AMD Radeon RX Vega Price/Performance Ratio “Terrific”

During Computex, AMD finally revealed more details about their Vega GPUs. Set to arrive later this year, the new graphics cards will utilise the upcoming Vega 10 GPU. The chips are based on the new Vega architecture which is supposed to be a significant improvement over Polaris GCN 4. So far, we have the relatively expensive Radeon Pro Vega Frontier Edition. However, reports suggest that consumer Vega will be a lot cheaper.

At $999, the new Radeon Pro Frontier Edition is undoubtedly a premium card. However, consumer Vega will be offering a much better price to performance ratio. As the Frontier Edition uses full Vega 10,  Vega 10 will have to cost below $999. AMD’s competition, the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti comes in at $699 while the older GTX 1080 comes in at $549. As these cards are the main competition, Vega will have to priced better than their Nvidia counterparts. The ways to this goal are to either offer more performance at the same price point or just be a lot cheaper. Since AMD is aiming to shed the budget cloak, it is likely the first option.

Vega Will Have ‘Terrific Price/Performance”

The other comparison is against AMD’s old cards. So far, we know there are two models based on the Apple iMac Pro reveal. We have the full Vega 10 with 4096 stream processors and the cut-down model with 3584 stream processors. This is the same amount as in the old Fiji chips. However, AMD is clocked the GPUs much higher and the architecture has been drastically revamped. Even if AMD launches at the same price, the price/performance will be a lot better due to improved performance.

After such a long wait and hype, AMD has to deliver well on Vega. From all of the demos we have seen and the performance leaks, AMD looks to be quite competitive so far. Performance is expected at or beyond GTX 1080 levels. Hopefully, this means the cards will be priced like the GTX 1080 Ti at the $550 flagship point but perform closer to the GTX 1080 Ti. The cut-down model will likely fit in between the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080 in a similar manner. I for one can’t wait to finally see Vega reach the market.