has been dominated by Intel Corporation INTC Core i7processor and Nvidia's GTX 1080 graphics card.

Experts now believe AMD has a potent product in hand to counter Nvidia's GeForce threat. This should come as a welcome relief for those who were uneasy after the performance of Vega Frontier Edition released in June underperformed GTX 1080.

That said, analysts believe if AMD makes substantial inroads into the high-end gaming GPU market, Nvidia may not take it lying low. Nvidia may step on the gas on its new Volta line of GPUs, expected to be launched in early 2018.

All said and done, AMD has arrived on the high-end gaming market after a two-year hiatus. It remains to be seen how much of an impact this will have on the gaming processor market dynamics.

AMD investors haven't reciprocated the company's optimism, with the shares down 1.22 percent at $13.78 currently.