Soooo... R9 390 and 390x will be rebrands/refined versions of the 290 and 290x and the next gen HBM stuff will be Fiji and FijiXT?
Makes sense I guess if refined versions are able to keep up with nvidias options at price for performance levels.
Ahh no. Consider these two points:
R9-290x is being rebranded as the R9-380. R9-390x and Fury are not rebrands because they will have different types of memory setups and more streaming processors then the previous generation. Fury is having 4 GBs HBM and R9-390x is having 8 GB VRam. In a sense, these are the GTX 980ti and GTX Titan-X variant, flagship tiers on the AMD side for this generation. GTX Titan with full GM200 and 12 GBs VRam will be in competition with R9-390x for 4k performance supremacy. GTX 980ti, the dumb-down step-child of the GTX Titan-x, is going up against the Fury XT which will beat both GTX Titan-X and 980 Ti in FPS Performance due to HBM. Both R9-390x and Fury will both run 4096 SP.
or
If you want to look at it from another point of view, NVidia 400 to 500 to 600 to 700 to 900 series could be looked at as rebrands of one another. The only differences is the changes between Fermi to kep to Maxwell being the only small difference besides a change in the framebuffer. If people want to call R9-390x a rebrand/refine version of R9-290x, then what I just stated just now is true too. AMD 4000 series got rebranded into the 5000 series, then the 6000 series, then the 7000 series, then the R9-200 series, etc... The main point being that just little 15% to 50% increases were made in between each generation, both AMD and Nvidia, due to rebranding different generations for less than stellar performance increases. Performance increases being the worst on NVidia's end, but that's heavily subjected by every individual's preferences and views on "performance." Difference of 64 Watts doesn't mean crap to a lot, but it's a big deal to NVidia fanboys. Spending $200 dollars more for the GTX 780 Ti over R9-290x for + 10 FPS was really worth it to some...
I think the term "rebrand" is being misused across the web regarding these GPU's. While they have done actual rebrands (IE HD 7970 becomes R9 280X) that offer no improvements over the previous generation (Minus clock bumps) these new chips are all being refined similar to the Tonga R9 285 which bring improvements and new features across the board instead of just an increase in clocks speeds and ram. The chips will be improved upon in more ways than one if the R9 285 was any indication especially now a days where it sits on the board currently in relation to the other R9 series chips. They already confirmed that the R9 370+ were on the newest version of GCN so it depends on what that all entails but these are not just straight up rebrands.
+ 10
Another thing to consider:
GTX 960 = GTX 780 Ti
GTX 760 = GTX 680
In general:
Hypocrisy amongst other TPU members calling AMD out on their rebrands is pretty high since NVidia was the first to do it. Lets look the other way when NVidia does it, but cry like a Bit*** because AMD started copying them. Wa wa! I remember a quote from our very own Humansmoke who told somebody, explaining the hatred between AMD and NVidia fanboys. With Humansmoke siding with the NVidia fanboys, he made a claim that AMD Fanboys are "divorced from reality." Sadly, this little trick of demonizing the other side with their own faults and defects is pretty pathetic on the Green Camp's part, and the only other group of people low enough to resort to this Aquarius-form of tactics and rhetoric is the Republican Party.... Lawls, shots fired! As for the idiots who want NVidia to be a monopoly, you are basically saying you want AMD to die in a raging fire, and your performance increases each proceeding generation after NVidia becomes a monopoly, to only increase by 1% for a flat rate of $200.00 per generation, and no more Titans or 15% performance improvements. GG NVidia Fanboys.
On a side note, I am not an AMD Fanboy. You may mis-construde that because their is an abundants of ignorant people in the world. I'm actually investing in 2 Titan-X for the purposes of using them for 3D animation and content creation, but I am holding out for 3rd party benches on AMD Fury....