31score
#87 of 131
Overall rank
AMDEntry

Radeon Vega Frontier Edition

3.5 · 12 votes
Best for 1080p esports gaming

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VRAM
16 GB
CUDA
4,096
FP32
13.11 TF
Bandwidth
483.8 GB/s
TDP
300W
Boost
1600 MHz
Strengths at a Glance

How it stacks up to the flagship

Each metric is shown as a percentage of the GeForce RTX 5090 D, the strongest card we track.

FP32 compute13.11 TFLOPS13%
vs RTX 5090 D: 104.8 TFLOPS
Memory bandwidth483.8 GB/s27%
vs RTX 5090 D: 1790 GB/s
VRAM capacity16 GB50%
vs RTX 5090 D: 32 GB
Shading units4,09619%
vs RTX 5090 D: 21,760
Power efficiency14/10024%
vs RTX 5090 D: 58/100
Synthetic Benchmarks

Estimated benchmark results

Each result is shown as a share of the RTX 5090 D's score in the same test.

3DMark Time Spy11,160pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 36,000 pts
3DMark Port Royal (RT)4,860pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 18,000 pts
Blender (samples/min)1,456spm
vs RTX 5090 D: 5,200 spm
Geekbench Compute57,600pts
vs RTX 5090 D: 240,000 pts

Performance breakdown

Gaming31
Ray tracing27
AI / Compute24
Creator / 3D28
Power efficiency14
Real-World Gaming

FPS Across Resolutions

1080p · Ultra preset1440p · Ultra preset4K · Ultra preset
Cyberpunk 2077avg 27 fps
1080p
37
1440p
27
4K
17
Call of Duty: MW IIIavg 38 fps
1080p
51
1440p
38
4K
24
Alan Wake 2avg 22 fps
1080p
30
1440p
22
4K
14
Forza Horizon 5avg 39 fps
1080p
53
1440p
39
4K
25
Baldur's Gate 3avg 32 fps
1080p
43
1440p
32
4K
20
Community Feedback

What Owners Say

Owners like the huge memory buffer for pro workloads. The usual gripe is it runs hot and loud under load, and drivers were flaky for gaming.

Pros
  • Giant frame buffer for heavy tasks
  • Runs hot but handles big loads
  • Quiet under moderate gaming loads
  • Fast for its era in compute
Cons
  • Drivers were never gaming optimized
  • Runs hot under sustained heavy load
  • Noisy stock cooler at full speed

Supported technologies

AV1 Encode

Full specifications

Graphics processor
Architecture
GCN 5.0
Process node
14 nm
Transistors
12.5 B
Compute Units
64
Release date
2017
Launch price
$999
Core configuration
CUDA Cores
4,096
TMUs
256
ROPs
64
L2 cache
4 MB
Memory
Size
16 GB
Type
HBM2
Bus width
2048-bit
Bandwidth
483.8 GB/s
Memory clock
945 MHz
Clocks & throughput
Base clock
1382 MHz
Boost clock
1600 MHz
FP32 (float)
13.11 TFLOPS
FP16 (half)
13.11 TFLOPS
Pixel rate
102 GPixel/s
Texture rate
409.6 GTexel/s
Board & power
TDP
300W
Suggested PSU
550W
Power connectors
2x 8-pin
Bus interface
PCIe 3.0 x16
Length
267 mm
Slot width
2-slot
Display & outputs
Max resolution
7680×4320
Outputs
1x HDMI, 3x DisplayPort

API and SDK support

DirectX
12 (12_1)
Shader Model
6.4
OpenGL
4.6
OpenCL
2.0
Vulkan
1.1.125
Verdict

Our verdict on the Vega Frontier Edition

The AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition is a first-gen workstation card that runs hot and loud while offering massive memory for compute tasks.

Get it if you need a pro workstation card for compute tasks and can find one cheap used. Skip it if you want a modern gaming GPU, as it lacks gaming drivers and runs hot.

Buy it if…

  • You need lots of video memory for compute but not gaming.
  • You are building a vintage workstation for early machine learning experiments.
  • You collect rare AMD professional cards from the late 2010s.
3.5

12 votes

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