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AMD Radeon RX 490 2016 release date latest news: Launching expected this year; Might turn out as Vega 10

Not long after the unveiling of the new AMD RX 470 and RX 480 graphics cards, the rumors are rife that the GPU manufacturing company is about to release the next RX 400 series GPU. It is expected to feature advanced graphics capabilities over its predecessors, possibly utilizing the latest Polaris architecture. However, the much anticipated RX 490 might end up being the Vega 10, using a much-advanced architecture better than Polaris.

Promotional image for the AMD Polaris architecture | AMD

As reported by WCCF Tech, the rumored AMD RX 490 is expected to be the perfect 4K gaming graphics card. The online tech publication has noted on three different occasions in which the RX 490 was leaked by AMD itself and other sources such as Sapphire. First, the upcoming GPU was shown on AMD's official website. The second time happened in the leaked official slide by AMD, and the third time was on Sapphire's website. To note, Sapphire is AMD's biggest company in-board partner in terms of manufacturing "discrete" graphics card.

Also, the yet-to-be-revealed AMD GPU was so-called the RX 490 as the leaked sliding from AMD spilled the RX 490 nomenclature for their next graphics technology. Still, there are no confirmed reports yet from AMD and Sapphire regarding any GPUs that the companies are currently developing. So far, aside from the rumors, there are no definite signs yet of an impending new RX 400 series graphics card release this year.

Regarding the specs of the RX 490, it is rumored that in able for it to match the 4K gaming requirements, it will have a large memory interface of more than 256 bit. With this, it will have greater memory interface than that of Radeon RX 480 or RX 470 graphics card.

It is also reported that the RX 490 will be Polaris 10-based just like AMD's recently unveiled GPUs, and the latest Radeon graphics card can be a formidable rival of NVIDIA's GTX 1080 someday. Lastly, it is likely that it will pick up the dual GPU solution unlike the other graphics card.

Going back to the leaked AMD sliding, KitGuru reported that a Redditor who leaked the RX 490 listing is claiming that the latest GPU will be released before the end of December 2016. This should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as other reports also claim that the Radeon RX 490 will be based on the much advanced Vega architecture. The GPU may end up being Vega 10 instead, and if this verifies, the 2016 release of the graphics card will not happen this year as the public will have to wait for Vega until 2017.