LEAKED: Imminent AMD Radeon RX 490 Release Date as Vega 10, Polaris 12 GPUs Hurdle South Korea’s RRA Certification?

Will AMD press the release date button for the rumored Radeon RX 490 graphics card real soon as freshly leaked details indicate the confirmed certification of upcoming Vega 10 and Polaris 12 GPUs? It's highly likely that alongside the flagship RX 490, the giant chipmaker will also introduce more affordable cards in the Radeon RX 400 series, a new report said.

That the RX 490 coming out soon was seemingly confirmed by the news from South Korea, according to WCCFTech, adding that the country's National Radio Research Agency (RRA) has certified two sets of graphics cards from AMD and identified to belong with the Vega 10 and Polaris 12 chip architectures. For the latter, it's assumed that the cards will be that of the mid-range RX 460 and 470, which the same tech publication said will certainly hit the market in the early months of 2017.

As for the Vega 10 GPU, the flagship RX 490 would be the same bet as the card was reported earlier to be part of AMD's newest graphics platform. Per the same WCCFTech report, the RRA certification certainly translates to a virtually finalized RX 490 in terms of specifications and design.

"The certification also marks the final stages of the design of a particular GPU (no changes can be made after this certification is received)," the report said. Essentially, the RRA certification is the last phase prior to the commercial debut of any silicon-based electronics.

But WCCFTech also made clear that while the RX 490 is likely to come out in the immediate months and even weeks to come, the final labeling is still subject to change. "We can safely expect at least one of these to power the upcoming RX 490 flagship (or whatever it ends up being called)," the report said.

And even as the definitive rollout timing of the RX 490 remains unknown, graphics card enthusiasts have somewhat clear ideas of the things to expect. One is that the card will surely impress the gaming crowd with full support for 4K resolution and virtual reality of VR capabilities.

The RRA certification also effectively confirmed that the RX 490 is not a dual-GPU Polaris 10 card and instead designed for the more advanced, powerful and efficient Vega 10 platform.

More importantly, the Radeon RX 490 is fast shaping up as AMD's direct answer to NVIDIA's flagship GeForce GTX 1080. Speculations are rife that on release date, the RX 490 will out-perform the GTX 1080 while selling a tad lower than the latter's SRP of $600 a pop.