AMD Rebrands RX 500 Series GPUs As RX 500X Series

[Guest]

AMD posted specs for a full line of RX 500X series of GPUs that appear to be straight-up rebrands of the existing RX 500 series.

AMD Rebrands RX 500 Series GPUs As RX 500X Series : Read more

 

[redgarl]

OEM

 

[Martell1977]

It's possible that these will be mobile variants or the 12nm change over products.

If it is a straight up naming change, this would be nothing new, both AMD and nVidia have done this, as well as the OEM only series. How many generations did the GeForce 8800 live on? 3? 4? I do want to mention though that the 290x to 390x and other GPU's were not a straight up rebrands, there were memory, clock speed and a few other changes made. It wasn't ground breaking changes, but going from 4gb VRAM to 8gb was a good move.

Rebrands are just placeholders until delayed products are ready for the market. Maybe they decided to forgo the 12nm and make the jump straight to 7nm. Maybe an indication that 7nm is closer to being ready than we thought? So much to speculate about here.

 

[Giroro]

I suppose it was inevitable in today's market that AMD (and probably Nvidia soon) would re-brand last-gen tech as a hollow excuse to raise MSRP. But it is still disappointing that AMD hasn't finished fleshing out their Vega line, and possibly never will.

Were the Rx 400 series actually new cards? I knew Rx 500 used to be Rx 400, and I guess I just assumed Rx 400 was a re-brand of Rx 300 (which was a re-brand of Rx 200,which was itself mostly a re-brand etc. ). That is why I am so disappointed in the lack of new Vega cards, because I for sure knew those weren't re-brands of 5 year old tech.

 

[ern88]

AMD should call its rebadges the rebrandeon edition. But nope all AMD does is give some slight boost of the clock and roll it out to some unsuspecting consumer and call it a day.

 

[spdragoo]

I suppose it was inevitable in today's market that AMD (and probably Nvidia soon) would re-brand last-gen tech as a hollow excuse to raise MSRP. But it is still disappointing that AMD hasn't finished fleshing out their Vega line, and possibly never will.

Were the Rx 400 series actually new cards? I knew Rx 500 used to be Rx 400, and I guess I just assumed Rx 400 was a re-brand of Rx 300 (which was a re-brand of Rx 200,which was itself mostly a re-brand etc. ). That is why I am so disappointed in the lack of new Vega cards, because I for sure knew those weren't re-brands of 5 year old tech.

It depends on the cards:

• 
  ■ The R5/R7 400 series were technically rebrands of the similarly-numbered R5/R7 300 series cards (although they managed to drop their TDPs by about 33%), but the 400s were all OEM models
  ■ The RX 455 was a rebranded R7/R9 360, but was again only an OEM model
  ■ The RX 460/470/480 were brand-new models, using 4th-gen GCN processors
  ■ RX 520 was a rebranded R5 430 (OEM exclusive), although it dropped from 8 to 4 ROUs
  ■ RX 530 is a weird OEM model (possibly for laptops?), appears almost as if someone took 1/4th of the R9 380X's processors & dropped the memory down to 25%/50% (with the laptop models using the onboard DDR3 instead of their own GDDR5), plus the GDDR5 models cut the bus width in half.
  ■ RX 560/570/580 are rebranded RX 460/470/480 models with slightly higher clocks (& slightly higher TDPs).

 

[TJ Hooker]

If it is a straight up naming change, this would be nothing new, both AMD and nVidia have done this, as well as the OEM only series.

The thing, is although rebrands are common, they usually come with increased clock speeds/VRAM/etc., or are renamed further down the product stack (e.g. high-end flagship HD 7970 becomes med-high R9 280X). I can't think of any recent examples of a card being rebadged and keeping the exact same specs and same place in the product stack (and therefore possibly the same MSRP).

 

[none12345]

Seems like a waste of time to me. Same card same clocks, no need for a new name, but whatever.

At least its not like 2 versions of the nvidia 1030 where ram(ddr4 vs gddr5), and clock speeds are quite different. Thats just retarded. Hell if nvidia called it a 1030 and a 1030x no one would care. But as its 2 different products under the same name its straight BS.


Rant over....someone wake me up when the 7nm cards come out. Otherwise the gpu market has pissed me off so much over the last year and a half that even tho i really want a gpu, i just refuse to pay anything right now for 2016 era chips(well i guess id buy a 1070 or a vega 56 if it was $150, otherwise this old stuff can just screw off).

 

[monsta]

Yay for 3rd rebrand of the RX400!

