Reviews - AMD Radeon 300 series may largely consist of rebrands

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According to references in the latest AMD Catalyst 15.3 Beta drivers.

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Read more.

I love getting a new graphics card just by updating the driver. ;)

So the Tonga R9 285, one of their most recent cards and at a good price point, isn't being re-branded but everything else is? I find that rather hard to swallow.

Even if most are rebrands if they all come with HBM wouldn't that give them all a decent boost in performance?

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Originally Posted by Corky34

Even if most are rebrands if they all come with HBM wouldn't that give them all a decent boost in performance?

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Rebrands would not have HBM.

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Originally Posted by hexus

According to this data the AMD Radeon R9 370 will be a Radeon R9 270 rebrand (Oland XT).

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Oland is the R7 250 isn't it? The R9 270 is the ancient Pitcairn (ie 7870) and doesn't support any of the recent features AMD have been talking about, so I very much doubt this info is accurate!

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Rebrands would not have HBM.

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Is that because of technical reasons?
i.e HBM can only be paired with a GPU that's designed for it.

This fits in with earlier rumours when they were meant to be released this month.
Rumours have now changed to indicate a later release without rebrands.
I'm guessing that the drivers were done for the first case, and may not be indicative of what actually happens.

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Originally Posted by Corky34

Is that because of technical reasons?
i.e HBM can only be paired with a GPU that's designed for it.

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Yes. The memory controller is different.

Hexus - just noticed this article is listed as "Reviews - " rather than rumour/speculation - typo? The more I look at it the more nonsense it looks - you probably don't want it to look like you agree with it!

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Originally Posted by Corky34

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Rebrands would not have HBM.

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Is that because of technical reasons?
i.e HBM can only be paired with a GPU that's designed for it.

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Rebrands generally refer to the card itself being identical, only a change in name to the new series. It would probably cost as much to add HBM to an old card as it would to use a cut down version of the new architecture at the same specs with HBM.

A rebrand isn't the worrying part, if this is true. The worrying part is that the 270 is going to be come the 370, the 240 will become a 340, etc. If it was going to be that the 270 becomes the 360 and the 240 would become the 230, then that would be alright.

From the rumours I read before now, the 390(X) and 370 will be new cards, and the rest will be rebrands. At this point I think I'll just wait and see.

seems like a suicide move to me, I hope it is not truth.

Why should I upgrade my 7850 if the new cards are just another rebrand of my card?

270 to 370 seems... unusual. I would expect more along the lines of 280x to 270 as a Rebrand.

Saying that Nvidia got away with the GTX960 being basically the same performance as the GTX760.

I blame consoles.

Still pushing these 2011/12 cards on us eh!? Enough with the god damn rebrands!!

Nah, I'm not completely serious. I'm just waiting for official words before I judge. But, seriously, if they all turned out to be rebrands, I might just give up on Amd :( If some are rebrands, I would be very suprised to see them do anything like rebrand a 270 as 370. I think a 280 would become a 370. That\'s pretty much how it\'s normally done with this kind of thing..

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Originally Posted by ZaO

I think a 280 would become a 370. That's pretty much how it's normally done with this kind of thing..

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The 280 is even older than the 270 :p

It'd likely be new variants of tonga (also the basis of the 285) that'd be used in the upper-mid 300 series IMHO