While much if not all of the focus is on the RX 480 and its upcoming June 29th launch, there are a few other releases looming on the horizon. Nvidia is likely preparing their mainstream GTX 1060/1060Ti solution while AMD is working on their flagship Vega graphics cards. Set to arrive with HBM2, Vega is set to go head to head against the GTX 1080 or even the GTX 1080 Ti whenever that card arrives. Luckily for AMD fans, the new GPUs may be coming sooner than expected.
According to AMD’s Radeon Technologies Group head Raja Koduri, he will be headed to Shanghai “in Vega mode”. Given his choice of words, it’s likely some business to do with new GPUs. Based off of a visual analysis of AMD’s roadmap, Vega looked to be arriving in early 2017. However, it could also be late 2016 as well. Some rumours have pointed to late October as being a potential launch date. This would allow AMD to quickly tie up both the mainstream and enthusiast market segments.
It’s important to keep in mind though that even if Raja is teasing Vega business, the cards may still be a while away. The only possible limitations are 14nm fab capacity, die yields and HBM2 supply. Given that with Samsung and GlobalFoundries working on the relatively mature 14nm process, and HBM2 in full production, the reasonable factor left is market timing. Hopefully, we’ll see Vega sooner rather than later.
If this is the ES, they will want to do some testing before committing to production candidates and production ramping, and that would take about 3 months start to finish. So I think that October would be optimistic, November should be possible.