After previous whispers about AMD’s incoming Radeon RX 490 flagship graphics card, the rumor mill is now claiming that the board will not only be revealed, but actually launched as soon as next month.
This is the word from Wccftech.com, which cites sources claiming that the RX 490 will be both announced and released on sale on the same day in December.
Of course, we need to throw in the usual caveats about this being speculation, and such a launch does seem very close to hand – it’s December next week, after all – given how little else we’ve heard about the graphics card.
For its part, Wccftech.com points out that the 490 has already been spotted on various graphics card vendor websites (Sapphire for example) and on AMD’s official listings, too, so everything appears to be in place for a launch, the site theorizes.
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Polaris or Vega?
There’s also some discussion about whether the RX 490 – which will aim to cope admirably with 4K gaming – will be a dual GPU using Polaris tech (current-gen), or whether it will move to Vega.
Wccftech.com reckons Vega isn’t ready for this early a launch, so the graphics card will be Polaris 10-based. Again, this is more speculation, the good news being that at least we’ll know soon enough whether these rumors are true or not, given the timeframe involved here.
Whatever happens, AMD will, of course, want to keep up with Nvidia’s impressive GTX 1080. As we saw recently, at the other end of the market, when Nvidia launched its GTX 1050 and 1050 Ti budget cards at the end of last month, AMD instigated pre-emptive price cuts on its Radeon RX 470 and RX 460 cards to ensure they remained competitive.
