We’re just approaching the halfway point of July, and now we’re now about a fortnight away from AMD Radeon RX Vega being unleashed on the world. In May of last year, believe it or not, there were reports that AMD was lining up an October 2016 launch for Vega. Here we are, some 14 months later, and gaming Vega GPUs still aren’t with us. It’s also been 14 months since the arrival of the GeForce GTX 1070 and GeForce GTX 1080, and four months since the GTX 1080 Ti. In all this time, AMD hasn’t had a single answer to the high-end graphics card market.
Sure, the mid to low tier showings have been impressive. The Radeon RX 480 (and subsequently the RX 580) have been capable of standing toe-to-toe with the GeForce GTX 1060, while AMD’s other, weaker, GPUs have been enough to combat Nvidia at the low-end. But low-end graphics cards don’t grab headlines. Being the best in the world does. For 14 months AMD has handed Nvidia the crown without so much as raising its arms in defence, let alone throwing a punch. For 14 months, Nvidia has sold millions, upon millions, upon millions of GeForce GTX 10 Series graphics cards. The GeForce GTX 1060 is now the most popular gaming graphics card in the world. The GeForce GTX 1070 is now the fifth. The effect trickles down too. The mindshare among plenty of PC gamers is that Nvidia is better because, well, they’ve got the more powerful graphics cards. It’s probably why the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is the sixth most popular graphics card in the world and the Radeon RX 470 doesn’t even get a look in.
For too long AMD has let Nvidia have its cake and eat it, and they’ve been fine with the Green Team reaching over and stealing a slice of theirs too. There is a beacon of hope on the horizon with Radeon RX Vega though, and AMD has amply demonstrated with its Ryzen CPUs that it’s capable of coming back from a losing position, of punching above its weight, and, perhaps most importantly, of providing the sort of competition that ultimately drives prices down. It’s done it with Ryzen; the results speak for themselves. In two weeks it’s got to do it all again with RX Vega.
The important question now though is, is it too little, too late? We won’t know the answer to the first part until they’re in our hands, but we can have a pretty good stab at the second. Nvidia’s graphics card cycles are typically in the region of 18 months, sometimes two years. Its GTX 10 Series debuted in May 2017. It seems logical to assume the GTX 11 Series could be ready in time for the holidays. It may even be ready now. AMD may beat Nvidia’s pricing and performance in the short term, but you can almost feel Nvidia itching to break out from the wings and unleash its next generation. It would be the ultimate killer blow. Whether they can, or whether they will, is another matter entirely though.
So with AMD stretching out the Radeon RX Vega launch to breaking point, does the Red Team have enough time to claw back the GPU market? Or is a 14-month wait for GTX 1080 performance just not going to cut it? Let us know below how you think the next few months are going to pan out.
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Yeah,I gave up on amd.bought 1080ti.No regrets!
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I respect your choice.
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Thanks.Been ATI fan since 2005....And I was really satisfied with my rx 480, and wanted to upgrade to vega...but when frontier edition fell in line with 1080...I decided against it.and bought 1080ti,must say,difference in gaming is so huge
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The main reason that I ever bought a Nvidia card was because the previousl 5 ATI cards that I had, had all bricked in less than 2 years. I figured that it was because the ****ing things didn't have a proper cooler on them (all reference). So after that I made a vow, to never buy a reference gpu ever again. EVER
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Yeah,referenced cards I buy only for water blocks... Luckily ,aorus 1080ti extreme edition have proper EK water block for it.Nevertheless,aorus custom air cooling heatsink was made really good. Custom ATI cards also have good air cooling..
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My friend has an ATI 4600 in his old pc. The thing works on a AGP and it's still alive & kicking. It has a custom air cooling solution so that is probably 1 of the reasons.
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Considering the vega will increase my electricity bill i'd go for a gtx 1070/1080 since i would spend that money anyways.
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Vega isn't going to increase your power bill that much, using so much as a toaster or a microwave will increase your power bill way more, even just running another refrigerator (or just one) or having your AC running colder will use up way more electricity
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YES they have taken too long, I got the 1080ti because I gave up waiting for Vega because it was taking waaaay too long. Plus I doubt vega will beat the 1080ti.
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You're right!And 1080ti is really a beast of card,even on my 144mhz freesync monitor works great!
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only reason i'm still waiting is because i have a freesync monitor =/, waiting for vega to change out this gtx 970.
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So far I have no problems with my GTX970 hitting ultra 60fps on the games I play... though I'm pretty sure I will have to change because I don't think shadow of war will be able to be played ultra 60fps on a GTX970. If Vega turns out to be good with excellent pricing as well, I'm buying, if not, I'm waiting to see volta.
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As am I, if Vega turns out great I'm getting one of the better models of those, if not I'll wait till Volta to get more power for my buck
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Volta is on the way, and it's not a QUANTITY card.
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yes they have. Even if Vega beats the 1080ti or is on par. it wont matter due to vegas power consump. and volta will be out soon :) amd always finds away 2 FKup
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Quality over quantity boys...
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AMD has missed out on 100% of the high-end market for over a year. They should have put out something. A cut-down Vega chip with high-speed GDDR5 memory to place itself just under or at the GTX 1070 @ 325-350 USD would have been nice never mind the inefficiency, but AMD has conceded a monopoly to NVidia in the high-end market for over a year, which is just not ok, I have been sitting on a 1050 Ti/ HD 7870 for far too long my friend!
