AMD Vega GPU Bared In All-AMD System Demo; Software May Be The Only Thing Delaying Its Launch

AMD bared its new Vega GPU during the Ryzen announcement where the Sunnyvale chipmaker highlighted a high-end all-AMD system. The press demo not only allowed the members of the press to play games with it, but also to look under the hood. However, the highly-anticipated GPU will not be launched in the coming GDC but is confirmed for release during the second quarter of the year reportedly in May. The delay is attributed to further software improvements that AMD historically has struggled with in the past.

The Ryzen press event highlighted what a high-end all-AMD system can do. The 8 core, 16 thread Ryzen 7 1700X CPU was used with the enthusiast Vega graphics card playing "Star Wars Battlefront" running at 4K. The Vega and Ryzen combo easily delivered more than 60 FPS framerate all throughout. Press event attendees were able to play games with the system and give the bared machine a good look through. Moreover, attendees were able to go outside the game to make some specs verifications, wccftech reported.

The AMD Vega itself looks similar to the reference Radeon RX 480 cooler it succeeded, but the new design clearly has lots of extra length to it for the USB 3.0 plug, possibly used for diagnostics. There is a bunch of other components in the GPU not dissimilar to the board layout of the Radeon R9 Fury. Moreover, the card utilizes the 8-pin-plus-6-pin PCle power arrangement, TechReport has learned. It also appears that AMD has taken leaps in cooling as only a beefy blower cooler has been used to cool a huge HBM-equipped graphics chip.

Gamers were hoping to see an AMD Vega and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in GDC, but this may be a long shot from happening. AMD is believed to be still working on the Vega, making sure to optimize performance and making improvements on the software. Early last month, a report from bitsandchips.it reported that AMD has dedicated 80 percent of its drivers team to work on further tweaking the drivers for Vega. AMD has been struggling in the software end and it was only a couple of years back that the Sunnyvale chipmaker has managed to earn a good reputation for its new Crimson software ecosystem.

AMD also confirmed that its "Capsaicin and Cream" on Feb. 28 will be hosted by Raja Koduri, its resident graphics designer and chief architect of Radeon Technologies Group. The event will be live streamed for one hour where the Ryzen lineup is expected to be formally launched. More details will also be given regarding AMD's newest Vega architecture particularly the much-awaited flagship product, the Vega 10. In the meantime, check the video below on what AMD brought to CES 2017.