AMD RX 490 Powerful Specs: Very Likely to be Polaris-Based Card, Not Vega - GTX 1070 Competitor Released Soon?

There is not much information that we can dig from the upcoming Radeon RX 490. AMD remains mum but we have analyzed all the rants, leaks and the meaning behind the number '490' itself.

You may have heard the rumors that stated AMD RX 490 could be a Vega based graphics card. However, judging from the codename, it is very likely for RX 490 to be built with Polaris architecture.

AMD RX 490 - a Polaris-based graphics card with powerful performance?

470 and 480 use the fourth generation of AMD graphics GPU. And the fourth generation is codenamed Polaris, TechPowerUp reported. Although this may be very basic information about graphics card naming, but it could give us a clue on what could be the RX 490. Hence, it is very likely to be Polaris-based graphics card instead of the speculated Vega.

AMD could be still crafting the path to a Vega-GPU architecture, as speculated by Pcgamesn. The Vega card could bear the codename RX 5xx instead of RX 4xx.

AMD Radeon RX 490 could be a dual-GPU card that beat GTX 1070 or GTX 1080

AMD RX 480 is already in the highest performance using Polaris 10 GPU. However, the graphics card cannot deliver 4K performance. On the other hand, RX 490 is expected to be categorized in VR segment. So, if RX 490 is not a Vega-based and Polaris is not VR-ready - what it's going to be? The speculation points to the use of dual-GPU in RX 490 with Polaris-based architecture.

It would make sense that the AMD RX 490 will be a powerful beast comparable to GTX 1070 or possibly GTX 1080.

AMD RX 490 release date: Possible in late 2016 or early 2017

AMD remains quiet about RX 490 although many leaks hint to the release date. VideoCardz has listed the yet-to-be-released graphics card with launch schedule "in the fourth quarter of this year" as reported by University Herald.