As rumors persist that AMD will introduce the flagship Radeon RX 490 graphics card with the Zen-based Summit Ridge processors on December 13, a freshly leaked benchmark results indicate that the GPU is fully capable of matching its assumed rival, the NVIDIA GTX 1080, in terms of performance. And the card is likely to come out as a Vega 10 GPU.
The RX 490, according to WCCFTech, scored an impressive performance by returning 8400 points based on the DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 modes of the game title Ashes of the Singularity. The benchmark result is in clear parity with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, the report added.
"This card really looks to be top-notch ... Currently, there's no GPU from AMD that comes this close in the Polaris Radeon 400 series lineup," the report said.
WCCFTech is also convinced that the RX 490 is designed as a Vega 10 GPU and will have versions in dual chip configurations but not on the Polaris 10 architecture. "Their (AMD) dual chip products are based only on high-end chips such as Fiji (Radeon Pro Duo) and Hawaii (Radeon R9 295X2)," the report said.
And with the Vega platform in the cards for the RX 490, the card will be fully supportive of game titles built around on DX12 and will virtual reality or VR capabilities. This is mostly due to the card having HBM2 memory.
It's a big possibility too that AMD will release a PRO version of the RX 490 that is geared for the Mac and MacBook Pro lineup that Apple will supposedly introduce in 2017.
The other details known so far on the upcoming Radeon card is that there will be premium editions with "bus width greater than 256 bits." And that the RX 490 when it hits the market will have a sticker price "close to the price point of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080."
It's unclear though if the RX 490 will sell at a higher or cheaper mark but it likely the latter or lower than the GTX 1080's SRP of $600 a pop.
While AMD is likely to introduce the Radeon RX 490 with the Summit Ridge CPUs and AM4 X370 Zen Motherboard on December 13, the actual release date will possibly follow a bit later if indeed the card is a Vega 10 GPU.