Monday, January 7th 2013
AMD Rebrands Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs to HD 8000 for OEMs
It turns out that the "Radeon HD 8950" that Lenovo's Erazer X700 ships with, is yet another example of GPU makers shamelessly rebranding previous-generation GPUs, to the whims of pre-built PC makers. One of our forum members spotted this page on AMD's website, which lists the specs-sheets of nine OEM-exclusive Radeon HD 8000 series SKUs, which reveal them to be complete rebrands of their HD 7000-series counterparts. If you're into pre-built PCs, and planning to buy one soon, watch out what's crunching pixels in it.
61 Comments on AMD Rebrands Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs to HD 8000 for OEMs
whats funny NV site doesnt specify shader count, transistor count etc.
However, I got to say it:
Does this make the ASUS MARS II a 8970x2?
:roll:
The 8xxx series appears to be more of a tweaked 7xxx series.
Basically like what happened when nVidia went from the 8800 series to the 9800 series.
Fair enough since AMD are still refining their drivers for GCN architecture.
In any case the Mars II is a dual GTX 580 card...unless you're thinking about this oneIf you're making a case for Nvidia's prior indiscretions, I seem to remember ATI "updating" the Rage Pro to Rage Pro Turbo that came with drivers optimized for synthetic benchmarks and shittier gameplay performance- and that was sometime around the beginning of 1998 (February I think) - so I wouldn't bother playing the historical card.
btw.. now that we are seeing more re-brands i am curious to know, what will users of these oem systems get to see when they use GPU-Z or how are their drivers different from retail models? do the drivers detect them as 8xxx(OEM)?
(or whoever ordered you not to) rather than a rebranding from some companies.
I wrote in a thread "both disappointing" (Nvidia + AMD) and we already are in GPU Dark ages
Personally, I think this is quite normal. They can do whatever they want, seriously.
anyways, I am just curious to know.. thats all
It's not like nVidia never did anything like this, but damn AMD sure does have crappy timing. Pulling a stunt like that just when they seemed to be able to get ahead is quite the slip-up.
We have plenty of OEM desktop users reporting their GPUs to us.
It's not like the OEM market is insignificant - if it was, AMD wouldn't be doing business in it. And I for one wouldn't enjoy being screwed over just because I wanted to buy a Lenovo or a Dell. This will hurt sales, and it is a crappy move, no matter how you look at it.