Friday, November 18th 2011
Several Entry-thru-mid Radeon HD 7000 GPUs Mere Rebrands
Want a new graphics card this shopping season? Is news of Radeon HD 7000 series arriving late this year or early next year holding you back from purchasing current-generation? Don't let it, go grab that graphics card you had your eyes on. Fairly reliable sources point out that a bulk of Radeon HD 7000 series graphics cards will be based on rebranded current and previous generation GPUs. This bulk mostly spans across the entry-thru-mid range of the product lineup. Familiar GPU codenames such as Cedar, Caicos, and Turks, make a comeback with Radeon HD 7300 series, HD 7400 series, HD 7500 series, and HD 7600 series.
Moving up the ladder, the source postulates two possibilities for Radeon HD 7700 series. First, and more plausible, is that the series is based on Juniper (a hop across two previous generations!); the second is that these make use of rechristened GPUs from a slightly higher market position from the previous generation. Perhaps Barts, perhaps even highly crippled Cayman. The only real next-generation GPU is codenamed "Tahiti", but we're hearing that graphics cards based on it are said to not follow the Radeon HD 7000 series nomenclature altogether.
Source:
ChipHell
Moving up the ladder, the source postulates two possibilities for Radeon HD 7700 series. First, and more plausible, is that the series is based on Juniper (a hop across two previous generations!); the second is that these make use of rechristened GPUs from a slightly higher market position from the previous generation. Perhaps Barts, perhaps even highly crippled Cayman. The only real next-generation GPU is codenamed "Tahiti", but we're hearing that graphics cards based on it are said to not follow the Radeon HD 7000 series nomenclature altogether.
66 Comments on Several Entry-thru-mid Radeon HD 7000 GPUs Mere Rebrands
I like that graphics cards are getting faster and that my card is still considered good in terms of features and efficiency....
Well, I suppose it's not necessarily my version, we shall see.
Not that I know what all goes into maintaining CrossfireX ability despite major architectural changes, and not that the HD 6000 series would disappear overnight.
Along with that, the increasing power of APUs is making low-mid grade discrete GPUs a less worthwhile thing to invest much development on.
It was 'Bump'gate. An issue with the solder components causing things to melt and stop working. Hypothesised reason why Apple turned to ATI. Cost NV a lot of money that did as they had to set aside some huge amount for RMA's etc.
The Nvidia rebranding was pretty systemic but a lot stemmed from the huge success if the 8800GTX chip (G80 on a 90nm process?) which the pretty much regurgitated until Fermi.
Feel free to correct me, my mind is a bit fuzzy on that.
G80 was the 8800GTX with the 768MB of ram
There is no bad intent by the graphics card manufacturers, they aren't doing anything malicious. People are still getting the performance per $ that should be getting(if they weren't they would be buying a different product). So, people need to stop blaming their un-informed buying on the people selling the products.A lot of those weren't rebrands. The only rebrands were the 8800GS to 9600GSO(done because no one was buying the 8800GS) and 8800GT to 9800GT(done because the 8800GT was released with the expectation that ATi would keep their x2900 naming scheme, but when ATi jumped to a next generation naming scheme, nVidia had to also to keep their products looking fresh in marketting, and nVidia actually proposed using a tri-SLI capable PCB with this card at first but the AIBs shot it down). Some can argue the GTS250 was a rebrand of the 9800GTX+ too, but IMO the massive changes to the reference PCB made it more than a rebrand, despite using the same core configuration. The rest were just variants of the core, just like every core is used in different variants of cards in different configurations.
It makes a lot of sense from a manufacturing perspective. They are still good cards.
Also better get out your tinfoil hats ppl lmao
No one is expecting the GFX comany to make an entirely new product line every time a new card is introduced. But we do expect some sort of honesty from vendors about what we are buying.
I understand the need to keep your product naming scheme constant:
"yes this will also be our Gen 7 offering for midrange, yes it is a Gen 6 part, no we are not making another part - gen 6 with higher clocks will do the job"
In this case board partners are more responsible than the company. Although AMD could easily require them to put a little graph there that shows performance of the chip in respect to current and past gen offerings.
They should just make the names all arbitrary, then no one will complain that "Angry Beaver" has the same chip as "Aggravated Ferret".