AMD: Vega is “On Track” for Q2 Release

Following a surprise reveal on Facebook that RX Vega graphics cards are due out within the next two months, AMD has now officially confirmed its intention to release the hardware during the second-quarter of 2017. In an announcement regarding the company’s revenue performance during the Q1 2017, AMD mentions that Vega is still “on track to launch in Q2.”

“AMD’s “Vega” GPU architecture is on track to launch in Q2, and has been designed from scratch to address the most data- and visually-intensive next-generation workloads with key architecture advancements including: a differentiated memory subsystem, next-generation geometry pipeline, new compute engine, and a new pixel engine,” the company says.

Regarding AMD’s financial showing during the first-quarter of 2017, the company actually made an operating loss of $29 million and a net loss of $73 million, despite an 18% year-over-year revenue growth. Being first-quarter, though, these figures barely cover the release for AMD’s successful Ryzen 7 processors, which launched in March, nor any of last month’s Ryzen 5 sale. AMD has reportedly increased desktop sales by $152 million this year, thanks to Ryzen; conversely, Intel has seen a drop of $150 million in its desktop sales over the same period.

“We achieved 18 percent year-over-year revenue growth driven by strong demand for our high performance Ryzen CPUs as well as graphics processors,” AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su said. “We are positioned for solid revenue growth and margin expansion opportunities across the business in the year ahead as we bring innovation, performance, and choice to an expanding set of markets.”

A Q2 launch for Vega still means we could be waiting up to two months for the graphics cards to ship. An official reveal at Computex 2017, which runs from 30^th May-1^st June, seems a likely proposition.