With a hint of an imminent release within this year, semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and its partner Sapphire Technology have both been teasing the upcoming launch of the company's graphics card RX 480's successor, the AMD RX 490. AMD's chief gaming scientist Richard Huddy revealed inconclusively through his lectures that the upcoming device will be going after a greater than 256-bit bus along with a focus on gaming at 4K resolution. As such, the gaming performance in this unit will provide decent rendering at the highest resolution levels. 

Meanwhile, reports indicate that the Polaris 10 graphics processing unit (GPU), which the older RX 480 sports, would be the last Polaris chip to be unlocked by AMD. With this in mind, speculators are on the fence as to what type of silicon will AMD be going to produce for the upcoming RX 490.

However, the people from AMD are quick to add that the GPU in the RX 480 is already utilizing the Polaris 10 silicon, in full, with nothing removed nor curbed. 

Reports say that the RX 490 is the seminconductor vendor's response to NVIDIA's GTX 1080. If such is the case, then the upcoming graphics card should be able to have a provision for virtual reality (VR) gaming support. Moreover, it should be able to provide a decent power for VR gaming which would be similar to GTX 1080's performance.

The upcoming RX 490 will also reportedly sport 4K gaming support along with other perks, given that the device is slated to carry a powerful graphics card that is specifically tailored to meet these requirements.

Naturally, the price of the AMD RX 490 should not be surprisingly hefty. Either way, the company is also expected to align the graphics card's pricing at its closest rivals, notably the NIVIDIA's GTX 1080, which is currently retailing at around $600.