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as I said earlier, if they planned better they could have released a consumer dual chip Polaris 10 card last year around October in the name of the RX 490 with some Infinity fabric tech built in to improve the cross fire config and as a general production first release of the tech. Vega was pushed back for other reasons but a gaming dual Polaris card could have yielded valuable data for InFb and thread scheduling that could have helped Vega and Ryzen
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Hoping to see low prices. But germany always pushed prices that far that it's even cheaper to import one...
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Here in South Africa that only works if you incorrectly label the stuff as something like clothes... Otherwise customs and import tax kill you.
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No matter how much cheaper something is abroad the import tax + customs always kill it
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I'm hoping AMD keep the momentum going!
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They better, or I'll buy up the company and then I'll kick some asses.
Disclaimer, I am not a millionaire. Tho ppl tell me that I have the attitude of one. ;)
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What, is everyone so sensitive that they can't stand to see someone who has an opinion and has the balls to speak.
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Actually, AMD wasn't waiting but had to delay Vega due to internal technical issues, could be a bios bug or maybe HBM production problem or maybe lack of time for software optimization. Vega was supposed to be launched much earlier.
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I'll wait until the card's get released, & then we will see if the wait was worth it.
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t's just like it says in the article...vega will come only for nvidia to throw out something even more better a month or two later much like what happened with rx and gtx 10 series...480 and 470 were super promising, and then 10 arrived.
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The 480 was still a good gpu and still is. I liked how they focused on 1 single gpu instead of trying to hit the market with everything. I think that, that is a better approach, considering their financial situation. Now the AMD stock went from bellow 1$ to 12$+. Not bad for a "dead" company.
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It's better to make sure that the gpu's will rock hell, than run hot as hell.
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I think & hope the wait, will show that they really took their time with their work. It's better to show you love your work & respect the ppl that buy it, provided they can afford it.
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Depends on the price. I couldn't care less whether they released it 3 months ago cause I'm planning to upgrade in December/January.
If the performance is better than 1080 and the price is lower, dandy....if not, they can kiss the market goodbye.
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It might also be worth to wait till Volta, unless you're set on going with the team red
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I've never had, nor will I ever have a NVidia card. NVidia is 2x more expensive than AMD counterpart in Croatia.
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Also, I saw a graph that shows AMD supports their driver gpu-s more than Nvidia (regarding generations). If you need prof I'll try to find the graph.
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well in that case, I would have also never bought NVidia gpus, pricing is very different in each country.
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Heck... In South Africa everything is just equally expensive...
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It depends on the resolution. If you are still game at 1080p, an older gpu is more than enough if you can lower the settings and other preferences.
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Then Vega is a no-brainer, unless you want to wait +1 year for Navi. It is necessary for them to price vega better to sell, at this point.
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It depends on the brand/name recognition. I have seen & read many articles that PROVE that AMD-s cards fare better than Nvidia-s, but due to market recognition & brand awareness it didn't sink in with the buyers/customers. FYI I hate the word consumer. That word implies that a person doesn't think for him/her self.
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I don't get what you're trying to say here.. are you saying that amds cards are inherently better than nvidias? Haha consumer just means that he consumes products, being mindless or not is up to the individual
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I don't think that AMD-s cards are inherently better than nvidias. I do however, understand that when someone want's to buy the best, like Nvidia Titan cards. I get it. It's not for bragging right's (but it's there non the less), it's because you want the very best that your money can buy.
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True
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Most consumers do mindlessly consume.
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That's why I say ppl should think like a customer, not a consumer.
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I really wanted to build AMD rig for my brother with R7 1700x and RX 480 but after reveal of Vega - I postponed it.
Hoped it would've been released in October 2016 as mentioned above - THAT NEVER HAPPENED.
So, here I am still waiting.
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Should have gotten that 1070...it's not like vega will be a miracle lol.
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Come on ppl, it's ok if he/she want's to say what he/she thinks. BTW pozdrav iz Hrvatske.
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I believe that Vega Will have a short life and will be replaced with navi in less than a year, allmost the same that did intel with Broadwell, that promese a lot like up to 128MB of Vram that can be used as L4 Cache, and ended in nothing...
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it'll be replaced with whatever nvidia throws out next...and I'm not even a fanboy, it's just that they showed up a year late to fight for the same category lol
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I think this flavor of Vega will be short lived, Vega 20 (weather it be 14 or 7nm) will likely replace it 6 months after launch. Navi I believe will be half of Vega on multiple dies using 7nm, I don't think we will see that until early to mid 2019
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I'm actually quite interested in the die shrink to 7nm. I reed that, bellow that lvl it's going to get difficult to reduce the die size further.
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5nm is going to be tough on all accounts, the technology will be fully different than anything we have today and everything before it in every aspect (materials, transistor design, process technology and so on). Thankfully the initial technology and research has been done for a few years now, I'm confident that the grand stopping point will be around 3nm
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yea they waited too long, and i get why but late is late they better completely wipe the floor with gtx 1080 ti or they won't gain any respect as a brand, cause anything less or equivalent and spent all that time, they just playing catch up
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no, not exactly, I fully understand and support delaying launch to make sure the software is there for it to properly run, we don't want another Polaris type launch however it would have been a good idea to have put out something in the high end in the mean time. I really don't mean a larger Polaris chip (while that would be awesome and all), but it would have been good if a consumer dual P10 card was launched last October to fill in until Vega was ready, just better planning
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i think the question should also include... what is your monitor's maximum resolution...
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they took ridiculously long with this one...i might get the XL version if it's at better price/performance than 1070 though
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Yes, I already made my decision to buy a GTX 1080 TI
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390x is a good gpu man, in my opinion I would suggest waiting to see what they will release or wait for volta.
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giving my r9 390x to my younger brother