AMD Radeon RX 490 release date, specs rumors: GPU to be revealed in 2016?

AMD is currently trying to catch up with rival Nvidia and create the more powerful graphics card in the industry. Reports are saying that AMD is planning to announce its latest GPU, the Radeon RX 490, within the year.

Reports say that speculations of the release started sprouting online after the graphics card was spotted on AMD's official website as well as Sapphire's website. It was listed as part of a promotion that was going to end on New Year's Eve, so a lot of fans are very excited to see the GPU hit shelves soon. Some are still weary, however, and think that though the RX 490 will be announced on Dec. 31, the card will find its way to shelves in 2017.

As for specs, rumors are suggesting that the 490 will come with next-gen Vega 10 architecture. Some others, however, report that the 490 will instead come with Polaris-based architecture. Having the Vega 10 tech would make the RX 490 more powerful than any GPU that came before it in its series, but since the RX 480 ran on the Polaris 10 GPU configuration, the 490 may as well follow suit.

According to Video Cardz, the RX 490 will have 9,830 GFLOPS of computing power and it will have a base clock of 1,200 MHz. It also has a dual-GPU system and a memory bandwith of 716.8 GB/s. There is also said to be a PCI-Express 3.0x16 interface and a memory size of 8,196 MB. The GPU is also said to be powerful enough to handle 4K and Virtual Reality gaming as well.

With specs like that, AMD is sure to be a powerful contender for Nvidia. The company is planning to release the GTX 1080 Ti in early 2017, and with AMD's probable release in 2016, the RX 490 may just get a headstart on the competition.