Hands-on with AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition - lampeound1949

amurray@idgcommunications.com AMD says its new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition has the potential to disrupt line art the way Ryzen has disrupted CPUs.

AMD's Radeon Lope de Vega Frontier Edition may be a graphics card for workstations, but gamers are even as eager to run across what this GPU prat differentiate us about the coming consumer version. AMD has already made a splash with its Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper CPUs, and now Lope de Vega ass aid complete a high-carrying into action puzzle. To show how the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition could benefit workstations, AMD officials gave America a hands-along prevue of one of the offse output cards.

rvfe 1 — AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition features a glowing dishonorable 'R' and blue-LED indicators that match the GPU exercis.

What it is

We've published congested details on the Radeon Lope Felix de Vega Carpio Frontier Edition, simply here's the short story: The Frontier Edition is supported AMD's new Vega core and features 16GB of advanced HBM2 Random memory. And it's a doozy in every way workable: The air-cooled card will monetary value $999, patc the clear-cooled version will price an additive $500. The air-cooled card we adage has a 300-Watt TDP, spell the liquid-cooled one demands upbound to 375 Watts.

AMD has maintained from the start that the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is not aimed at gamers, but rather at "data scientists, immersion engineers, and product designers." What that translates to is a batting order that, on paper, gives professionals to a greater extent performance for the money than the pricey Nvidia Quadro competition.

rvfe 2 — The new Radeon Vega Frontier Edition (top) is slenderly thirster than the original Radeon RX 480 (bum).

What we tried

AMD set up two PCs with identical everything: Ryzen 7 1800X CPUs, 32GB of DDR4/2400, SSDs, 4K panels, and even the same mouse and keyboard. Both machines ran Windows 10 Enterprise edition. Indefinite machine featured the current GeForce Giant Xp, piece the second machine ran one of the first tune-cooled production-level Radeon Lope Felix de Vega Carpio Frontier Version cards AMD has built.

And by "built," we normal shapely. AMD told us that for Frontier Version, the lovely blue anodized heat enshroud, Radeon logo, and glowing yellow "R" were all finished in California. So, successful in 'Murica—at least the last part. The Same isn't likely to happen with the consumer version, but it's a nice touch down.

As much as people want, wish, and conceive of Frontier Edition to be the stand-in for a gaming Radeon RX version today, it's not. AMD's premier demo was a simulated workflow in a design firm.

rvfe b — Nvidia's mighty Titan Xp happening the left and AMD's new prosumer Radeon Vega Frontier Edition on the rightfulness.

With the Frontier Variant machine running an 8K Dell panel and a second panel at 1080p, plus an HTC Vive, AMD staring up a theoretical car design in the Solidworks engineering application. Panning, spinning, and moving the car looked reasonably fast, as expected. Once the model was "done" and ready to be examined, it was exported using AMD's ProRender wa-in to Unreal Engine 4, where it could be viewed using the HTC Vive.

AMD's managing director of professional person products, Nick Pandher, said IT may seem unusual for a game engine to be paired with an engineering app, but many small- to mid-sized design firms actually operate this way today. Unlike the proprietary visualization tools that were once wholly the rage, off-the-shelf tools usage game engines such American Samoa Fabulous Engine and standard VR cogwheel.

Is it fast?

People forever want to know, "How fast?" For that, we inside-out to our pair of matched PCs and SPECViewperf, the workstation gold regular for measuring visualization performance on hardware.

In the given time we had to run tests, we saw the Frontier Variation outscore the Titan Xp past 28 per centum in Catia and Creo to 50 percent in SolidWorks. We also ran Maxon's Cinebench, a popular OpenGL benchmark, in which the Frontier Edition was about 14 percentage faster. The numbers sound reflection what we already knew about the Frontier Edition, but this time we could go through the performance demonstrations live.

Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is certainly quicker in the tests we witnessed, but to be sightly, information technology's comparing an apparently consumer-focused Colossus Xp card to the pro-plane Frontier Edition. Nvidia's Titan Xp, for example, officially works only with consumer drivers, while the company's Quadro workstation products offer very much much functioning.

rvfe c — The Radeon Lope Felix de Vega Carpio Frontier Edition features a GPU tach that communicates the cargo along the card. The DIP switches to the left over let you change the discolor of the LEDs.

Here's the riotous thing

That brings us to the disruptive part of AMD's agitate: Although powerful, Titan Xp is incomprehensive to consumer drivers. To approach the performance of the Radeon Vega Frontier Variation with an Nvidia product, you'd have to step in the lead to at to the lowest degree a $2,000 Quadro P5000. A P6000 menu, which is kind of the professional equivalent of a Titan Xp, is nearly $6,000.

AMD blames these in high spirits prices for driving many prosumers to order workstation-assort systems with bring dow-end professional cards so they can replace them with faster consumer GPUs. AMD believes the Frontier Edition can end this madness and give the company a triumphant return to the professional workstation cards.

Note that the Frontier Edition will do thusly with professional-optimized software endorse, though the drivers for the Radeon Vega Frontier Variant South Korean won't actually exist to the full certified. AMD contends that the newfangled GPU design and the HBM2 memory matter as very much like the drivers in making Radeon relevant for workstations again.

rvfe a — 3 DisplayPort 1.4 ports plus an HDMI 2.0 port grace the back of AMD's new Radeon Vega Frontier Version card.

What about gaming?

AMD didn't show U.S. wholly this out of kindness. The keep company is reasonably concerned about how gamers are size up the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. AMD cautions that consumer-class drivers are a work on in progress, and at the run a risk of repeating itself, the Frontier Edition isn't a GPU for gamers. AMD does, however, expect Frontier Edition buyers to economic consumption the card for gaming inside the context of their work. A spunky developer, for instance, would want good public presentation when testing the game he surgery she is edifice. Game performance in VR for professional visualisation will besides matter, the company says.

rvfe 6 — The Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is a power monger at 300-watt TDP for the aviation-cooled translation and 375 for liquid. Officials tell us the card sack be stacked with a 6-immobilise, overly.

Just a mouthful

While AMD didn't want to bring out any gaming performance, it united to reach the States a taste of how Radeon Vega Frontier Variant performs in gaming. Thus we switched out the 8K Dell venire for a pair of Acer 34-inch, wide-aspect 3440×1440 panels, and played games on both the Heavyweight Xp and the Radeon Vega Frontier Variation.

To show that IT wasn't just an API advantage, AMD Lashkar-e-Taiba us play Doom using Vulkan, Prey using DirectX 11, and Sniper Elect 4 using DirectX 12. All of the games were set to their highest game settings, and we played at the native resolution of the panels. Although the same panels were FreeSync-based, FreeSync was switched off connected the AMD GPU.

Shift backward and forward between the two systems, we'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the Titan Xp and the Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. Patc you'd expect such performance from a $1,000 card, many have been concerned that Vega just won't perform.

The Radeon Lope de Vega Frontier Variant (top) is roughly the same physical dimensions as an Nvidia Titan Xp.

From what we've seen, that concern is likely unwarranted. Vega FE appears to be plenty fast and, leastwise for the settings and the games we played, indistinguishable from the competition. Our original estimates after seeing Radeon Lope Felix de Vega Carpio Frontier Edition withSniper Elite 4 at Computex still hold: The cards appears to be faster than Nvidia's GTX 1080 and just about that of a GTX 1080 Titanium card.

We'll withhold final judgement until we get our own parting to try—the consumer-focused gaming bill of fare, most likely. All of the waiting will soon be finished: Radeon Vega Frontier Edition cards should start out shipping Monday, and the curtain volition finally rise on RX Vega in late July.

Update: Although pre-orders for the were set at $1,200 which AMD officials confirmed, AMD now aver the pricing of the aerate-cooled card is $1,000 with the limpid-cooled version set at $1,500.

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One of founding fathers of hardcore tech reportage, Gordon has been application PCs and components since 1998.