7 AMD Vega GPUs Spotted In AMD Linux Code; May Suggest More Than 1 Model For Gaming

The latest report on the AMD Rx Vega is that there is a total of 7 SKUs spotted by a dataminer in the AMD Linux driver code. These are not necessarily GPUs for gaming although there were some suggestions that there could be three RX Vega cards for gaming and another three for the professionals.

AMD is expected to unveil the Radeon RX Vega by the second quarter of the year possibly in May and patches are now being sent in preparation for its arrival. Gamers are highly anticipating the already announced RX Vega that is said to go head-to-head with NVIDIA's GTX 10 series. Now a dataminer in Phoronix has uncovered 8 AMD Vega GPU IDs in the latest Linux driver patch along with some Polaris-based devices. There are as much as 40,000 lines in the said update that were just rolled out and it includes 100 small patches for AMD's Linux graphics drivers for Vega GPU support.

The uncovered AMD Vega support indicates that there may be 7 different Vega 10-based variants that AMD's Linux drivers will be supporting when the new architecture fully launches this year. The 7 Radeon graphics may not automatically be for the gaming market. Previously, the Sunnyvale-based company has announced not just a flagship Radeon RX Vega for gamers but also the Radeon Instinct cards with Vega GPUs for use with Artifical Intelligence and the Radeon Pro cards that are obviously for professionals, PCGamesN has learned.

The most likely scenario is that AMD will release one RX Vega card, one Instinct MI25, and two Radeon Pro cards. That means there are three unknown Vega 10-based cards, which may have fueled rumors that AMD may offer three Vega cards for gaming and another three for professional use in the first wave of the Vega GPU launch. Enthusiasts and gamers are now expecting not just the top-tier RX Vega but also a diminutive RX Vega Nano or even an enhanced RX 590 from the Polaris rebranded RX 500 series. Incidentally, there were no patches for the Vega 11 GPUs even though there were 7 GPU IDs based on Polaris 12.

Meanwhile, as PC gamers await the AMD Radeon RX Vega, the red team is offering more affordable solutions for those looking to build their hardware that delivers high-quality gaming and VR. AMD is expected to release its RX 400 series refresh, now rebranded as the RX 500 with better clock speeds sometime in April. These new GPUs notably used a different manufacturing process, still the same 14nm FinFET technology but using the Low Power Plus (LPP) version. This means that the RX 500 series has been enhanced to produce better performance with less power consumption, Digital Trends reported.