 

[bennie101]

And every other company in this world does about the same thing I can mention many Intel for 1 how but apple and there phones slight tweaks and such we got a new product.Even Nivida Has done it as well its just business is all it is up to the comsumer to research a product before they buy it if they dont well thats on them.

 

[bit_user]

The rebranding doesn’t preclude an announcement for an actually new consumer GPU from AMD this year, but there is no evidence it will occur.

We know there will be at least one more Vega, this year. Vega 56 & 64 were internally named Vega 10, and Linux driver support was just added for Vega 12. I don't know if Vega 11 is supposed to be the 24 CU chip that sold as Vega M for integration into Intel's Core i7-8xxxG series, the Vega Mobile GPU, or if it's yet something else.

 

[bit_user]

Were the Rx 400 series actually new cards? I knew Rx 500 used to be Rx 400,

Yes, they were new cards. RX 500 was mostly a rebadge, except that RX 570/580 is a new chip (Polaris 20), while RX 470 and RX 480 were Polaris 10. RX 460 and RX 560 are Polaris 11. RX 550 is Polaris 12.

I guess I just assumed Rx 400 was a re-brand of Rx 300 (which was a re-brand of Rx 200,which was itself mostly a re-brand etc. ).

No, Polaris (which introduced the RX naming scheme and inaugurated the RX 400 series) was a new generation of GCN. It's not really hard to find out (hint: look at the Architecture column):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units#Radeon_RX_400_Series


If you want to know what's different about Polaris (besides manufacturing node), here are the juicy details:

http://gaming.radeon.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2016/08/Polaris-Tech-Day-Architecture-Final-6.24.2016.pdf
http://radeon.com/_downloads/polaris-whitepaper-4.8.16.pdf

 

[cinergy]

Raja Koduri was a real disaster for AMD.

 

[Istarion]

"Raja Koduri was a real disaster for AMD."

Agreed, but I hope I'm wrong and he's an infiltrator trying to crash Intel from inside 😛

 

[Martell1977]

Raja Koduri was a real disaster for AMD.

I'm not so sure, he came in toward the end of development of Polaris and Vega. Was too late for him to change much that far in. His influence will be seen in Navi, more than likely.

 

[bit_user]

Raja Koduri was a real disaster for AMD.

I wonder about this. If he was so bad, it's strange that he'd land that sweet gig at Intel. People in the industry do talk...

 

[TJ Hooker]

RX 500 was mostly a rebadge, except that RX 570/580 is a new chip (Polaris 20), while RX 470 and RX 480 were Polaris 10.

Is there any actual difference between Polaris 20 and 10 though? Seems like they just rebadged the GPU core itself.

 

[bit_user]

RX 500 was mostly a rebadge, except that RX 570/580 is a new chip (Polaris 20), while RX 470 and RX 480 were Polaris 10.

Is there any actual difference between Polaris 20 and 10 though? Seems like they just rebadged the GPU core itself.

According to this, the manufacturing node for the RX 500 series is different. Perhaps that only applies to Polaris 20, however.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56763/amd-radeon-rx-580-powered-refreshed-polaris-20-gpu/index.html

 

[cryoburner]

The X stands for...
EXTREME

To be fair, while the RX500 and 500X might just be rebrands of the RX 400 series, It's not like Nvidia has released a new series of cards in the mean time either. Both AMD's RX 400 series and Nvidia's Geforce 10 series are nearly 2 years old at this point, and cards in both series cost more now than they did at launch. If AMD were to release some mid-range Vega-based cards right now, they would probably just get bought up by miners, driving up their costs and making them not worth buying anyway, much like what happened with Vega 56 and 64.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Spoiler

RX 500 was mostly a rebadge, except that RX 570/580 is a new chip (Polaris 20), while RX 470 and RX 480 were Polaris 10.

Is there any actual difference between Polaris 20 and 10 though? Seems like they just rebadged the GPU core itself.

According to this, the manufacturing node for the RX 500 series is different. Perhaps that only applies to Polaris 20, however.

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/56763/amd-radeon-rx-580-powered-refreshed-polaris-20-gpu/index.html

Hmm, here's an Anandtech article saying the opposite, that it's not a new process:
"Both foundries have also been making other undisclosed, small tweaks to their lines to further boost chip quality. It’s not a new fab process (it’s still 14nm LPP) but it’s an improvement over where Polaris 10 production started nearly a year ago."
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11278/amd-radeon-rx-580-rx-570-review/2

Maybe AMD was trying to mildly hype the improvements gained from gradual process refinements as if it was a new process, to try and put some shine on an otherwise full lineup of rebadges? I guess it doesn't matter a whole lot either way at this point.

