AMD Radeon RX 490 Specs, Rumors: Next-gen Card May Be Vega-based Or Polaris-based GPU [VIDEO]

AMD unveiled to its investors a Vega GPU architecture that will carry the name RX 490. However, the graphics card's release date is still in question, depending on the type of GPU that it will be used on RX 490: the new GCN architecture or the current Polaris GPU.

The 4K-focused RX 490 has been teased on both AMD and partner Sapphire's websites, hinting at a release later this year. Now AMD Radeon RX 490 is confined between dual-GPU cards, with a pair of Polaris cards jammed into one board, and the first iteration of the company's new Vega graphics architecture.

According to a leak provided by Videocardz, the Radeon RX 490 will be powered by Vega 10, AMD's high-end graphics processing unit (GPU), wherein the card will have 4,096 processor cores, 256 texture mapping units, as well as 64 render output units.

Following the same report, the RX 490 will consist of second-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM2), which will have random access memory (RAM) of 8,196 MB storage capacity. The card will also house a 1,200 MHz base clock and a 350 MHz memory clock.

In addition, the upcoming Radeon RX 490 is also expected to have an 8196 MB HBM2 memory size with 4096-bit memory bus width and 716.8 GB/s memory bandwidth.

However, PCGamesN reported that AMD may still stick with the current Polaris GPU in order to make its 2016 release. Based on AMD's chief gaming scientist, Richard Huddy, he explained how the graphics card's naming system emphasize the expected features for AMD.

RX translates that the device is powered by a processing power of more than 1.5TFLOPs that can accelerate up to 60 frames per second at 1080p in popular titles like "DOTA 2" and "LOL."

In addition, the number '4' refers to the fourth generation GCN architecture, which seems to indicate that the Radeon RX 480 may still be Polaris-based after all. The '9' refers to the ninth tier of gaming, which targets a memory bus of more than 256 bits focused on 4K gaming. This would mean that the upcoming RX 490 may deliver enough powerful features to provide a decent gaming experience at the highest possible resolution.

As of now, AMD has yet to announce the official release date and specs of the RX 490 so fans should take the reports as speculations.