The highly successful original equipment manufacturer, AMD, has developed its upcoming Radeon RX 490 that can support 4K gaming and is scheduled for a new mid-2017 release. The release date was confirmed to be in 2016 according to the AMD and Sapphire official websites, but that is not the case anymore.

The same GPU has been used as a promotional unit in 2016 for the semiconductor company in Sunnyvale, whereas the chipset was also seen on official websites of AMD and Sapphire with the discounted motherboard manufacturer certified by AMD. However, the company has been very tight lipped about this information and has not confirmed any of the earlier specifications.

WCCFTech released its news report regarding the AMD Radeon RX 490 delay, saying: "We have just received further reports that the card will not only be announced in December but will be launched in December as well. The card has been listed on AIB websites (and even AMD Official) for quite some while now, so everything appears to be ready."

As earlier rumors point to AMD Radeon RX 490 carrying Vega 10 architecture, the delayed release could be for this additional feature. The current GPUs in the AMD RX Series were based from Polaris architecture, and the decision to use the Vega 10 for AMD Radeon RX 490 may have caused the company to put more time on its development.

"The only way the RX 490 ends up being a Vega 10 GPU (assuming AMD did not fast-track it) is if it arrives next year," WCCFTech reported.

However, AMD RX 490's name could contain the future of the chipset's structure. The number '4' refers to the fourth generation GCN architecture, which could mean that Radeon RX 480 may still be Polaris-based and the '9' refers to the ninth row of gaming.

According to HNGN, AMD Radeon RX 490 will feature second-generation high bandwidth memory that will have RAM of 8,196 MB storage capacity. The next-gen GPU will sport a 1,200 MHz base clock and a 350 MHz memory clock.

For reference, the RX device is powered by a processing power of more than 1.5TFLOPs, which should push an accelerated speed of up to 60 frames per second at 1080p.

Since the new flagship graphics card will compete with NVIDIA's GTX 1080, the Radeon RX 490 sticker price on release date will benchmark with the latter. Recent news suggests that the RX 490 will be pricier than the RX 480 but certainly not surpassing that of the GTX 1080, which NVIDIA introduced at $600.