Friday, November 25th 2016
AMD Readies Radeon RX 490 for December?
A spectacular rumor doing rounds has AMD sign 2016 off with a new high-end graphics card launch. The company could launch the Radeon RX 490 by the end of the year, according to an Guru3D report. This SKU could either be based on the larger Vega 10 silicon, or be a dual-GPU on a stick graphics card based on a pair of Polaris 10 "Ellesmere" chips. The former seems more likely as multi-GPU support among recent AAA game launches is dwindling. Earlier this year, AMD inadvertently leaked the SKU name Radeon RX 490 on its website.
If the Radeon RX 490 is based on the Vega 10, then it could feature 4,096 stream processors based on the "Vega" architecture, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 4096-bit HBM2 memory interface, holding 8 GB or 16 GB of memory, with a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. If instead it is a dual-GPU card based on Polaris 10, then you could be looking at 2x 2,304 stream processors, and 16 GB of GDDR5 memory across two 256-bit wide memory interfaces.
Source:
Guru3D
If the Radeon RX 490 is based on the Vega 10, then it could feature 4,096 stream processors based on the "Vega" architecture, 256 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 4096-bit HBM2 memory interface, holding 8 GB or 16 GB of memory, with a memory bandwidth of 512 GB/s. If instead it is a dual-GPU card based on Polaris 10, then you could be looking at 2x 2,304 stream processors, and 16 GB of GDDR5 memory across two 256-bit wide memory interfaces.
112 Comments on AMD Readies Radeon RX 490 for December?
Just sticking GDDR5X on RX480 isn't gonna be RX 490, I'll give you that as a guarantee right now. RX480 is already well treated VRAM wise, well balanced overall, and core OC's deliver while memory OC's don't do much for most games.
Given the stream processor count I really don't see a 1070 competitor. And I also think we are forgetting an extremely important little detail: the real 1070 contender is already out and its called Fury X. AMD still wants to get rid of that stock and they go for cheap. In addition, a SMART AMD would position their high end-entry card a noticeable margin above the 1070 at a similar price point, because it will both be pushing the 1080 out of the arena and at the same time make 1070 obsolete. The 1070 and 1080 are about 25% apart in performance, if they were to position it somewhere round the middle @ stock clocks that would allow a 'OC to 1080 perf' card for a 1070 price, which is going to be a big winner in this segment, because everyone does that little OC. Matter of fact if they go down that route (wishful thinking I know, but still, it makes some sense) they may well have a '970 sales killer' on their hands. AMD has got the momentum PR-wise right now.
I'm talking commercial binned chips that go into Embedded chipsets in small form factor equipment where there is not much cooling. Those chips are capable of much higher clockspeeds, but the silicon process is new and there weren't enough yields of high quality chips to supply the consumer market.
HBM is 512GB/s as in current Fiji aka Fury/Nano
I'm excited more for what HBM and Zen will bring to the CPU side.
It is also possible that this is vega, but I doubt it. I doubt that HBM2 is ready for production, and I doubt AMD was able to accelerate VEGA that quickly.
Yea, it's called the RX 480 and it's no 970 killer if you look at AMD's loss of market share.... to nVIDIA.
I Feel you will see this in AMD over the next 2 years.