AMD RX Vega GPU 2017: early release hinted, next-gen GPU coming to notebooks

The AMD Radeon RX Vega Graphics Cards is one of the highly awaited products in the market today. Without any official confirmation from the company about its release date, several speculations have been prevalent as early as 2016 regarding the possible specs of this GPU. However, beyond the talks and predictions, AMD recently held a technology summit in China where it revealed several details about this upcoming product.

8GB and 4GB HBM2 configurations

According to VP and General Manager of Gaming, Scott Herkelman, add-in board stakeholders of the company can freely configure the forthcoming graphics cards with a couple of memory capacities. Herkelman cited two specific examples of configurations; namely the 4GB and 8GB memory capacities using varying densities of HBM stacks.

In other words, based on the type of HBM2 stacks used, the chip can be configured with 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB of generation 2 High Bandwidth Memory. Although the company has not yet confirmed the name of this chip, analysts predict that it is the Vega10.

On the other hand, the Vega 11 GPU, which is a smaller variant will have a single HBM stack. This is to primarily reduce the interposer footprint, which is best in numerous aspects. With a smaller interposer, the production cost is cheaper but yields are considerably better. In addition, a smaller general package is better for mobile graphics processing unit’s requirement.

Vega will be released to notebooks

Aside from the latest configurations, Herkelman also noted that the highly anticipated graphics card would be available in notebooks. Although at this point the details are a bit vague, Wccftech revealed that the Raven Ridge APUs that contains Vega based integrated graphics will roll out on notebooks.

In addition, the configuration of the GPU coming out with a single HBM2 stack is a potential for a high-performance device dedicated for gaming and professional workstation notebooks.

Release date

The Radeon RX 500 series is expected to be released starting April in the US, UK and other regions. According to several claims, the AMD Radeon RX Vega Graphics Cards will follow suit soon after. The anticipated release allegedly would fall during the Computex, which happens between May 30 and June 30, 2017.