Hot on the heels of the AMD Radeon RX Vega launch, Asus has announced its initial product lineup based upon this graphics technology. Its phased rollout will start with a pair of reference design RX Vega 64 graphics cards. Then, a couple of weeks later, eager Radeon fans will be able to purchase Asus exclusive Strix RX Vega 64 designs. Asus will release two Strix cards but at the time of writing we don’t know the differences between them, as certain specs are ‘TBD’ and no other differences have been described.
Asus branded reference cards
Asus will release its pair of Radeon RX Vega 64 reference cards on 14th August. We have the worldwide release date but Asus hasn’t been forthcoming with its pricing strategy: prices will be “announced shortly,” it says.
This product pairing will be made up of a water cooled and an air cooled edition (black/silver). The specification tables of these respective products can be found below for your perusal. Obviously the water cooled version has better clock speeds out of the box with GPU base/boost of 1406/1677MHz, compared to 1247/1546MHz of the air cooled reference card.
| ASUS RX Vega64 Water Cooled Edition | ASUS RX Vega64 Air Cooled Edition (Black/Silver Editions) |
| (RXVEGA64-O8G-LIQUID) | (RXVEGA64-8G) (RXVEGA64-8G-SILVER) |
| PCI Express® 3.0 | PCI Express® 3.0 |
| OpenGL® 4.5 | OpenGL® 4.5 |
| Stream Processors 4096 | Stream Processors 4096 |
| Boost Clock 1677MHz | Boost Clock 1546MHz |
| Base Clock 1406MHz | Base Clock 1247MHz |
| 8GB HBM2 memory | 8GB HBM2 memory |
| Memory Clock 945MHz (1.9Gbos) | Memory Clock 945MHz (1.9Gbos) |
| 2048-bit memory interface | 2048-bit memory interface |
| 1 x HDMI 2.0 | 1 x HDMI 2.0 |
| 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 | 3 x DisplayPort 1.4 |
Strix RX Vega 64 arrives early September
Asus will bring its Strix technology to bear upon AMD’s RX Vega graphics card design in “early September,” it has announced. A pair of Strix RX Vega 64 cards will release worldwide at this time.
You can see an example of one of these custom cooler cards embedded above. However, Asus hasn’t given us a lot of info about what kinds of benefits end users might see in these particular products. Strix card fans don’t spin up unless necessary – that much we know from previous products. Unfortunately, Asus has left the base/boost clocks marked as ‘TBD’ and we don’t know pricing either.
| ROG Strix RX Vega64 OC Edition | ROG Strix RX Vega64 |
| ROG-STRIX-RXVEGA64-O8G-GAMING | (ROG-STRIX-RXVEGA64-8G-GAMING) |
| PCI Express® 3.0 | PCI Express® 3.0 |
| OpenGL® 4.5 | OpenGL® 4.5 |
| 8GB HBM2 memory | 8GB HBM2 memory |
| 2048-bit memory interface | 2048-bit memory interface |
| Boost Clock – TBD | Boost Clock – TBD |
| Base Clock – TBD | Base Clock – TBD |
| 1 x DVI-D | 1 x DVI-D |
| 2 x HDMI 2.0 | 2 x HDMI 2.0 |
| 2 x DisplayPort 1.4 | 2 x DisplayPort 1.4 |
Looking at the above we can see that the Asus Strix RX Vega 64 cards offer a different output port config compared to reference. Their 1x DVI-D, 2x HDMI 2.0, plus 2x DP 1.4 arrangement compared against reference designs with 1x HDMI 2.0 plus 2x DP 1.4. If you are going to attach a VR HMD the 2x HDMI 2.0 is more convenient.
Strix cards also feature Asus Aura Sync RGB LED technology that can synchronize colours and effects across a complete PC system. Whichever Asus card you buy, reference or Strix design you get exclusive GPU Tweak II software with XSplit Gamecaster. Asus says its Strix RX Vega 64 cards will be available worldwide from early September.