AMD is rolling out two new Radeon SKUs to bolster its lineup below the $179.99 price-point held by the Radeon R9 270. The names of these SKUs might confuse the heck out of you, the TechPowerUp reader, and our hearts go out to the target buyers of these products, but bear with us - Radeon R9 255 and Radeon R9 260. Not to be confused with similar-sounding Radeon R7 250 and Radeon R7 260, the two SKUs are positioned in the Radeon R9 series, and could offer either higher performance levels than what the R7 260X manages, or it could also be a sly marketing move by AMD to make the lower-mainstream part of its lineup look more appealing to buyers of pre-built mainstream desktops that are "gaming ready."

There are two pieces of evidence to support the existence of the two. First, AMD updated its website to show R9 255 and R9 260 in the Radeon R9 section of its OEM products page. Second, on close inspection of the driver information (.inf) file of Catalyst 13.12 WHQL, we sniffed out three curious looking device IDs, which point at products going by those names. Selling an SKU named "Radeon R9 260" could work well for AMD's "Never Settle for anything less than AMD Radeon R9 Series graphics" marketing campaign.The extract from the driver information file (which you can find by simply making the installer extract to the temporary "AMD" folder), lists of these entries:

1002&DEV_665C&SUBSYS_29321462
"%AMD665C.2%" = ati2mtag_R505, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_665C&SUBSYS_29341462
"%AMD665C.3%" = ati2mtag_R505, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_665C&SUBSYS_8770148C
"%AMD665C.4%" = ati2mtag_R505, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_665C&SUBSYS_9260148C
"%AMD665C.5%" = ati2mtag_R505, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_665C

Descriptor "%AMD665C.2%" is linked to R9 255, and "%AMD665C.4%" with R9 260. Device IDs of the two also point at R9 255 being based on the "Cape Verde" silicon, and R9 260 being based on "Bonaire."

The product page also lists out specifications of the two.

Radeon R9 255

• 28 nm "Cape Verde" silicon (derived from the device ID)
• 512 stream processors, 32 TMUs
• 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface
• 930 MHz core clock
• Up to 2 GB standard memory amount, with 6.50 GHz memory clock
• 104 GB/s memory bandwidth
• Draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe connector

Radeon R9 260

• 28 nm "Bonaire" silicon (derived from the device ID)
• 896 stream processors, 56 TMUs
• 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface
• 1100 MHz core clock
• Up to 2 GB standard memory amount, with 6.50 GHz memory clock
• 104 GB/s memory bandwidth
• Draws power from a single 6-pin PCIe connector