AMD's enthusiast Vega with 8GB HBM2 will launch in May

AMD is set to launch its next-gen Vega graphics cards in May, with an event just before Computex - just as the Polaris-based Radeon RX 400 series cards were unveiled in Macau, just before Computex 2016. If you haven't seen my '5 reasons why AMD's next-gen Vega is going to kick ass' article, you should - and then come back here to enjoy the rest.

We're hearing that AMD will launch its enthusiast SKU of the Vega 10-based GPU, powered by 8GB of HBM2 memory. 8GB might not sound like much, but if you want to read how it will be impressive - I have teased a little about High Bandwidth Cache (HBC) - which is a large part of how AMD is going to dominate the GPU game in 2017, and beyond.

As for pricing, I think we're going to be looking at around $799-$899 for the Vega 10 graphics card with 8GB of HBM2, which should slot right next to my expected $899 pricing on the GTX 1080 Ti from NVIDIA. We should expect reference cards from AMD that are deliciously sexy, and very powerful - offering 4K 60FPS performance from a single GPU.

Vega 10 Specifications

This is where AMD should fight against NVIDIA in the GTX 1070, GTX 1080 and upcoming GTX 1080 Ti.

GPU: 14nm Vega 10 (64 NCUs)

Performance: 12 TFLOPs of single precision performance (750 GFLOPS of double precision)

GPU clock speeds: 1465MHz on reference, 1600MHz+ on AIB partner cards

RAM: 8-16GB of HBM2 (512GB/sec bandwidth)

PCIe: PCIe 3.0 x16

TDP: 225W

Release: May/June 2016

Dual Vega 10 Specifications

Reduced clock speeds, but dual Vega 10 GPUs - 4-stack HBM2, so 1TB/sec memory bandwidth (16-32GB)

GPU: 14nm Vega 10 (64 NCUs) x 2 (128 NCUs total)

Performance: 24 TFLOPs (12 TFLOPs per GPU) of single precision performance (1.5 TFLOPs of double precision)

GPU clock speeds: 1200MHz+ reference only

RAM: 16-32GB of HBM2 (1024GB/sec bandwidth)

PCIe: PCIe 3.0 x16

TDP: 300W

Release: Late 2017

Vega 20 Specifications

Professional/workstation card, the Titan X of AMD's Vega line up in a way. Shaders are set up differently on Vega 20, so we should see some exciting things with the shift to 7nm and the compute performance. If we do hit 20TFLOPs+ of single precision, we're in for a world of performance on the workstation side of things before Navi hits in late-2018, early 2019.

GPU: 7nm Vega 20 (64 NCUs)

Performance: Interesting - 35-40TFLOPs half precision (20TFLOPs+ of single precision)

GPU clock speeds: Faster clock speeds, nothing concrete

RAM: 16-32GB of HBM2 (1024GB/sec bandwidth)

PCIe: PCIe 4.0 x16 host connection

TDP: 150-300W

Release: First half 2018

Navi 10 Estimated Specifications

Navi will be arriving in a single- and dual-GPU card with Navi 10 and Navi 10 x2, with the dual-GPU variant set to be an absolute monster.

GPU: 7nm Navi 10 (128 NCUs)

Performance: 50TFLOPs+ half precision, 30TFLOPs single precision

GPU clock speeds: Unknown

RAM: 16-128GB of "Nexgen Memory"

PCIe: PCIe 4.0 x16 host connection

TDP: 150-300W

Release: 2019+

Dual Navi 10 Estimated Specifications

This is just nuts, maybe some of this will hit - with my estimates, it'll be interesting to come back to this in 2 years time.

GPU: 7nm Navi 10 (128 NCUs) x 2 (256 NCUs total)

Performance: 100TFLOPs+ half precision, 60TFLOPs single precision

GPU clock speeds: Unknown

RAM: 32-256GB of "Nexgen Memory"

PCIe: PCIe 4.0 x16 host connection

TDP: 150-300W

Release: 2019+