AMD officially launches Radeon RX Vega for elite gamers

There are many reasons to be a fan of AMD nowadays. For instance, many of the underdog's products offer solid performance at a great price (budget-friendly), plus its fan community is really engaged too. If you need support, not only can you reach out to AMD, but countless friendly fellow owners as well. Heck, AMD Windows drivers have really improved over the years too, making it a treat to upgrade when a new version is released.

AMD doesn't only want to be about the budget-friendly market, however. It is prepared to go after the high-end too. Going against the giant that is Intel won't be easy, but with processors such as the upcoming drool-worthy Threadripper line, AMD is making an impressive effort. Today, the company is also targeting NVIDIA on the GPU front, finally launching its much-anticipated Radeon RX Vega. AMD is hoping to capture the wallets of enthusiast gamers with Vega, and with the low starting price, it may succeed.

"Radeon RX Vega graphics cards are built on the 'Vega' GPU architecture, a direct response to the evolving complexity and visual demands of today's games. To meet these needs the 'Vega' GPU architecture puts pioneering graphics technologies previously reserved for high-end graphics products into the hands of enthusiast gamers everywhere. Bleeding-edge capabilities like Rapid Packed Math, the High Bandwidth Cache Controller and new Geometry and Pixel Engines will help push the performance envelope while gaming in low-level APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan, giving developers more flexibility in designing the most intricate and beautiful virtual worlds in today's and tomorrow's games," says AMD.

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Raja Koduri, senior vice president and chief architect, Radeon Technologies Group, AMD explains, "The enthusiast gaming experience is defined by high resolutions and a tear-free, buttery smooth 60 frames per second, something that only approximately 600,000 gamers are capable of enjoying today. But there are 4 million more gamers who aspire to enjoy that same enthusiast gaming experience without breaking the bank, and with Radeon RX Vega graphics cards we're working to give them that."

AMD promises three versions of the Radeon RX Vega. The standard Vega will be air-cooled and have 56 compute units. There are two superior models with 64 compute units -- one with liquid-cooling and the other cooled by air. The company says pricing starts at $399, but that is for the standard model. The cost will jump, obviously, for the two more powerful variants.

All three of the cards feature a 2048-bit memory interface and 8GB of HBM2 (high bandwidth memory). The 56 compute unit model provides 10.5TFLOPS and 3584 stream processors. The superior "64" variants have 4096 stream processors -- the air-cooled model offers 12.7TFLOPS, while the liquid-cooled version offers 13.7.

For those looking for a bit more value, AMD will also have special "packs," starting at $499, that will bundle the Vega GPU with two games -- "Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus" and "Prey." These packs can also save you money when buying with other PC components. If you need, say, a new monitor, buying one of these packs can provide savings on a Samsung CF791. Looking to build a new PC? You can get a discount on AMD Ryzen processors and motherboards.

If you are interested in purchasing one of these cards, it can be yours beginning on August 14. If you think $399 upwards is too much to spend on a graphics card, AMD's RX 500 series of cards will continue to be sold, offering solid performance at much lower prices. In other words, with Vega, the company is diversifying its offerings -- giving consumers more options. That is cool.

Will you be buying an RX Radeon Vega? Please tell me in the comments below.