[citation][nom]heero yuy[/nom]how does the AMD graphics card naming work? I know with NVidia the 600 series is the latest and the 690 is the most powerful but amd confuses the hell outa me[/citation]
bigger numbers are better. same as Nvidia. it's just there are more numbers...
anyways, the first number "_XXX" is the number of the series. the second number "X_XX" is the subseries (this generally depicts the GPU inside. for example, the 7970 and 7950 have tahiti GPU's, the 7870 and 7850 are on pitcairn, and the lower cards are based on the cape verde processor. this card, as mentioned, is based on a new GPU, which is on GCN 2.0 - probably an early run to see real-world performance specs and ready drivers for higher end cards) the third number "XX_X" tells you which cards are in what order in the subseries (7750 is below 7770, 7850 is below 7870, 7950 is below 7970, so on so forth) the "9" digit at the end is reserved for a dual-gpu card (6990, third party 7990s)
a few exceptions to the rules I put out above: the 7870 XT should really be a 7930, as per naming rules. (it's better than the 7870, and runs on the tahiti core, but it's below the 7930)
basically, bigger numbers are better. the first number denotes the series, the second number denotes performance range (7 being an entry-level card, 8 being mid-range, 9 being enthusiast or high-end) and the third number tells you the order in that performance range.
make sense?