Over the past few months, rumors have circulated claiming that AMD's bigger and more powerful graphics processing unit codenamed "Vega" will finally see the light of day before the end of the year. Contrary to this belief, a recently leaked slide believed to be taken from an AMD investor presentation revealed that Vega GPUs will not be released until 2017.
Regarding the launch AMD's Vega GPUs, the leaked slide has a bullet point that reads, "Will launch 'Vega' for the enthusiast market n 1H 2017."
The leaked presentation slide actually coincides with AMD's initial roadmap which was unveiled at the launch of the Polaris architecture, according to Digital Trends. Although the Vega GPU does offer promising specs and compute performance, the fact that it won't be available until the first half of 2017 is already a deterring factor and might hamper AMD's current boom in popularity brought about by the Polaris launch.
AMD is currently offering Polaris 10 and Polaris 11 GPUs. These cards are intended to target the entry-level and mid-range graphics card market which is known for high volume demands. According to Tech Spot, the most expensive in AMD's current Polaris lineup is the Radeon RX 480 8GB model which costs $240. The card is a hit for system builders and the gaming community. In fact, AMD is flooded with demands for the RX 480 that the company is having problems keeping its stock in good level.
Despite the popularity of the RX 480, AMD's current Polaris lineup is still farfetched compared to Nvidia's high-end GeForce 10 series which includes the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070. Despite the massive price tag attached to these cards, Nvidia reported that its profits were driven to record high by the GeForce 10 series. As for AMD, no card in its current lineup can rival the compute power of its GeForce counterparts. If the leaked slides hold any truth to it, this could mean that the GeForce 10 lineup will run totally unrivaled until the first half of 2017.
