Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) seems to have big plans for its high-end graphics processing unit. Latest leaks suggest that the company will release its Vega 10 GPUs before 2016 ends, and it will introduce Vega 11 graphics cards by the first half of next year.
The rumored Vega 10 GPU will be based on the next generation GCN graphics architecture by AMD. It will then be packing 4,096 V9 cores that are said to provide up to 12 TFLOPS computing power. It will also be able to provide a 4K capability that is most sought by gamers and possibly be called the RX 490, WCCFTech reported.
The AMD Radeon RX 490 will still be using 14nm FinFET manufacturing process, but it will now have a 16 GB HBM2 memory type. This will be the first GPU that the company will release that has the second generation High Bandwidth Memory. It is also rumored to have a 512 GB/s bandwidth and a 4,096-bit memory bus.
For comparison, the $1,200 GeForce GTX Titan X, the latest and most powerful GPU from NVIDIA that uses the Pascal architecture, contains 12 GB GDDR5X VRAM, 3,584 cores, 11 TFLOPS compute power, 480 GB/s bandwidth, and a 382-bit memory bus. It also uses a 16nm manufacturing process.
The Vega 11, on the other hand, which is actually less powerful the Vega 10, even if it has a larger brand number, is rumored to arrive during the first half of next year. An alleged RX 580 GPU will be based on the Vega 11 architecture, and it possibly offers 8 GB HBM2 VRAM, 7 TFLOPS computing power, a 1025-bit memory bus, and 256 GB/s bandwidth.
With regards to the naming scheme that started with Polaris, Raja Koduri, Chief Architect & head of AMD's Radeon Technologies Group, previously explained that Polaris 10 is actually more powerful than Polaris 11 even if it had a bigger brand number. It was simply based on the time of its development. The company developed the more powerful GPU first before the other, and this practice was carried on to the Vega line.
It is also rumored that the company is trying to develop a dual GPU set up based on Vega 10. There is not much information about this project except that it is aimed at businesses and that it will offer around 18 TFLOPS performance.
