AMD lists Radeon R9 380, R9 370 and R9 360 OEM card specs

[HEXUS]

They all appear to be rebrands of previous models.

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[Plasmastorm]

AMD Exec : We've got too many old cards we can't shift.
Yes man: Sir ! We can sell them with a 'new' sticker to OEMs, nobody gives a toss about GPU's in oem systems.
AMD Exec: Give that man a bonus.

Repeat above every 2 years and you have AMD's strategy it seems

[directhex]

On the bright side, it means they'll have to prolong driver support for old cards for longer!

[kalniel]

On the bright side, it means they'll have to prolong driver support for old cards for longer!

Yup - GCN is proving a rather long lasting architecture

[scaryjim]

... Repeat above every 2 years and you have AMD's strategy it seems

And nvidias, to be fair, and I doubt it's entirely driven by the GPU companies: OEMs like having new-sounding parts in their black boxes, so they demand updated products on a regular basis. If that demand doesn't align with the release of new GPU SKUs, AMD and nvidia have little choice other than to rebrand existing cards.

Market forces working ahead of technical development, I'm afraid: While the R9 380 is based on relatively new silicon, the R9 370 is a rebaranded 7850, and the R9 360 is a cut down 7790. Which I believe means there's actually three different iterations of GCN in that line up....

[shaithis]

To be fair, it makes sense.

You bring in a new top-end model (or 2 or 3) and then all the older models go down the pecking order. Why re-design a chip when the one you have fills a performance point and is now cheaper to manufacture than it used to?
You then have a few choices:

1. Keep adding bigger sub-version numbers to faster cards, this would require more granularity in model numbering
2. Confuse people by having multiple product lines running parallel with no differentiator as to performance (this is how it used to be and people didn't like it)
3. Re-brand older cards into the new model lines with appropriate model names that reflect performance (What we have now)

I remember when they starting re-branding, people were up in arms, but the alternatives aren't really any better.

[MrRockliffe]

People don't complain when the rebranded cards end up similar performance to nvidia equivalent, yet (much) cheaper.

[Jowsey]

My preference (And I assume everyone's preference for easy understanding would be a pecking order like this:

390x
390
380x
380
370x
370
360
etc.

What it actually might turn out to be is:

390x
390
290x
290
285
7850
7790

I know which one would be easy for the less well informed to make a choice, example " It appears the 370x offers more performance than the 370. But what about the 7850 vs the 285? Who wins there... "

[Tabbykatze]

Disappointing but not unexpected, would have been hopeful both that both the 290 and 280 series would be the new architectures. But that is naive wishful thinking.

[semitope]

That is nvidias strategy as well. It just only matters when AMD does it because... AMD. Everybody likes to pick on AMD. Or maybe its that nvidia doesn't announce it or bother mentioning (don't know if they do)

AMD Exec : We've got too many old cards we can't shift.
Yes man: Sir ! We can sell them with a 'new' sticker to OEMs, nobody gives a toss about GPU's in oem systems.
AMD Exec: Give that man a bonus.

Repeat above every 2 years and you have AMD's strategy it seems

[kalniel]

That is nvidias strategy as well. It just only matters when AMD does it because... AMD. Everybody likes to pick on AMD. Or maybe its that nvidia doesn't announce it or bother mentioning (don't know if they do)

Welcome to the forums. Have a look how nVidia's rebranding has gone down here as well.

[DanceswithUnix]

So 290 not included? Odd, perhaps OEMs don't use them?

[GuidoLS]

So 290 not included? Odd, perhaps OEMs don't use them?

The 390's aren't ready yet, and reading between the lines, won't be ready until next year, with the Zen processors.

[kalniel]

The 390's aren't ready yet, and reading between the lines, won't be ready until next year, with the Zen processors.

I think he means why aren't there any 290 based rebrands.

My thought would be that they're not what OEMs look for as they're a bit on the power/enthusiast side - all the OEM chips are efficient/relatively low power choices.

[GuidoLS]

I think he means why aren't there any 290 based rebrands.

My thought would be that they're not what OEMs look for as they're a bit on the power/enthusiast side - all the OEM chips are efficient/relatively low power choices.

Because they've already announced the specs on the 390, so the only way they could re-brand the 290 would be to make a board and call it a 385 or something, which would make obvious dollar grab even more obvious, not to mention that, in AMD world, the xx5 designation usually means dual-gpu, which the 290 isn't. That's kind of the downside with rebranding after announcing specs. Your 'flagship' gets torpedoed. That's part of the reason Nvidia removed the Titans from the numbered naming schemes.

[DanceswithUnix]

Because they've already announced the specs on the 390, so the only way they could re-brand the 290 would be to make a board and call it a 385 or something, which would make obvious dollar grab even more obvious, not to mention that, in AMD world, the xx5 designation usually means dual-gpu, which the 290 isn't. That's kind of the downside with rebranding after announcing specs. Your 'flagship' gets torpedoed. That's part of the reason Nvidia removed the Titans from the numbered naming schemes.

385 would be a 380 update (from the explanation given when they released the 285), so that doesn't fit the AMD numbering.

290 could be called a 380X, but that doesn't leave much room at the top. But, ignoring performance, if the 390 costs the same or less than the 290 to manufacture then the 290 would have to be completely exorcised from the range. This could be a good sign, or I could be reading far too much into it