Rumors Realized: MSI Radeon RX Vega Graphics Cards

After months of rumors and speculation, teased at Computex 2017, and officially announced at SIGGRAPH 2017, the AMD Radeon RX Vega graphics cards have finally made their way to third-party manufacturers, such as MSI. Using AMD’s Vega architecture, the MSI Radeon RX Vega GPUs feature HBM2 (High-Bandwidth Memory 2), which is vertically stacked VRAM. HBM2 also has a wider bus than its GDDR5 counterparts, allowing for higher bandwidth at lower clock speeds and less power.

The MSI Radeon RX Vega GPUs also support FreeSync 2 technology, which helps reduce screen tearing by dynamically adjusting the refresh rate of a FreeSync monitor to the frame rate being output by the graphics card. FreeSync 2 also features a low-latency API for HDR content, allowing a game to tone-map directly to the HDR monitor’s target luminance, contrast, and color space. The MSI Radeon RX Vega GPUs are also AMD Radeon VR Ready Premium, which means they are compatible with Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Gamers looking for the top-tier performance should opt for the MSI Radeon RX Vega 64 8G Graphics Cards. All Vega 64 models feature 8GB of HBM2 VRAM, 4,096 stream processors, a 2,048-bit memory interface, HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, and a large 484 GB/s memory bandwidth. The reference model has a 1247 MHz core clock speed and can be boosted up to 1546 MHz. It has a blower-style cooler. The Iron model has the same specs as the reference model, but it features a sleek silver design with the red Vega logo. Looking for optimal performance? The Wave model got you covered. It has a 1,406 MHz clock speed, which can be boosted up to 1677 MHz. It also features a closed-loop liquid cooling system to keep GPU temperatures down.

MSI also offers the mid-range Radeon RX Vega 56 8G Graphics Card. Like its Vega 64 big brother, the Vega 56 features 8GB of HBM2 VRAM, a 2,048-bit memory interface, and HDMI 2.0b and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs. However, the Vega 56 has slightly fewer stream processors, at 3,584 and a smaller 410 GB/s memory bandwidth. This model has a blower-style cooler.