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

[kalniel]

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.

The 285 isn't a dual CPU, so if there's going to be a rebrand of the 290/X I expect it to be something like a 385.. however I still think it won't be an OEM part, and we don't know the model numbers for retail parts yet so it could well end up being a 380X or something.

[Corky34]

But what about the 7850 vs the 285? Who wins there... "

As bigger is always better it has to be the one with highest number.
Then again if you add Hyper or an "i" to the number that trumps everything.

[MercutioUK]

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.

Can't say I'm a fan of re-branding but... so long as it's clear they aren't new cards I guess the "it makes performance comparisons easier" argument is a fair one. The amount of folks who still fail to understand that a... 5970 is a vastly, vastly superior card to a 7450 is... frustrating (about even to a 7850 in fact).