• The upcoming AMD Radeon RX 490 is said to be Vega-based.

The upcoming AMD Radeon RX 490 is said to be Vega-based. (Photo : YouTube/AdoredTV)

AMD's new flagship graphics card, the Radeon RX 490, is reportedly set for a release date no later than December 2016. The latest information indicates that the GPU, touted as AMD's answer to the NVIDIA GTX 1080, is scheduled for same day introduction and rollout.

But when exactly the RX 490 will debut this coming December was not mentioned in the new report by WCCFTech. "We have just received further reports that the card will not only be announced in December, but will be launched in December as well ... The card has been listed on AIB websites (and even AMD Official) for quite some while now - so everything appears to be ready," the report said.

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In the same report, WCCFTech said that as rival to the GTX 1080, the RX 490 is chiefly designed as a premium 4K card that is specifically focused on the virtual reality or VR platform. Firing up the card's 4K rendering capabilities is believed to be its Polaris 10 architecture, which indicates that the GPU will have "a net total of 4609 stream processors."

The RX 490 bus width is said to exceed 256 bits but how exactly the report did not specify.

Earlier rumors have suggested that AMD will be based the RX 490 on Vega 10 but that would be unlikely for two telling reasons. The possibility alone that the card is about to come out next month makes it a Polaris 10 GPU. "The only way the RX 490 ends up being a Vega 10 GPU (assuming AMD did not fast-track it) is if it arrives next year," WCCFTech said.

Also, the same post is convinced that the RX 490 is a Polaris dual-GPU solution due to its supposed VR-dedicated feature. "Since the card is especially focused towards VR, dual-GPU solutions have a unique advantage since they can dedicate one processor for each eye," the report said.

As for the Radeon RX 490 sticker price on release date, the benchmark is likely that of the NVIDIA GTX 1080. As a flagship card, WCCFTech said the RX 490 will be pricier than the RX 480 but certainly not surpassing that of the GTX 1080, which NVIDIA introduced at $600.