AMD Launches Its 13.1 TFLOPS Radeon Vega FE Graphics Card, Prices It At An Impressive $999 USD

Hot on the heels of launching its hugely anticipated EPYC server processor lineup, AMD has now officially launched its first Vega-based graphics card, called Radeon Vega Frontier Edition. While the card doesn’t carry the “Pro” moniker of the company’s other workstation cards, Vega FE is in fact a pro card; one that caters not just to visualization, but also machine learning.

A couple of weeks ago, an etailer leaked prospective pricing, and as AMD now confirms, that pricing wasn’t SRP. Whereas this etailer listed the air-cooled Vega FE for $1,199, AMD’s official pricing is $999. The same $200 drop is seen with the liquid-cooler pricing, which sits at $1,499 (this version will be available in Q3).

AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition liquid cooled version

At $999, Vega FE’s pricing is interesting, for good reasons. For a card of this caliber, I would not have been surprised if that leaked $1,199 price tag was correct. It’s faster than the circa 2017 Radeon Pro Duo, which costs the exact same. While the Pro Duo is equipped with a combined 32GB framebuffer, Vega FE’s 16GB HBM2 delivers significantly more bandwidth (483GB/s vs. 224GB/s).

The fact that this card is catered towards the machine learning market meant that AMD could have charged an up-front premium. And, if not that, then there could be a premium for the simple fact that this is the first Vega card to ever be released. No one can say that AMD is price gouging with this one. For its price point and feature set, this is one downright drool-worthy card.

AMD Radeon Pro Duo (2017)

AMD's Radeon Vega Frontier Edition Workstation Graphics Card

AMD Radeon Pro Duo (2017)

AMD's Radeon Pro Duo Workstation Graphics Card (2017)

Radeon Pro WX 7100

AMD's Radeon Pro WX 7100 Workstation Graphics Card

Radeon Pro WX 5100

AMD's Radeon Pro WX 5100 Workstation Graphics Card

Radeon Pro WX 4100

AMD's Radeon Pro WX 4100 Workstation Graphics Card

Radeon Pro WX 4100

AMD's Radeon Pro WX 3100 Workstation Graphics Card

Radeon Pro WX 4100

AMD's Radeon Pro WX 2100 Workstation Graphics Card

To harp on pricing a bit more, AMD says that the Vega FE delivers “unmatched” total cost of ownership (hard to disagree with). Combine that with its ROCm platform, which can accelerate software and solutions development, the Vega FE is looking mighty attractive.

Interestingly, AMD used this launch to reveal a neat update to its Radeon Pro driver. Now, inside the driver’s UI, users will be able to switch between “Radeon Pro” and “Gaming” mode. When Gaming mode is selected, it could deliver better performance in certain creation workloads, and especially gaming (as would be expected). It’s not clear if the gaming mode inherits the same per-title optimizations as the driver Radeon gamers download, but I’ve shot off an inquiry to AMD to (hopefully) find out.

Also worth noting is that AMD has just launched the first production versions of its ProRender plugin for both Blender and SolidWorks. Full details can be found at AMD’s ProRender blog.