 

[Rexer]

AMD must've invested a lot into the RX 400/500 Polaris to keep it around for 3 yrs. Each year they just readdress the bios to higher frequencies. I have to admit, they run cooler than the R9 200/300 and Vegas. It's a big plus to flash a 480 bios to 580. I don't know if you want to call it business frugal but it's easy to see that was the scheme.

 

[Rexer]

And every other company in this world does about the same thing I can mention many Intel for 1 how but apple and there phones slight tweaks and such we got a new product.Even Nivida Has done it as well its just business is all it is up to the comsumer to research a product before they buy it if they dont well thats on them.

Yeah, companies don't like to fix things that aren't broke. I know a computer consulting firm that bought the same new cars they bought in 2014. That's boring. An employee fell asleep at the wheel. Can't blame him. No exciting crash. Stopped on the shoulder of the road which was even more boring. Z-z-z-z-z. *Oh, a new model. Wonderful. *Z-z-z-z-z.

 

[bit_user]

AMD must've invested a lot into the RX 400/500 Polaris to keep it around for 3 yrs.

I doubt that's it. I think they originally planned to do a Vega shrink to 12 nm, this year, and release smaller versions of it. But, once they saw how far behind Vega was and how little was to be gained from 12 nm, they opted to re-target for 7 nm and maybe address some of Vega's power efficiency issues.

From their perspective, what would be gained by launching something only 10-15% faster against Pascal's successor? They'd end up even further behind than where they're at. It won't help AMD and it won't help consumers.

I don't know if you want to call it business frugal but it's easy to see that was the scheme.

What they can't afford is to have a major flop. So, if a 12 nm refresh isn't going to be competitive, their least bad option is to delay for a year. It's not a great situation, but at least they'll live to fight another day.

 

[cryoburner]

AMD must've invested a lot into the RX 400/500 Polaris to keep it around for 3 yrs. Each year they just readdress the bios to higher frequencies. I have to admit, they run cooler than the R9 200/300 and Vegas. It's a big plus to flash a 480 bios to 580. I don't know if you want to call it business frugal but it's easy to see that was the scheme.

It hasn't even been two years yet at this point, and I suspect AMD will likely not wait another whole year before launching new cards. The RX 400 series was launched shortly after the Geforce 10 series, and I imagine we'll see a new series from them not too many months after Geforce 11 debuts. The fact that these cards are being rebranded "500X" rather than "600", and they haven't been officially announced to the consumer market might be indicative of them intending to launch something new later in the year. They are supposedly working on a major redesign of their GPU architecture to be much more efficient and scalable, but that may not be ready for a couple years. In the mean time, I would expect them to at least fill out their product lineup with Vega / Navi architecture though.

Due in part to miners messing up the GPU market in the months prior to Vega's launch last summer, pricing and availability of the cards has been pretty terrible, and their struggle to compete at the high end hasn't really helped. Even though Vega's efficiency is not on par with Nvidia's cards, it is apparently a bit better than Polaris though, and I'm sure a move to a smaller process node would improve it further. It seems possible that we could see some 7nm GPUs appearing around the new year.

 

[bit_user]

The fact that these cards are being rebranded "500X" rather than "600", and they haven't been officially announced to the consumer market might be indicative of them intending to launch something new later in the year. They are supposedly working on a major redesign of their GPU architecture to be much more efficient and scalable, but that may not be ready for a couple years. In the mean time, I would expect them to at least fill out their product lineup with Vega / Navi architecture though.

No, they already released their roadmap (I repeat: released - not leaked!). They are planning to do a 7 nm shrink of Vega for late 2018 (cloud/machine learning) and early 2019 (consumer) launch. Then comes Navi, and then comes their new, post-GCN architecture.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12233/amd-tech-day-at-ces-2018-roadmap-revealed-with-ryzen-apus-zen-on-12nm-vega-on-7nm/9

There's a bit more, on the first page.

Anyway, things change and roadmaps aren't legally-binding (although they have to be careful not to mislead shareholders), so there's probably a small margin of room to hope they have something good for consumers, this year. I'm hoping Vega prices normalize and some of the major game engines pickup more support for Vega's 16-bit operations that seem to have served them quite well on Far Cry 5.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/far-cry-5-performance-benchmark-ultra,5552-7.html