AMD's most advanced graphics cards for gaming, the recently announced Radeon RX Vega lineup, is available at e-tail outlets around the world starting today.

For gamers who already have an enthusiast-class PC and monitor and are looking to up-level their graphics capabilities, Radeon RX Vega 64 air-cooled cards are available today priced at $499 USD SEP. Radeon RX Vega 56 graphics cards are expected to be available August 28th, priced at $399 USD SEP, representing a more affordable way to get into enthusiast-class gaming on "Vega" architecture.

Radeon Packs2 are also available now for a limited time in select regions, with the Radeon Black Pack featuring the Radeon RX Vega 64 air-cooled card priced at $599 USD SEP, and the Radeon Aqua Pack featuring the Radeon RX Vega 64 Liquid Cooled Edition - the most powerful of the Radeon RX Vega graphics cards - priced at $699 USD SEP. Radeon Packs offer a discount of up to $200 from participating retailers on the purchase of select Radeon FreeSync-capable monitors for smooth frame rates, a $100 discount from participating retailers on the purchase of select Ryzen 7 1800X processor + X370 motherboard combos, and two games in soon-to-be-released Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Prey 3 (an estimated $120 USD retail value).

Radeon RX Vega graphics cards employ High Bandwidth Cache composed of 8GB of HBM2 memory. The graphics cards feature capabilities like Rapid Packed Math, the High Bandwidth Cache Controller and new Geometry and Pixel Engines to better harness low-level APIs and excel in DirectX 12 and Vulkan games.

The graphics cards support display technologies including Radeon FreeSync technology for HDR gaming. And Radeon Software brings the graphics cards to life, enabling features and stability.

Performance

According to various reviews that have surfaced online, the Radeon RX Vega 64 card goes on average neck-and-neck with the GeForce GTX 1080 in gaming performance at 3840x2160. On the other hand, AMD's GTX 1080-like performance doesn?t come cheap from a power perspective. The Vega 64 has a board power rating of 295W and compared to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, AMD's card consumes 110W or more Watts at 1080 gaming. In terms of pricing, AMD wins the game over the GeForce GTX 1080.

The Radeon RX Vega 56 delivers around 90% of Vega 64's performance for 80% of the price. Furthermore, when compared with the GeForce GTX 1070, its closest competition, the Vega 56 enjoys a small performance advantage.

But again, its power consumption is still notably worse than the GTX 1070's by anywhere between 45W and 75W at the wall.

AMD's $399 MSRP is rather aggressive, especially when GTX 1070 cards are retailing for closer to $449 due to cryptocurrency miner demand.