AMD might be prepping up their Radeon RX 490 graphics card for launch this month. The card has just been listed over at a retail site and mentions a product launch during second half of 2016.
AMD Radeon RX 490 Listed Online - A High-End, Enthusiast Aimed Graphics Card Built For 4K AAA / VR Gaming
The AMD Radeon RX 490 is a new graphics card and allegedly, the fastest of the Radeon RX 400 series lineup. The Radeon RX 490 is an enthusiast aimed graphics card that will be able to power AAA experiences at up to 4K resolutions and also run VR titles smoothly. AMD RX 490 may be part of the Radeon RX 400 series line up but it isn't confirmed if it will be based on Polaris or Vega GPU architecture.
The listing mentions the new card as the AMD Radeon RX 490 with a product launch mentioned for 2nd half of 2016. The card also supports Crossfire functionality but that doesn't tells us whether it is a single chip or dual chip based card since dual chip cards from AMD also support Crossfire. The interesting thing is that AMD might show a glimpse of the new card at an upcoming event which is centered around their Zen based Summit Ridge processors.
The event marked as "New Horizon" will be live streamed on 13th December and will include live demos and details of the new processors. But we can expect some information on the new cards too. It makes sense to announce details of a new card at the 13th December event since AMD has no event planned after that until CES 2017.
AMD Radeon RX 490 Expected Details:
- The card will target the 4K resolution and be the go-to graphics card for VR.
- Top cards will have a bus width greater than 256 bits.
- It will be based on either a dual-GPU Polaris 10 design (rumor) or Vega 10.
- Its going to be close to the price point of the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080.
AMD Next Generation Vega 10, 11, 20 and Dual GPU Graphics Card Rumored Lineup:
| WCCFTech | Polaris 10 | Vega 11 | Vega 10 | Vega 10 Dual GPU | Vega 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 2016 | 2017 | 2017 | 2017 | 2018 |
| Process | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET | 14nm FinFET | 7nm FinFET |
| Transistors In Billions | 5.7 | TBA | TBA | TBA | TBA |
| Stream Processors | 2304 | 2304+ (est.) | 4096 | 8192 | 4096 |
| Clock Speed | 1266 Mhz | TBA | 1526 Mhz | 1100 Mhz+ (est.) | 1800 Mhz+ (est.) |
| Performance | 5.8 TFLOPS | TBA | 12.5 TFLOPS | 19 TFLOPS - 24 TFLOPs (est.) | 15 TFLOPS+ |
| TDP | 150W | TBA | 225W | 300W | 150-300W |
| Memory | 8GB GDDR5 | TBA | 8GB/16GB HBM2 | 16-32GB HBM2 | 16-32GB HBM2 |
| Memory Bus | 256bit | TBA | 2048-bit (2 Stacks) | 4096-bit (2048-bit x2) | 4096-bit (4 Stacks) |
| PCI Express | 3.0 | TBA | 3.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 |
| Bandwidth | 256 GB/s | TBA | 512 GB/s | 1 TB/s | 1 TB/s |
AMD Is Allegedly Working on Radeon Pro 490 - To Feature Vega GPU Architecture
So we have been hearing a few details on the Radeon 490 from Chinese sources. A few weeks, we spotted some interesting details of a product that is called Radeon Pro 490. This card is specially built for use in the next generation of Apple Mac Pro computers. The launch of this card is expected in May 2017 and the leaker mentions that the card would feature Vega architecture.
Now we cannot confirm this but in the case of Vega, we are looking at a single GPU design rather than a dual chip variant based on Polaris architecture. The Radeon Pro Duo already serves the market space for a high-end, dual-chip graphics card. Moving forward, the card would use HBM2 technology and there are also performance benchmarks for the card which should be taken with a pinch of salt. The leaker reports that the Radeon Pro variant ships with lower clock speeds so performance of the Radeon RX variant of the Vega GPU will be faster.
AMD Radeon Pro 490 Alleged Performance Numbers:
Looking at the benchmarks, the Radeon Pro 490 clearly shows a winning over the GeForce GTX 1070. With the Radeon RX 490 variant being even faster (core / memory clock speeds), we can expect it to reach performance numbers close to the GTX 1080. AMD may go the same route of aggressive pricing as they did with Polaris. A thing to point out is that the Radeon Pro variants usually come a few months after the launch of the consumer Radeon RX variants. So we could expect the RX variant launching soon.
AMD Vega 10, Vega 11, Vega 10 x2 and Vega 20 In 2017 and 2018
In 2017, AMD finally plans to upgrade all of their GPUs to the new FinFET architecture. While Polaris serves the mainstream, Vega will be aiming for the high-end market. The new graphics chip for Deep Learning will be the Vega 10, a very beefy GPU which we detailed yesterday. AMD Vega 10 is expected to launch in first quarter of 2017.
From the leaked details, we now know that Vega 10 can feature up to 4096 stream processors based on a new GCN uARCH (GFX9). The chip has as much as 24 TFLOPs of half-precision and 12 TFLOPs of single precision compute performance. The chip also features up to 16 GB of HBM2 that is clocked to operate at 512 GB/s. The cards based on this chip are rated with 225W TDP.
Now we noticed that Vega 10 isn’t aiming the HPC market but instead, focused at the Deep Learning servers. It will have two parts available in 2017, a single chip and dual chip solution. Both feature double precision at 1/16th the rate of FP32. It confirms that Vega 10 is similar to GP102 which cuts down double precision compute from the more beefy GP100 GPU
AMD Server GPU Roadmap 2016-2019
| Year | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product Segement | |||||
| HPC | Hawaii | Hawaii | Vega 20 | Vega 20 | |
| Deep Learning | Polaris 10 Polaris 11 | Vega 10 Vega 10 x2 | Vega 10 Vega 10 x2 | Navi 10 Navi 10 x2 |
|
| Inference | Radeon Pro S9 Nano | Vega 11 | Vega 11 | Navi 11 |
Unfortunately, we don't have any specifications for the Radeon Pro / RX 490 cards. The 490 codename might be internal and it could be called something entirely different by the time it launches. We expect AMD to clear up or provide details of their Vega GPU and upcoming cards at the New Horizon event.
