Speculations suggest that AMD is readying a new GPU card that will take the newly released Nvidia GTX 1080 head-on.

There have already been leaks of AMD's follow-up to its new RX graphics cards lineup, and it is expected that the new cards will be announced soon.

The upcoming RX 490 is said to be a 4K-gaming, top-tier class GPU that will take on other first-rate cards on the market, most notably Nvidia's new GTX 1080. While AMD has yet to officially come out with the new GPU tier, WCCFTech says that that company is making sure that it tags its new GPU lineups as the RX 4XX series, meaning that there are other iterations aside from the already confirmed RX 480 GPU. According to speculations, the RX 460 and RX 470 step-down versions are already in the pipeline, so it is more than likely that AMD is also preparing a top-tier, step-up addition to the new RX lineup.

Meanwhile, since leaks on the supposed new AMD RX GPU came out, observers are saying that since the RX 480 can already take on the newly-released GTX series from Nvidia, it is expected that a step-up version will more likely be a good contender for the top-specs GTX, the 1080. According to rumors, the new RX 490 is also based on the new Polaris 10 architecture by AMD, and there are speculations that based on supposed listings for the device, the new GPU is more likely a dual-GPU one, which will be one of its main improvements. A dual-GPU configuration means that the RX 490 will offer roughly the minimum performance for two RX 480 GPUs in a Crossfire arrangement.

As for its release date, it is expected that the RX 490 will come out towards the latter part of the year at the earliest, to compete with the already-released GTX 1080.