AMD to delay the release of its upcoming high-end graphics card, the RX 490. Reports, as well as rumors circulating the web put the release date in mid-2017.
Although the AMD RX 480 is listed to release during 2016, as part of a promotion both on AMD and Sapphire websites, Vega 10 architecture, on which the RX 490 is based on, is scheduled for release sometime during mid-2017.
Since the RX 490 should be the first Vega 10-based video card from AMD, the release date placed in 2016 is just impossible. If earlier reports are true, and the RX 490 indeed is the first Vega-10 based video card, it just can’t be released during 2016. The mid-2017 release date is more probable since AMD will probably unveil Vega-10 architecture alongside RX 490.
The card, reportedly, is made for 4K resolution gaming (if you remember, the RX 480 is 1080p/60fps video card), and should bring unmatched virtual reality performance. The card’s base clock is 1,200 MHz for GPU, with the memory clock being 350 MHz (1,400 MHz effective). According to Videocardz, the card should have an incredible 4096-bit memory bus width, and should sport 8 GB (or maybe even 16 GB) of vRAM; with bandwidth being 716.8 GB/s (this is possible because a new generation of HBM2 memory is used on the RX 490). The computational power should be 9,830 GFLOPS. If the rumored specs prove to be true, the RX 490 could end up being more powerful than the GTX 1080.
Since the card will battle Nvidia GTX 1080 and GTX 1070, the price should be a bit lower than the price of NVidia GTX 1080, which sells for $700 at the moment. Since the RX 580, one of the best mid-range video cards available sells for under $300, we can expect for AMD Radeon RX 490 to sport a price that will be noticeably lower than the price GTX 1080 sells for. Now, all we can do is to wait for 2017 to see what AMD has in store for us with Vega 10 architecture and the RX 490 video card.